"A 'Horseshoe Model' of Loss of Control"
Dr. Amanda Evans, McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow, Washington University
"A 'Horseshoe Model' of Loss of Control"
Friday, December 2, 2022 | 1:30 pm
Lovejoy Library 3rd Floor Conference Room
In this talk I present a novel account of the relationship between addiction and weakness of will in a way that connects current empirically informed models of addiction, so-called “willing addicts”, and anorexia nervosa. Recent discussion of the relation between addiction and weakness of will (or akrasia) has centered on the question of whether it makes sense to include addiction within a broader species of akratic or weak-willed actions. Against the backdrop of this debate, I first call attention to the fact that many of the empirical findings cited by philosophers in relation to addiction also apply to anorexia nervosa in structurally identical ways. The inclusion of anorexia in the current discussion sits rather awkwardly, however, with those theories of addiction that rely in some way or other on the purported phenomenological similarity between garden-variety akratic actions and addictive actions.
Eschewing this (often implicit) connection between pathological loss of control and the phenomenology of ordinary akrasia, I introduce the notion of counterfactual capacity for self-control. With this new framework in hand, I argue that the best way to understand this capacity is via a “horseshoe model” in which the two “extreme” ends of the model are occupied by the clinical “extremes” of pathological loss of control (i.e., with unwilling addicts occupying one end and anorexics as well as willing addicts occupying the other). I conclude by sketching some of the philosophical as well as clinical upshots of conceiving of loss of control in this way.
