Contribution
A teacher’s two-page commentary on Frankfurt’s “Identification and Wholeheartedness”, with page references, followed by brief notes on “The Faintest Passion” and on Scanlon. It separates two phenomena the essay runs together under decisive identification, and raises two objections: the decision is left unanalysed, and it cannot by itself secure wholeheartedness. For this record it is the nearest available report of what the essay says about the stopping point of the regress.
Key insight
In the 1987/88 essay, as Holton reads it, the stopping point is a decision, not a further desire, and Frankfurt says nothing about what a decision is. That moves him off the Hobbesian model of the will and towards Bratman’s, and leaves open whether a decision of the required kind can be specified at all.
Assumptions
- Holton’s reading of Frankfurt is the only access. The handout states and questions; it quotes Frankfurt four times.
- Lecture-note form. Several points are questions to the class (“Is this right?”, “What is he talking about here?”), not claims, and are reported here as such.
Key results
- Consciousness (handout p. 1). The essay starts by arguing that self-consciousness is essential to consciousness. Holton asks whether it is meant as necessary or sufficient.
- Identification is acceptance (handout p. 1). “Identification here should be understood as acceptance, not as essentially linked either to endorsement or what one cares about.” One can identify with a desire without approving of it, or with one taken to be trivial; for this Holton cites the “Reply to Watson” in Contours of Agency.
- From higher-order desire to decision (handout p. 1). “In his earlier work Frankfurt had understood this in terms of higher order desires. But it was unclear why a higher order desire would be one with which one specially identified. Later he comes to understand identification in terms of decisions.”
- First case: checking a sum (handout p. 1; Frankfurt pp. 168–169). One might arrive at “a decisive identification with a certain answer” (p. 169) that “resounds endlessly”. Holton: the point is not a judgement that no conflict will be found but a decision that no further checking is warranted, which can stand while one thinks one may have reason to revise. Yet Frankfurt “does seem to think that the decision … is one that we do think won’t be rejected”, quoting “he can anticipate that this view will be endlessly confirmed by accurate reviews of it” (p. 168), and “seems to think that this is necessary for identification. That is what the resonance effect amounts to.” Holton asks whether one could identify without that confidence, and whether the question would “go all the way up”.
- Second case: conflicting desires (handout p. 1; Frankfurt p. 170). Where desires conflict, “one makes a decision to embrace one desire rather than another”, and where it is not just a matter of order, “the rejected desire now becomes an ‘outlaw’” (p. 170). “Again, resonance doesn’t seem to be required.”
- The decision is not analysed (handout p. 1). “Note further that Frankfurt hasn’t given us an analysis of what such a decision amounts to. In particular, he hasn’t done it in terms of desires. So we have apparently left the Hobbesian model completely. The model looks more like Bratman’s.”
- Decision does not guarantee wholeheartedness (handout pp. 1–2; Frankfurt p. 175). Frankfurt treats decision as the way one eliminates inconsistency and becomes wholehearted, here a property of the person. But deciding A over B, B over C and C over A is possible, so further constraints on desires are needed. Outlawing desires one by one gives no guarantee that those left are consistent, and banishing each loser in turn makes the outcome depend on the order of the contests. Frankfurt allows “that the agent has identified himself inconsistently” (p. 175), but only in the sense that one may wrongly think oneself consistent; Holton’s worry is prior. He also quotes p. 175: “Nor is it likely to be readily apparent whether a decision which the agent intends to be wholehearted is actually so.”
- Decision against choice (handout p. 2; Frankfurt p. 172). Frankfurt distinguishes making a decision from making a choice; Holton asks what is meant and does not answer.
- “The Faintest Passion” (handout p. 2). Wholeheartedness is now a property of the person; ambivalence removes it, and “one cannot avoid ambivalence by an act of the will”. Conflicts among first-order desires, “merely impulses”, cannot be settled by decision on this model.
- Scanlon (handout p. 2). Is identification needed for responsibility or for “psychic health”? Negligence counts against the first. Scanlon’s seemings, assessings and optings; Frankfurt’s complaint that this is too intellectualized is raised as a question.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | In the 1987/88 essay identification is acceptance by decision, not a higher-order desire or an endorsement | moderate as a report | the handout’s summary; one supporting citation, to the “Reply to Watson” |
| C2 | Decisive identification, in the checking case, needs the anticipation that accurate reviews will confirm it (“resonance”) | moderate as a report | quotation of p. 168, and “seems to think” |
| C3 | In the conflict case the decision makes the rejected desire an “outlaw” and needs no resonance | moderate as a report | p. 170; the second half is Holton’s reading |
| C4 | Frankfurt gives no analysis of the decision, in terms of desires or otherwise | moderate | Holton’s statement; checkable only against the essay |
| C5 | Deciding cannot by itself make a person wholehearted, since pairwise decisions can be intransitive and the outcome order-dependent | moderate | an argument from intransitivity, given in the handout |
Concepts
- Identification — as reported, acceptance of a desire, by decision; not approval, and not the same as caring.
- Resonance — a decisive identification “resounds endlessly”: the agent anticipates that accurate reviews will confirm it (pp. 168–169, as reported).
- Outlaw — a desire rejected by such a decision, which the agent no longer counts as hers to act on (p. 170, as reported).
- Wholeheartedness — here a property of the person, the absence of ambivalence among what one has identified with; sometimes, as at p. 175, said of a decision.
Connections
THEORY-120 states Frankfurt’s 1971 hierarchical account from the paper read first-hand (LIT-692); Holton reports that by 1987/88 Frankfurt had replaced higher-order desires with decisions as the mark of identification. THEORY-029 reports, via the IEP (LIT-297), that the essay ends the regress in a decisive commitment made “without reservation”; Holton’s resonance condition, the anticipation that review will confirm the decision, is the nearest thing in the handout, and he says it is not needed in the conflict case. His remark that the model “looks more like Bratman’s” points to Bratman’s self-governing policies (LIT-596, Unavailable), which THEORY-029’s promote_when also names.
Bearing on the record
- THEORY-029, partly, at second hand. Its promote_when asks for a first-hand reading of “Identification and Wholeheartedness” to decide whether Velleman’s unwitting-decision counterexample reaches the 1987/88 view, and if not, whether that view’s conditions can be stated without presupposing the agent’s participation. This is not first-hand and does not run the counterexample. It does report what the stopping point is: a decision that Frankfurt does not analyse, carrying in the checking case the agent’s anticipation that reviews will confirm it. A condition of that kind is a condition on the agent’s own stance, which is THEORY-029’s second horn, and the absence of an analysis is consistent with its charge that non-alienability is secured by stipulation. Holton’s point that resonance is not needed in the conflict case suggests the essay’s conditions are not uniform across its cases, which the reading of the essay would have to settle. So it supports the account’s dilemma on this essay without meeting the promote_when.
- THEORY-120: the handout reports that Frankfurt left the higher-order account behind for decisions by 1987/88, the move THEORY-029 already records.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- Two pages of lecture notes. Much is posed as a question; quotations from Frankfurt are few and short.
- Second hand, edition inferred. The page numbers are taken to be the 1988 reprint’s because they fall within its pages; the handout does not say so.
- The unwitting-decision case is not discussed, nor is Velleman.
Open questions
- Does the essay itself state conditions on decisive identification (“without reservation”, resonance) that an unwitting decision fails, and are they the same in the checking case and the conflict case?
- What is the distinction between making a decision and making a choice at p. 172, and does it bear on whether a decision can be unwitting?