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Want of Care: An Essay on Wayward Action

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Abstract

Philosophers have taken little heed of the fact that people often act contrary to their better judgment not because they suffer a volitional infirmity like weakness of will or compulsion but instead because they care too little about what they judge best (they are unconcerned) or they care too much about something else (they are compromised). Unconcerned and compromised action, being varieties of akratic action that do not involve volitional infirmity, are phenomena worth examining not only in their own right but also for what they reveal about the better known varieties of akratic action for which they might easily be mistaken, such as weak-willed action and action (or inaction) that stems from accidie. Unconcern and compromise also are worth examining for what they reveal about a topic beyond philosophical psychology, namely, moral and legal accountability. Forgiveness, resentment, and retributive punishment each may have less to do with what an offender (morally) believes than with what he cares about.

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Notes

  1. Although he does not develop the concept of unconcern, Frank Jackson (1984: 4) makes the related point that a person who acts contrary to his better judgment does not exhibit weakness of will if the reason why he acts contrary to his better judgment is that he simply “doesn’t care enough about what he acknowledges to be what it is best to do.”

  2. By ‘akratic action’ I mean uncompelled intentional action that is contrary to the actor’s better judgment.

  3. The example is cast in the first person for ease of analysis only. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  4. If you are of the opinion that $200 is not morally insignificant, feel free to imagine a smaller sum.

  5. To the extent that the foregoing discussion draws on moral and psychological intuitions that are inconsistent with certain theories of belief (e.g., Schwitzgebel 2002) according to which a belief is constituted by a set of dispositions, including dispositions to experience various feelings, I leave it to the reader to determine whether the inconsistency calls into question these moral and psychological intuitions or instead calls into question the theories with which these intuitions might be inconsistent.

  6. In view of the difference between weakness and unconcern, consider the sardonic apology with which William Charlton closes the preface to his book on weakness of will: “To those who see grammar as the great instrument of masculine domination I should apologize for the frequent use of ‘he’ as a universal pronoun and ‘man’ as a word for members of the human species. . . . [P]erhaps in forgoing the more chivalrous styles which, all things considered, I think better, I merely betray the weakness of my will” (Charlton 1988). Perhaps. More likely, Charlton betrays unconcern.

  7. Although I hesitate to attribute to any particular writer the precise idea that caring consists in evaluative belief, something like this idea seems present in Shoemaker 2003, Wallace 2000, and Lipman 1995.

  8. While I join Jaworska (2007) in doubting that caring consists in evaluative belief, I do not endorse her reasoning. Jaworska’s principal ground for divorcing caring from evaluative belief is that “marginal agents” (very young children and adults with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease) lack the capacity for evaluative belief but evidently possess the capacity to care. In Jaworska’s view, “attention to marginal agents will force us to see . . . what caring . . . really [is]” (Jaworska 2007: 532). Jaworska seems to overlook the possibility that attention to marginal agents will show us only what marginal caring is. Marginal caring could well lack features that define the central case.

  9. Here I diverge from one strain of thought in the work of Harry Frankfurt, who has said that caring about something is “substantially equivalent” to “regarding” it as “important” to oneself (Frankfurt 1999: 155–56).

  10. These details are from Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette, a twelfth-century poem.

  11. This example originates with Bennett (1974), who, for reasons irrelevant to the present discussion, does not agree that Huckleberry Finn exhibits moral virtue.

  12. See Jaworska 1999 and 2007 for a thoughtful discussion of the differences between caring and mere desiring.

  13. Consider what prosecutor Matt Murphy said about Rodney Alcala, believed by some to be America’s most “prolific” serial killer: “He’s an evil monster who knows what he is doing is wrong and doesn’t care” (Gardner 2010).

  14. See, e.g., State v. Mitchell, 726 N.W.3d 356 (Wisc. App. 2006); State v. Millet, 2002 WL 31195405 (Ohio App. 8 Dist. 2002); People v. Eva M., 2001 WL 1326562 (Cal. App. 2 Dist. 2001); Naovarath v. State, 779 P.2d 944 (Nev. 1989).

  15. Millet, 2002 WL 31195405 at 3.

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Acknowledgments

Many people gave me valuable feedback on the material in this essay. I especially would like to thank Facundo Alonso, Paul Audi, Richard Brooks, Sarah Buss, Jules Coleman, Stephen Darwall, Tamar Gendler, Adrienne Lapidos, Jed Lewinsohn, Sarah McGrath, Tristram McPherson, Alexander Nehamas, Maurice Richter, Gideon Rosen, Alex Sarch, Scott Shapiro, Michael Smith, Patrick Weil, Rebecca Wolitz, and my anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Law School, University of Michigan, 625 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Gabriel S. Mendlow

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Mendlow, G.S. Want of Care: An Essay on Wayward Action. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 17, 299–310 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9436-1

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