Our thesis concerns how practical reasoning normally works, and it identifies a problem with a widely shared characterization of it. In this paper, we argue that many ordinary cases of action selection, and not just exceptions involving addiction or weakness of will, exhibit an interesting form of irrationality that stems from a drive to avoid effortfulness. Focusing on two case studies, we argue that the initiation of pointless actions, and procrastination regarding well-justified actions, are often explicable by reference to effort avoidance as opposed to the agent’s explicit judgments or desires. This is so because practical reasoning is sensitive to effortfulness, and influenced by a drive to avoid effortfulness, and this very avoidance is often askew from standard inputs to practical reasoning (such as desires, beliefs, goals, and intentions). Effort avoidance thus plays a powerful and hitherto unnoticed role in many ordinary cases of action selection. As we explain, effort avoidance works subtly, by negatively affectively coloring effortful action options, and silently, without revealing effort anticipation as the source of this coloring. In so doing, effort avoidance can undermine the agent’s control over behavior by undermining the control they exercise in practical reasoning. Still, in some cases agents can bring feelings related to effortfulness into focal awareness, rendering better control over practical reasoning possible. Control is within our reach. It just happens not to be the norm in the way that standard philosophy of action would have us believe.
Brozzo et al. (Fri,) studied this question.