Self-Control

Some philosophers distinguish between judgmental control (or rational control) and merely managerial self-control—particularly with respect to our control of our mental states. States like desire are normatively supposed to disappear whenever we sincerely endorse judgments in tension with them. (I am not supposed to continue wanting to smoke after I sincerely judge smoking to be bad for me.) When such states prove recalcitrant—when they resist judgmental control—we can apply to ourselves methods that also work when we use them on others. However, some forms of merely managerial control are also essentially first-personal in character. Investigating their first-personal character explains why some experiences can feel alien to us in the way some of our desires can—even though we don’t usually expect that our experiences will bend to our judgments.