One of the problem cases we looked at for the standard view in the last video, is Harry Frankfurt's contrasts between the willing addict and unwilling addict. One of Velleman's reasons for introducing this case in his paper is that he thinks the Frankfurt has a solution to this case that gets something right, but importantly needs supplemented or further developed. So what does Frankfurt think that this contrast between the willing and the unwilling addict shows about the nature of agency. Well, Frankfurt's suggestion is that the important difference between the desires and motivations of the unwilling addict and the willing addict is one that we can explain in terms of whether or not the agent identifies with those desires. Or equivalently put whether or not the alien- whether or not the agent is in some sense alienated from those desires. So Frankfurt's suggestion here is that the unwilling addict isn't exercising their agency when they take their drugs, at least not in the full blooded or paradigmatic sense that Velleman is trying to characterize in his paper. Because the unwilling addict is moved, or actuated by desires and motives that they don't really identify with, that they feel alienated from. This isn't true of the willing addict. When we described the case of the willing addict, We said that they were perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied with the desires and compulsions that led them to take the drugs. And Frankfurt's suggestion is that, well, this is why the willing addict counts as exercising their agency in their drug taking behavior. Now, this sort of analysis is supposed to apply to much more mundane cases in cases of drug addiction. Velleman suggests that it can apply to cases like his 'resentment talking' case. When we described that case, it sounded like it was a weird sort of in-between kind of case with respect to the way in which agency was involved. If we agree with the way that Velleman sets up the case - If we think, when Velleman says that it was his resentment talking rather than him talking when he was mean and snappy with his friend at dinner, it's not quite that there was nothing like action going on guiding Velleman's behavior and guiding the way that he responded to his friend's robotics. But at the same time, it doesn't seem like it was what we might call a paradigmatic, or what Velleman calls, a full blooded case of agency. Now Velleman thinks that Frankfurt is capturing something important with this idea of identifying or being alienated from the drives, motives and psychological states that guide your behavior. And we can see this perhaps going on in his resentment talking case as well. Velleman's thought is that when we say it was my resentment talking rather than me, we're seeing something like there was some kind of psychological force or motive driving my behavior that I don't fully identify with. That I, in some sense, feel alienated from. So the suggestion is that we can maybe fix or add to or help improve the standard view by building in some kind of contrast between the psychological states that cause behavior that I do identify with and the psychological states that cause behavior I don't identify with. That I in some sense feel alienated from. Now. This talk about identifying with or being alienated from desires and impulses or other psychological states that drive our behavior. We might think that it's all very well, but we might still wonder, well what does that really mean, okay, what is this notion of identification or alienation that we're trying to appeal to to help us better understand what's involved in paradigmatic or full blooded cases of agency. We need some kind of story or explanation about what exactly is involved in identifying with or being alienated from a desire or a motive. And we find a suggestion about this in Harry Frankfurt's work, most famously in a paper called freedom of the will and the concept of a person. But also in a number of other papers. You can find citations to them in Velleman's paper. Franklin suggestion to cook filament. Is the agent's identifying with the motive that actuates him, Frankfurt suggests, consists in his having a second-order desire to be actuated by that motive, whereas being alienated from the motive consists in is having a desire not to be so actuated. So basically Frankfurt's suggestion is to appeal to a kind of higher order or second order level of desires, beliefs, and psychological states. And say that that's where we need to look when we're deciding whether or not somebody was really acting in the full blooded sense Velleman is interested in. So for example, when we're looking at the case of the unwilling addict, we can see that they weren't really a full agent when they were taking their drugs. Because at the higher order level of desires, sure, they had this first-order desire, this lower-level level desire to seek and take drugs. But they also have a second-order desire to not have that first-order desire. They have a bunch of second-order attitudes towards that desire that consists of disapproving, disapproving of it, not wanting to have it, wishing that it wasn't a part of their psychological makeup. So Frankfurt's thought is the activity of the unwilling addict doesn't count as a genuine exercise of agency because the desires that were causing their activity don't match up with the second order desires, which Frankfurt things we need to locate and understand this notion of identification that is appealing to you. Velelman thinks that Frankfurt suggestion about how we should understand what identification or alienation from our desires and impulses and the psychological states that move us consists in, he thinks that it's not going to work. And he thinks that it's not going to work for a reason that he says has been discussed in the literature on philosophy of action. He talks about a paper by Gary Watson. And he also says that Frankfurt has admitted that his own view doesn't really work for this reason. The basic problem is that it seems that we can be alienated from our second order desires as well. So perhaps I might have a second-order desire to impress my friends or to look cool, or to not offend anybody and get along well with everybody. Any one of those desires might at any particular moment be guiding my behavior and sort of modulating the way that my first order desires caused me to act in the world. Maybe I'm weighing up how to behave between two different options. And I find myself always picking the one that I think will impress my friends or cause the least amount of people disagree with me. So I can have these second-order desires or motives that end up driving my behavior. But those might be desires or motives that I don't really identify with that i feel alienated from. Perhaps I know that it's a fact about myself. I always try to impress my friends or try not to upset people or cause them any hassle, unduly. But I don't really like that fact about myself. It's something that I wish that I could change in the same sort of way that the unwilling addict wishes that they could change their drug taking behavior. So it seems that just by moving up a level and talking about second-order psychological states, we haven't really removed the possibility of being alienated from or failing to identify with those states. So it seems then that Frankfurt's initial suggestion about how to understand this notion of identification and alienation hasn't really worked. Velleman thinks that there's something importantly right about what Frankfurt's getting at. The claim is that there's some point, some part of the agent's psychological hierarchy or psychological makeup that they can't be dissociated from, are alienated from with which we can identify them as an agent. It's just that Velleman thinks it can't be second-order desires. And at this point you might think, well, maybe it's third order desires or fourth order desires may be the right move, is to move further up the psychological hierarchy. But it seems that wherever we go we will be able to ask the same questions about whether or not the desires and motives at that level of psychological hierarchy, ones that the agent really identifies with. Why can't they feel alienated from their third-order desires, or their fourth-order desires. We need to know what is so special about whatever aspect of the agents psychology that we're appealing to. That means that the possibility of them coming apart from it, being alienated from it, failing to identify with it just doesn't really make sense. So Frank - sorry,  Velleman's key problem with Frankfurt's suggestion that we appeal to higher-order desires to explain what's going on in human agency is that it doesn't really do that, doesn't really give us some aspects of the agent's psychology that they can't be alienated from, that they must identify with. One of the reasons that Velleman is according so much discussion to Frankfurt's view, is he thinks that thinking about the way in which Frankfurt's view fails (according to Velleman) in this way motivates us to think about agency by trying to find just such a psychological state or psychological property, some aspect of the agent that it just doesn't make sense to think that the agent could be alienated or dissociated from or fail to identify with.