Julia Haas (Rhodes College)
An agent exercises instrumental rationality to the degree that she adopts appropriate means to achieving her ends. Adopting appropriate means to achieving one’s ends can, in turn, involve overcoming one’s strongest desires, that is, it can involve exercising synchronic self-control. However, contra standard approaches (Kennett and Smith 1996, Mele 2002, Sripada 2012), I deny that synchronic self-control is possible. Specifically, I draw on models from reinforcement learning and empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience to describe a naturalistic, multi-system model of the mind. But this model precludes synchronic self-control. Must we, then, give up on a meaningful conception of instrumental rationality? No. A multi-system view still permits something like synchronic self-control: an agent can control her very strong desires. Adopting a multi-system model of the mind thus places limitations on our conceptions of instrumental rationality, without requiring that we abandon it.
