Akrasia and Uncertainty

Objectivism holds that what someone should do is determined by their situation as it in fact is—not as it appears to be according to their beliefs or evidence. A popular objection holds that objectivism cannot explain why—in cases like the Miners Puzzle—even conscientious people would decide to do what objectivism predicts they could easily know to be wrong. I argue that objectivists can accommodate such decisions as being blamelessly akratic. I argue for this by drawing on an analogy with Huckleberry Finn’s blameless akrasia, and by drawing on distinctions that are now common in the philosophy of action but still neglected in these discussions. Such distinctions pave the way for the possibility of conscientious akrasia.