See the footnotes here for work on motivation as related to akrasia—in particular, Steel’s ‘The Nature of Procrastination’ article.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘desires you have but aren’t pursuing much’. Which concept of desire are you using? The motivational one? I suspect we don’t understand the neuroscience of motivation well enough to say much about your question, but I’m not sure I understood your question.
I would prefer that the weather be sunny and roughly 70 degrees Farenheit with a slight breeze tomorrow, but am doing nothing to try and make that happen.
That could just be a desire that I don’t be expect to be able to fulfill (expectation roughly equal to 0), but I intuitively feel that desires are separate from motivation to pursue them (this might be wrong though).
For another example:
Alice wants to make a living writing, and gets happy and misty-eyed at the thought. However, she always says “I can’t do it now, I have X Y Z”. Meanwhile, she occasionally comments on and reads a group blog..
Bob thinks being a writer would be cool, but doesn’t intend to do anything about it. He occasionally comments on a group blog.
Most people would say that Alice wants to be a writer more than Bob does, but they do roughly the same amount of tangible work towards it. Most people would say that Alice wants to be a writer more than Bob does.
I was mostly asking with respect to akrasia vs. hypocrisy, but realized that you can distinguish between the two by making it easier for the person in question to accomplish their goal.
If they choose to fulfill the desire, then they actually want it, and if they don’t choose to, then they don’t care as much.
Alice wants to make a living writing, and gets happy and misty-eyed at the thought. However, she always says “I can’t do it now, I have X Y Z”. Meanwhile, she occasionally comments on and reads a group blog..
See the footnotes here for work on motivation as related to akrasia—in particular, Steel’s ‘The Nature of Procrastination’ article.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘desires you have but aren’t pursuing much’. Which concept of desire are you using? The motivational one? I suspect we don’t understand the neuroscience of motivation well enough to say much about your question, but I’m not sure I understood your question.
I would prefer that the weather be sunny and roughly 70 degrees Farenheit with a slight breeze tomorrow, but am doing nothing to try and make that happen.
That could just be a desire that I don’t be expect to be able to fulfill (expectation roughly equal to 0), but I intuitively feel that desires are separate from motivation to pursue them (this might be wrong though).
For another example:
Alice wants to make a living writing, and gets happy and misty-eyed at the thought. However, she always says “I can’t do it now, I have X Y Z”. Meanwhile, she occasionally comments on and reads a group blog..
Bob thinks being a writer would be cool, but doesn’t intend to do anything about it. He occasionally comments on a group blog.
Most people would say that Alice wants to be a writer more than Bob does, but they do roughly the same amount of tangible work towards it. Most people would say that Alice wants to be a writer more than Bob does.
I was mostly asking with respect to akrasia vs. hypocrisy, but realized that you can distinguish between the two by making it easier for the person in question to accomplish their goal.
If they choose to fulfill the desire, then they actually want it, and if they don’t choose to, then they don’t care as much.
Ouch.