Ethical issues in moral and social enhancement

one’s own
(i.e. an authenticity concern) and the lack of 
freedom of thought.
A further argument for the importance of a will of one’s own, as opposed to 
freedom of will and action, is the analogy between the God Machine and akrasia 
(see: Rorty, 1980; Mele, 1982; Pears, 1998). More specifically, there is an analogy 
between the influence of the God Machine and the examples of akrasia that are not 
instances of being weak willed. In both the God Machine scenario and the (not 
weak-willed) akrasia, it is important whether or not the second order volition arose 
in the right way. Davidson describes akrasia without weakness of will and argues 
that when people act against their better judgement they temporarily believe that the 
worse course of action is better, because they have not made an all-things-
considered judgment. They have merely made a judgment based on a subset of 
relevant considerations. This is compatible with Holton’s (1999) point that 
weakness of the will involves revising one's resolutions too easily. Under this view, 
it is possible to act against one's better judgment (that is, to be akratic) without 
being weak-willed. How does the analogy apply to the God Machine scenario? 
Suppose, for example that, Wilson Sr. judges that taking revenge upon a murderer 
is not the best course of action, but makes a resolution to take revenge anyway and 
sticks to that resolution. Such a description of some people’s seemingly irrational 
actions has a high degree of psychological plausibility. I agree with Holton’s 
interpretation that Wilson Sr. behaves akratically but does not show weakness of 
27
See: Locke 1689, Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 12. 

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the will. I think that the God Machine’s interference is best understood in similar 
terms: not as impairment primarily in the exercise of free will, but rather as an 
instance of externally enacted (heteronomous) akrasia without being weak-willed. 
The most important ‘break’ is not that between thought and action, as Harris 
(2014a) suggested, but between one’s own thoughts and beliefs and resultant 
effective will.