Dorothee Horstkötter
My research is covered by a comprehensive interest in both conceptual and ethical questions at the interface of (neuro)biology/psychology and (disordered) human behaviour. It is triggered by recent developments in the behavioural- and neurosciences and the frequent suggestion that desires, beliefs, intentions, or personal choices would have no impact on what people do, but that instead human behaviour (including disordered or deviant behaviour) were caused by (disordered or deviant) features of a person’s environment and/or brain. I consider this to entail important ethical and conceptual challenges which I am happy to face.
My current research is in ethics. It investigates the ethical and societal implications of a genomics and neurobiology approach to antisocial behaviour (ASB). Currently, research in neurobiology is considered of increasing significance for the explanation of antisocial behaviour. This raises great hopes and expectations with regard to, for example, more effective forms of prevention and intervention, but also great concerns about a variety of pitfalls and caveats. My research evaluates current scientific developments concerning ASB from an ethical point of view, integrating a theoretical ethical analysis with qualitative empirical stakeholder research.
Before, that is, during my PhD period, my research was in analytic philosophy of action. From a conceptual perspective I approached the challenge posed by significant parts of current social psychology, according to which, human behaviour is not controlled by persons, but instead the result of unconscious features of the environment. I argue that this conclusion depends on a misunderstanding of what behavioural self-control is. Investigating the meaning of self-control, I argue that it is not merely a notion of causal control (the one defeated in much social psychology research), but that self-controlled behaviour should largely be understood in normative terms.
For the future, I plan to integrate my ethical and conceptual interests regarding the challenges that current research in the behavioural and neurosciences pose for our daily lives and for our self-understanding as persons.
My current research is in ethics. It investigates the ethical and societal implications of a genomics and neurobiology approach to antisocial behaviour (ASB). Currently, research in neurobiology is considered of increasing significance for the explanation of antisocial behaviour. This raises great hopes and expectations with regard to, for example, more effective forms of prevention and intervention, but also great concerns about a variety of pitfalls and caveats. My research evaluates current scientific developments concerning ASB from an ethical point of view, integrating a theoretical ethical analysis with qualitative empirical stakeholder research.
Before, that is, during my PhD period, my research was in analytic philosophy of action. From a conceptual perspective I approached the challenge posed by significant parts of current social psychology, according to which, human behaviour is not controlled by persons, but instead the result of unconscious features of the environment. I argue that this conclusion depends on a misunderstanding of what behavioural self-control is. Investigating the meaning of self-control, I argue that it is not merely a notion of causal control (the one defeated in much social psychology research), but that self-controlled behaviour should largely be understood in normative terms.
For the future, I plan to integrate my ethical and conceptual interests regarding the challenges that current research in the behavioural and neurosciences pose for our daily lives and for our self-understanding as persons.
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Books by Dorothee Horstkötter
This volume explores all of these questions and more. Against the background of recent findings and expected advances in neuroscience and genetics, the extent and limits of parental responsibility are increasingly unclear. Awareness of the effects of parental choices on children’s wellbeing, as well as evolving norms about the moral status of children, have further increased expectations from (prospective) parents to take up and act on their changing responsibilities.
The contributors discuss conceptual issues such as the meaning and sources of moral responsibility, normality, treatment, and identity. They also explore more practical issues such as how responsibility for children is practiced in Yoruba culture in Nigeria or how parents and health professionals in Belgium perceive the dilemmas generated by prenatal diagnosis.
The capacity to exercise self-control is of great significance to our daily lives and the setup of our social institutions. The very possibility of behavioural self-control, however, has been seriously challenged by recent developments in behavioural science that suggest that any desires, beliefs or intentions have no impact on what people do. This book explicitly confronts this challenge by investigating the very meaning of self-control. A robust account of self-control does not require a notion of causal control, instead it emphasizes the normative character of self-controlled forms of human behaviour. The argument is developed against the background of both recent philosophical discussions and empirical insights from the behavioural sciences. Therefore, this book should be interesting to philosophers and behavioural scientists alike.
Summary (long version)
In their daily lives, people heavily rely on their capacity to control and rule their behaviour. They make decisions about what to do and how to proceed and then act accordingly. Sometimes, people feel tempted to act contrary to their better judgment, yet they may still achieve their initial goals and master the distracting inclination. In such cases, we consider people to have taken responsibility for their lives and their actions successfully. Obviously, sometimes, people fail to exercise self-control. Again, we tend to hold them responsible for their failures. On the background of holding people responsible for both their behavioural successes and failures lies the capacity to exercise control over one’s behaviour and to determine the course of one’s actions. Bearing this in mind and the great significance that behavioural control has on our daily lives and the setup of our social institutions, it seems crucial to possess a well-founded understanding of what exactly behavioural control is.
Such an understanding is particularly needed against the background of recent developments in the behavioural-, cognitive- and the neuro-sciences that suggest that there is no such thing as behavioural control and that any desires, beliefs, or intentions have no impact on what people do. Instead, it is suggested, human behaviour is caused outside people’s awareness and it is the result of diverse and complex unconscious and automatic processes which are generated by various features of people’s environment.
This book explicitly aims at meeting this kind of challenge. It argues for the relevance and existence of behavioural self-control. Thereby, however, it does not want to contradict, negate, or disprove empirical facts about the automatic and unconscious foundations of our daily behaviours. However, it seeks to contradict the main conclusion that its authors draw, that is, that due to the investigated facts about automatic behaviour, controlled forms of behaviour can be ruled out. This conclusion is not at all mandatory, but based on a false, limited, and naïve conceptualization of what behavioural self-control is.
The idea that automaticity and control are mutually exclusive depends on the assumption that both are each other’s opposites. Phenomenologically, this opposition may seem natural. Food is digested automatically, but the cigarette has to be lighted and inhaled. This impression, however, is not conclusive. An alternative interpretation can show us why. If the person who lights the cigarette is contrasted to the process of digestion, she may, phenomenologically, indeed be regarded as exercising control over her behaviour. When digesting, we do not form relevant desires, nor do we hold beliefs about how best to digest. Digestion just happens to us, it is an event rather than an action. In contrast, to a person who lights a cigarette this picture of action-causation can still apply. According to this interpretation, such a person wants to smoke, she believes that lighting a cigarette is a probable means, forms the intention to light it and hence does so. However, even without any assistance of automaticity-theory, one may likewise argue that such a person does not control her smoking behaviour. At least, there seems to be a significant difference between, for example, the person who lights the cigarette because she wants to enjoy the taste and relaxation it provides and the person who has decided to stop smoking but cannot resist the temptation. Even if the first person was credited with behavioural control, the second person is definitely not: She fails to exercise self-control. In this case, however, it is not automaticity which opposes self-control, but instead lack of self-control.
This difference is missed by the automaticity-approach to human behaviour. However, it is crucial for understanding self-control and hence leads to the thesis of this book: A robust account of self-control does not require a notion of causal control, instead it emphasizes the normative character of self-controlled forms of human behaviour. When applying the concept of self-control we distinguish between successful and failing behaviours. Those who exercise self-control succeed in achieving their aims, whereas those who fail to exercise self-control fail to do exactly this. Therefore, the very distinction between causal control and automaticity is irrelevant from the point of view of self-control. Instead, the relevant distinction is a normative one. It depends on a normative evaluation – for instance, on the value of smoking – and is possible only against the background of such kinds of normative assumptions.
In summary, to argue for the difference between causal control and self-control and to present a comprehensive normative account of self-control is the objective of this book. In the end this should allow us to reconcile the empirical evidence about the automaticity of behaviour with the social and personal significance that self-control is frequently ascribed.
In terms of method, the argument about the normativity of self-control will be developed philosophically. This, however, is not to say that it will develop in an empirical vacuum. Rather the opposite is true. Each chapter explicitly embarks upon the presentation and discussion of a relevant empirical theory. Actually, it is a careful analysis of what social psychology teaches already, which helps to support the thesis of this book. Although unnoticed hitherto, many of the issues actually investigated under the heading of self-control, will turn out to be essentially normative issues rather than issues of active action-causation.
The book starts with an elaboration of, what is called, the strength-model of self-control featuring willpower and the corresponding idea that lack of self-control is a matter of weakness of will, or as its counterpart in the empirical literature is called: ego-depletion. The reason for this choice is rather simple and refers back to the difference between self-control and lack of self-control. The person who lights and smokes a cigarette, although she has decided to stop, gives in to temptation and acts in a weak-willed fashion, one may want to argue. Weakness of will appears to be the most commonsensical understanding of what – if anything – it may mean to lack self-control. Nonetheless, the very idea of weakness of will seems to be harder to grasp than one may think at first glance. Against this background, chapter 2 argues that the conceptualization of lack of self-control as weakness of will is sensible, albeit under certain conditions only. Weakness of will and its opposite of willpower apply only if the following preconditions are fulfilled. A person can realize a goal with the help of her willpower only, if (i) she is able to realize the goal, if (ii) she cares about her goal, and if (iii) in her eyes the goal is clear, well-defined and not conflicting with any of her other goals. The analysis of weakness of will as an instance of lack of self-control then provides the strategy for the remaining discussion. Chapters Three through Five argue that self-control remains at stake even if (one of) these preconditions are not fulfilled. They then develop respective – normative – accounts of self-control.
Chapter 3 introduces how self-control is a capacity and depends on certain skills and strategies. This idea forms the basis of Mischel’s work on children’s development of the capacity of delay of gratification. It argues that people can be in a condition where, for psychological reasons, they are unable to achieve certain goals. Such a condition, however, is not tantamount to a situation in which such people’s behaviour would be altogether uncontrollable and compulsive. There is something between weakness of will on the one hand and compulsion on the other. This will be called a psychological incapacity. Unlike people who suffer from compulsion, those who are psychologically incapable could exercise self-control. However, unlike those who are merely weak-willed, they could do so only under certain circumstances and are in need of specific skills and strategies.
Chapter 4 introduces the self-determination theory of R. Ryan and E. Deci as a further approach to self-control. Those who are self-determined control their behaviour because they are intrinsically motivated to do so and consider their goals to be of great importance. Based on this thought, the chapter defends that self-control requires a certain concern for one’s goals. It explains what it means to lack such a concern and to be unconcerned. Unconcern, in turn is an instance of failure of self-determination and therefore should count as a further variety of what it means to lack self-control.
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of self in self-control. It introduces the possible relevance of personality-science for the question of self-control. By means of a sophisticated understanding of the notion of self, it appears to be possible to point out how people may exercise or fail to exercise self-control in case they have conflicting goals. Moreover, it appears that in such cases the very difference between successful and unsuccessful exercises of self-control cannot be traced back to any overt behaviour but fully depends on whether or not the person is adequately involved in the behaviour she conducts.
The book ends with some general conclusions that point out the various meanings that a normative account of self-control has for common sense, for philosophical purposes, and for psychological investigations respectively.
Papers by Dorothee Horstkötter
This volume explores all of these questions and more. Against the background of recent findings and expected advances in neuroscience and genetics, the extent and limits of parental responsibility are increasingly unclear. Awareness of the effects of parental choices on children’s wellbeing, as well as evolving norms about the moral status of children, have further increased expectations from (prospective) parents to take up and act on their changing responsibilities.
The contributors discuss conceptual issues such as the meaning and sources of moral responsibility, normality, treatment, and identity. They also explore more practical issues such as how responsibility for children is practiced in Yoruba culture in Nigeria or how parents and health professionals in Belgium perceive the dilemmas generated by prenatal diagnosis.
The capacity to exercise self-control is of great significance to our daily lives and the setup of our social institutions. The very possibility of behavioural self-control, however, has been seriously challenged by recent developments in behavioural science that suggest that any desires, beliefs or intentions have no impact on what people do. This book explicitly confronts this challenge by investigating the very meaning of self-control. A robust account of self-control does not require a notion of causal control, instead it emphasizes the normative character of self-controlled forms of human behaviour. The argument is developed against the background of both recent philosophical discussions and empirical insights from the behavioural sciences. Therefore, this book should be interesting to philosophers and behavioural scientists alike.
Summary (long version)
In their daily lives, people heavily rely on their capacity to control and rule their behaviour. They make decisions about what to do and how to proceed and then act accordingly. Sometimes, people feel tempted to act contrary to their better judgment, yet they may still achieve their initial goals and master the distracting inclination. In such cases, we consider people to have taken responsibility for their lives and their actions successfully. Obviously, sometimes, people fail to exercise self-control. Again, we tend to hold them responsible for their failures. On the background of holding people responsible for both their behavioural successes and failures lies the capacity to exercise control over one’s behaviour and to determine the course of one’s actions. Bearing this in mind and the great significance that behavioural control has on our daily lives and the setup of our social institutions, it seems crucial to possess a well-founded understanding of what exactly behavioural control is.
Such an understanding is particularly needed against the background of recent developments in the behavioural-, cognitive- and the neuro-sciences that suggest that there is no such thing as behavioural control and that any desires, beliefs, or intentions have no impact on what people do. Instead, it is suggested, human behaviour is caused outside people’s awareness and it is the result of diverse and complex unconscious and automatic processes which are generated by various features of people’s environment.
This book explicitly aims at meeting this kind of challenge. It argues for the relevance and existence of behavioural self-control. Thereby, however, it does not want to contradict, negate, or disprove empirical facts about the automatic and unconscious foundations of our daily behaviours. However, it seeks to contradict the main conclusion that its authors draw, that is, that due to the investigated facts about automatic behaviour, controlled forms of behaviour can be ruled out. This conclusion is not at all mandatory, but based on a false, limited, and naïve conceptualization of what behavioural self-control is.
The idea that automaticity and control are mutually exclusive depends on the assumption that both are each other’s opposites. Phenomenologically, this opposition may seem natural. Food is digested automatically, but the cigarette has to be lighted and inhaled. This impression, however, is not conclusive. An alternative interpretation can show us why. If the person who lights the cigarette is contrasted to the process of digestion, she may, phenomenologically, indeed be regarded as exercising control over her behaviour. When digesting, we do not form relevant desires, nor do we hold beliefs about how best to digest. Digestion just happens to us, it is an event rather than an action. In contrast, to a person who lights a cigarette this picture of action-causation can still apply. According to this interpretation, such a person wants to smoke, she believes that lighting a cigarette is a probable means, forms the intention to light it and hence does so. However, even without any assistance of automaticity-theory, one may likewise argue that such a person does not control her smoking behaviour. At least, there seems to be a significant difference between, for example, the person who lights the cigarette because she wants to enjoy the taste and relaxation it provides and the person who has decided to stop smoking but cannot resist the temptation. Even if the first person was credited with behavioural control, the second person is definitely not: She fails to exercise self-control. In this case, however, it is not automaticity which opposes self-control, but instead lack of self-control.
This difference is missed by the automaticity-approach to human behaviour. However, it is crucial for understanding self-control and hence leads to the thesis of this book: A robust account of self-control does not require a notion of causal control, instead it emphasizes the normative character of self-controlled forms of human behaviour. When applying the concept of self-control we distinguish between successful and failing behaviours. Those who exercise self-control succeed in achieving their aims, whereas those who fail to exercise self-control fail to do exactly this. Therefore, the very distinction between causal control and automaticity is irrelevant from the point of view of self-control. Instead, the relevant distinction is a normative one. It depends on a normative evaluation – for instance, on the value of smoking – and is possible only against the background of such kinds of normative assumptions.
In summary, to argue for the difference between causal control and self-control and to present a comprehensive normative account of self-control is the objective of this book. In the end this should allow us to reconcile the empirical evidence about the automaticity of behaviour with the social and personal significance that self-control is frequently ascribed.
In terms of method, the argument about the normativity of self-control will be developed philosophically. This, however, is not to say that it will develop in an empirical vacuum. Rather the opposite is true. Each chapter explicitly embarks upon the presentation and discussion of a relevant empirical theory. Actually, it is a careful analysis of what social psychology teaches already, which helps to support the thesis of this book. Although unnoticed hitherto, many of the issues actually investigated under the heading of self-control, will turn out to be essentially normative issues rather than issues of active action-causation.
The book starts with an elaboration of, what is called, the strength-model of self-control featuring willpower and the corresponding idea that lack of self-control is a matter of weakness of will, or as its counterpart in the empirical literature is called: ego-depletion. The reason for this choice is rather simple and refers back to the difference between self-control and lack of self-control. The person who lights and smokes a cigarette, although she has decided to stop, gives in to temptation and acts in a weak-willed fashion, one may want to argue. Weakness of will appears to be the most commonsensical understanding of what – if anything – it may mean to lack self-control. Nonetheless, the very idea of weakness of will seems to be harder to grasp than one may think at first glance. Against this background, chapter 2 argues that the conceptualization of lack of self-control as weakness of will is sensible, albeit under certain conditions only. Weakness of will and its opposite of willpower apply only if the following preconditions are fulfilled. A person can realize a goal with the help of her willpower only, if (i) she is able to realize the goal, if (ii) she cares about her goal, and if (iii) in her eyes the goal is clear, well-defined and not conflicting with any of her other goals. The analysis of weakness of will as an instance of lack of self-control then provides the strategy for the remaining discussion. Chapters Three through Five argue that self-control remains at stake even if (one of) these preconditions are not fulfilled. They then develop respective – normative – accounts of self-control.
Chapter 3 introduces how self-control is a capacity and depends on certain skills and strategies. This idea forms the basis of Mischel’s work on children’s development of the capacity of delay of gratification. It argues that people can be in a condition where, for psychological reasons, they are unable to achieve certain goals. Such a condition, however, is not tantamount to a situation in which such people’s behaviour would be altogether uncontrollable and compulsive. There is something between weakness of will on the one hand and compulsion on the other. This will be called a psychological incapacity. Unlike people who suffer from compulsion, those who are psychologically incapable could exercise self-control. However, unlike those who are merely weak-willed, they could do so only under certain circumstances and are in need of specific skills and strategies.
Chapter 4 introduces the self-determination theory of R. Ryan and E. Deci as a further approach to self-control. Those who are self-determined control their behaviour because they are intrinsically motivated to do so and consider their goals to be of great importance. Based on this thought, the chapter defends that self-control requires a certain concern for one’s goals. It explains what it means to lack such a concern and to be unconcerned. Unconcern, in turn is an instance of failure of self-determination and therefore should count as a further variety of what it means to lack self-control.
Chapter 5 focuses on the role of self in self-control. It introduces the possible relevance of personality-science for the question of self-control. By means of a sophisticated understanding of the notion of self, it appears to be possible to point out how people may exercise or fail to exercise self-control in case they have conflicting goals. Moreover, it appears that in such cases the very difference between successful and unsuccessful exercises of self-control cannot be traced back to any overt behaviour but fully depends on whether or not the person is adequately involved in the behaviour she conducts.
The book ends with some general conclusions that point out the various meanings that a normative account of self-control has for common sense, for philosophical purposes, and for psychological investigations respectively.
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This research brings together science and ethics. It provides an overview of the genomic and neuro(biological) sciences with regard to ASB. It investigates current elements and determines new aspects of the ethical research agenda. Thereby it will also take the view of relevant stakeholders into account.