Prescriptivism and akrasia

✍ Scribed by Harry S. Silverstein

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1970
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 302 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8116
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00505346

✦ Synopsis

Prescriptivism and Akrasia

by HARRY S. SILVERSTEIN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ONE Ot the standard objections to Hare's prescriptivist analysis of moral judgments is that this analysis is incompatible with the phenomenon of akrasia or "weakness of will." According to the preseriptivist analysis, so the familiar argument runs, it is impossible to assent to a moral judgment (or, at any rate, to assent "fully" to a moral judgment being used in its "central" sense) and yet fail to act in accordance with it. However, because we are all, at least occasionally, subject to the malady of akrasia, we all do, at least occasionally, assent to moral judgments and yet fail to act in accordance with them; hence,