philosophy - volition

“Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine, a drug that is addictive and can make it very hard, but not impossible, to quit. More than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are from smoking-related illnesses. Smoking greatly increases your risks for lung cancer and many other cancers. Pregnant women who smoke are more likely to deliver babies whose weights are too low for the babies' good health. If all women quit smoking during pregnancy, about 4,000 new babies would not die each year. Quitting smoking makes a difference right away - you can taste and smell food better. Your breath smells better. Your cough goes away. This happens for men and women of all ages, even those who are older. It happens for healthy people as well as those who already have a disease or condition caused by smoking. Quitting smoking cuts the risk of lung cancer, many other cancers, heart disease, stroke, other lung diseases, and other respiratory illnesses. Ex-smokers have better health than current smokers. Ex-smokers have fewer days of illness, fewer health complaints, and less bronchitis and pneumonia than current smokers. Quitting smoking saves money. A pack-a-day smoker, who pays $2 per pack can, expect to save more than $700 per year. It appears that the price of cigarettes will continue to rise in coming years, as will the financial rewards of quitting.”

In the previous essays, we have argued: (1) that analytical philosophy of mind is at least one legitimate approach to “practical philosophy”; (2) that all our cognitive processes are subconscious and that we are determined by them in our thought and behavior; (3) that subconscious cognitive processes are constantly inter-active; and (4) that every self is specific. It would seem, then, as if there were no room in these assertions for something called “volition” or “will power”. Even if one proposition in our mind was the prelude to action, we cannot say of it that it embodies self-determination, because that proposition is the result of countless other subconscious propositions over which we have not control. Additionally, in the second essay we claimed that we cannot even re-enforce our subconscious propositions through language or any other mean, because such efforts are also determined in the subconscious. But this does not exclude that awareness as the conduit of experience to the subconscious could affect the subconscious in its specific self-determination. Awareness determines nothing but it “affects” the subconscious. There is here a tiny “crack” through which we could allow “volition” to be “identified” as, at the very least, a special area of subconscious cognitive processing. One way to test this hypothesis is through an “analytical” approach to “kicking the habit” of smoking, which is certainly something that comes up in daily life for the millions the world over who want to quit but seem unable to do so. Additionally, since quitting involves thought processes, it would test the initial claim that philosophy can be practical in the area of mind.

But philosophy is not about self-help. It can be about volition or will-power in the restricted sense we have defined above. As such it could be helpful if you are honestly trying to stop smoking. The issue, then, is whether “volition” exists despite all the premises in the previous essays. If you think it does, then use it. But maybe, unbeknown to some hapless smoker doing his best to summon the will to quit, there is no such thing. Our intention here is to shed some light on volition itself: can it work or is there something else that you can handle better than agonizing when you are about to light up the next butt? This essay will be useless for hardened smokers. I once knew an ambassador who smoked four packs a day and claimed that they did not make him feel bad in any way, physical, psychological, or moral. His official car reeked of cigarette because he never lowered the windows when he smoked and when he had to attend official functions where smoking was not allowed, he would tap the table impatiently until he got out, lit up a Pall Mall and inhaled it so deeply his chest expanded to the full capacity of his lungs. A couple who between them smoked three times what the ambassador did, were shown slides of healthy and diseased lungs, and they told me, between lighting one cigarette after another, how “yucky” bad lungs looks. So what can you say to persons like that? Self-evidently, nothing.

Before we start helping the masses bankrupt cigarette manufacturers, let us do some further recapitulating. To most people, the concept of self it may be, well, self-evident, but for philosophers it is far from being so, to the extent that some give up on the issue and identify the self with the body, which is not as silly as it sounds, for the body is indeed as continuous as a self can be in contrast to the transitoriness of thought. We think a great deal but we never have the exact same thoughts whereas the body changes very slowly over time. The specificity of individuals lies not only in that no one looks exactly like some one else, but also in that we perceive things differently, we feel in different ways, and we are specific even when we use logic. We, therefore, ask you to assume that cognition is a process that is common to all human beings but specific in each one of us, either because of our beliefs and prejudices, or because of our affects (emotions and sentiments), or because of myriad other causes. That thought is propositional should not be surprising. After all, when we express our thoughts we do so in sentences. This does not mean that we think in sentences, for we think very quickly and a public, communicative language, such as English, could not keep up with our thoughts. We cannot escape the conclusion that we think in a mental language of some sort—analogically, what tachygraphy is to ordinary writing—but it is also possible for us to describe meticulously in English a chain of thought. There is no reason not to include perception in this process. I can look at my hand and say: “I am seeing my hand”, but this hardly does justice to my perception. The image that I have of my hand includes color (nicotine stains maybe), form, dimensions, texture, even background, in sum, innumerable details, which, if we had enough time, we could describe in propositions, but we can certainly accept that these instantaneous propositions are in our mind. To assume that mind is propositional is in fact much more sensible than the claim of the neurologists who found in the brain the “source of love”. Virtually all we are saying is that the brain is so inconceivably fast that even the fastest computers in the world today linked together cannot even approach a semblance of artificial intelligence, although this does not mean that some time in the future computation will not mimic the mind.

We exist in time. Time never stops. As soon as I have written these words, they are already in the past. Now, let’s suppose that I am concentrating on some task and smoking at the same time. Suddenly it enters my mind that I should stop smoking. There are many reasons why I should quit, but I was doing something that had nothing to do with smoking itself. So where did this thought come from? I might have been thinking before that I should give up cigarettes, but I wasn’t doing so afterwards. Kicking the habit is usually the result of multiple considerations and I know I cannot do a task and think about quitting at the same time, for we can only have one thought at a time. Since the quitting idea did not come out of nowhere, then it is inevitable to suppose that it came from our subconscious, where, we can further infer, many things are constantly going on. Whatever task we undertake involves so many interactive operations—perceiving, recalling, reasoning, etc.—that we couldn’t do anything at all if we stopped every instant to consider what exactly it is that we were doing and what it is that we did before that and what it is that we should do next. When we use the expression “making a decision”, we are implicitly assuming that there is such a thing as willing or volition. But this raises a significant question. If I am doing a task or if I decide to quit smoking, then, from our premises about the subconsciousness of thought, it can be reasoned that whatever we do is a product of cognition and that we have no real control over its operations, including volition. Most people would probably be reluctant, not to mention indignant, to accept such an idea and would claim emphatically something to this effect: “Nonsense! I quit smoking out of sheer will power.” They couldn’t very well make the same no-nonsense affirmation about a task that some one assigned to them, but they could respond: “I chose to do this task because of this or that” (probably the fear of getting fired). Most languages include the word volition. Webster’s defines “will” as: “the faculty of conscious and especially deliberate action; the power of control the mind has over its actions”. The first part of the definition leaves no room for our speculations about subconscious cognition, but the second part is ambiguous. It has the “mind” in “control” of “actions”. But which aspect of the “mind”? “Control” is a very wide term. Not much to quibble about there. But does “actions” refer only to “physical actions” and not to “thought”? An intellectual task, for instance, often results in a report or something in writing, and that is certainly quite physical. Our contention is that volition can be reduced to specific cognitive processes. Each instant of awareness and every proposition that we contemplate is an instance of “volition”. There seems to be no volition over and above our specific cognitive processes. This is what we have theorized so far. But may it not be possible to discover volition over and above our cognitive processes in a concrete situation? Let us then take the case of kicking the habit of smoking and let us assume an on-and-off smoker. What we are going to consider concretely are: smoking, kicking the habit, and relapsing, and in considering these possibilities we are going to seek out possible determinants of behavior other than cognition itself. We are going in search of that will power that people claim to be the source of their actions.

Since we have argued that mind is propositional, theoretically smoking or not smoking is a question of which propositions predominate in the determination of physical behavior. This means that we must ignore the problem of physical dependence. We must take for granted—initially, because we may have to reconsider—that some “irresistible physiological constraint” is not involved in smoking. Can we give an account of the decision to smoke in propositional terms alone? From the possibility of kicking the habit, we can reason that smoking is not necessarily a question of physical dependence. If it is possible and frequent to give up the habit and even for recalcitrant smokers to give it up albeit to relapse, then smoking is a “craving” and not an addiction or a dependence. A craving would be specific propositions with a greater "force" than other propositions, but not involving constraints that we cannot deal with. A necessary additional assumption, therefore, is that to smoke or not smoke are equally “acts of volition” in our cognition-based, propositional specification of volition. If quitting is an “act of will”, assuming no dependence is involved, then smoking or relapsing too must be “acts of will”. There being no fundamental difference between the process whereby we abide by a decision to stop smoking and the process whereby we smoke again, granting we found will power in one case, we must conclude that we will find it in the other case. An act of volition is more than a single event. Whether in relation to thought or to action, to will something means to go on willing it. We can decide to stop smoking, but this decision must stick if it is to be an effective decision. To go on not smoking we must be constantly rejecting the temptation to smoke, and this involves successive acts of will. Volition cannot be envisioned as a specific act by which we will something and then do it, like moving a chair from here to there and leaving it there. Volition has to be all those acts through which we abide by our initial decision. Similarly, if smoking or relapsing are also acts of volition, when we relapse we do not smoke once but go on smoking, and by the same logic, we are repeatedly exercising volition. Both for quitting and for relapsing, volition is manifest in successive, specific mental events. It does not consist in one specific decision and it is not independent of our subconscious cognitive processes.

Both smoking and kicking the habit involve the specificity of cognition in the sense we have proposed above that no individual is exactly the same as another. Craving in some is greater than in others. For a person, craving could mean going down to have a smoke in the bitter cold of a Manhattan sidewalk and for another it could be lighting up for no reason other than a perfectly gratuitous desire to stop doing something for a couple of minutes. A craver can feel fulfilled after his smoke. Another craver will rinse his mouth, use soap abundantly on his hands, and in general do propitiatory rites to fool himself that he hasn’t smoked, or at least, that he has washed away the “sin” of smoking. Cognition is an inferential system and smoking or relapsing must be considered to be as “rational” as kicking the habit. But in choosing to smoke or not to smoke some propositions predominate over other propositions, and so we must infer that some propositions have or acquire greater "force" than other propositions. Volition would then consist in this predominance of some propositions over other propositions. This still agrees with our propositional definition of volition, and the question of volition would come down to determining why some propositions predominate over other propositions. It is a cognitive process, but is there an "act" or “influence” independent of cognition that determines the superiority of some propositions over other propositions? If the propositions that would lead us to kick the habit predominate over propositions that would lead us to go on smoking, is there something over and above specific cognition that would give greater weight to the propositions for kicking the habit than to the propositions for smoking? Since we have assumed smoking and we have mentioned "craving", it must also be assumed that the propositions involved in smoking are ab initio predominant over the propositions for kicking the habit.

A specific question we have to consider here is whether “affects in themselves” are the "influence" over and above cognition that determines which propositions predominate. If it were the case that affects are what determine the predominance of propositions, then volition would have to be specified in terms of affects. But we must add that if affects are the result of subconscious processes, even if they could serve to specify volition, volition might still be little different from its proposed propositional specification. There is a distinction to be made between physical affects, e.g., a burning sensation, and “propositional affects”. If mind is propositional, then “propositional pain” can be defined as a “clash of propositions”, or in what in simple terms can be called “indecision or indecisiveness”. If we are torn between the craving to smoke and the propositions that militate against the craving, we would be in an uncomfortable situation. Even if we are engaged in an activity where smoking or not smoking has no bearing, for instance, dining in a restaurant where smoking is not allowed, the internal indecision is not resolved and we know that the craving will return, or that we can postpone any decision and let the future take care of itself, which is not much different from indecisiveness. Let us suppose without going into the question of the relation between physical and propositional affects, that it is pain and pleasure that tip the balance between smoking and not smoking. This pain and this pleasure can be both physical and propositional, although we shall be referring mostly to physical affects. We will not presuppose a foregone decision to kick the habit. We'll merely proceed from the premise of the on-and-off smoker considering whether to kick the habit or not.

The essence of this assumption is that smoking is something that the smoker enjoys; in other words, that there is craving and that this craving is stronger than all the propositions that we can array against it. If considerations of pain and pleasure determine the smoker’s decision, then volition would be a function of physical affects. Volition would consist in the propositions that emerge from the experience of physical pain or pleasure. Volition in such a case would be the specificity of cognition "allied" in whatever manner with affects. We will smoke if smoking gives us physical pleasure and we will not smoke if it inflicts physical pain. This appears to be a travesty of volition, but that is neither our intention nor the only interpretation one can put on it. Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that our actions should be decided on the basis of the greater good for the greater number, and by good is straightforwardly meant pleasure. So if I choose to be an utilitarian, I am adhering to the widely accepted view that volition can and should be determined by pain or pleasure. Of course, utilitarians or pragmatists would be in the forefront of those in favor of a total ban on social smoking, but on the other hand, why would they pick on me if it gives me pleasure—thus adding to the sum of collective happiness—to smoke in the privacy of my room (and absolutely forbid any one to enter it, except a fellow smoker)?

Supposing that smoking does both, the pleasure and the pain must happen at different moments, for it would be irrational to suppose that we are inevitably in pain in the very act of smoking. Let us then say that we will stop smoking if the pain outweighs the pleasure. If smoking gives both pain and pleasure at different times, there must be forgetfulness of pain to go on smoking, for it is only with forgetting that the propositions for smoking recur and can “hold sway”. The craving returns and smoking goes on. In the matter of willing to smoke as long as the pain of smoking is not overwhelming, physical affects will not be sufficiently explanatory. We will go on smoking regardless of the pain, or regardless of the pleasure of not smoking, because pain is neither unbearable nor constant and smoking gives us some degree of pleasure. Even if the pain consequent on smoking is there and could incline us towards kicking the habit, the point is that affects can cancel each other and are variable and subject to forgetfulness. Under "normal conditions", i.e., no constant pain, forgetfulness, etc., affects in themselves do not add much to the propositional definition of volition.

Let us posit duration of affects. Could we refer to the duration of pleasure and pain? But this won't do either because physical affects, at least in relation to smoking, cannot be quantified, and it may be the quality of the pleasure that smoking provides that matters. For instance, smoking is often associated with drinking coffee or liquor, which apparently enhance the pleasure of smoking. Many well-to-do or very successful people—Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton come to mind—consider that Havana cigars are one of the great joys of life, and some bon vivants cannot even imagine a Napoleon without cigar-smoking. The pleasure of smoking is not only in the act itself but in the anticipation and in its "compensatory" effects. In a situation in which one has a pessimistic attitude towards life or in which one's conditions of existence are discouraging or depressing, e.g., doing ill-paid, tedious work, the craving would predominate as long as it does not produce unceasing pain. In itself the idea of measuring the duration of affects turns out to be too rational by half. Perhaps, as Socrates argues, we could take to the thought that what is pleasure now will later be pain, and this would determine our choice. But what we know is that (1) craving ensues after the discomforts of smoking and (2) the thought of pain or pleasure is not the same as the pain or the pleasure in themselves. Physical affects can influence behavior, but there is pleasure after the pain, and the thought of pain or pleasure is meaningless as far as deciding for or against smoking. In the matter of quitting, then, physical pain and pleasure plainly will not do at all. They can carry us either way. And the thought of affects would seem to consist in an ineffectual calculus about physical pain and pleasure. It is possible to exaggerate the ineffectuality of this calculus, for in the final analysis, deciding to quit is always related to the future in the sense of the foreseeable effects of smoking. Even though the thought of affects does not have the force of affects themselves, it might have some deterrence value, for we can contemplate quitting even after the painful after-effects of smoking have passed. But "deterrence" is not volition. It is merely the "strengthening" of certain propositions in regards to other propositions. The final development of the argument is that affects not only do not conclusively determine decisions, but that, like all cognitive yields, they too are the result of specific subconscious cognitive processes.

But let us insist on discovering the source of volition in affects. In our search for a specification of volition, let us look at a “final decision” to kick the habit. Let us imagine a specific smoker, e.g., myself, and something like persistent discomfort. My voice is hoarse and crackly. I have an uncomfortable dry cough. My head hurts. I feel tired. I am experiencing stomach spasms whenever I smoke. On top of whatever physical ills I may normally have, these are indisputably the result of having smoked ten maybe fifteen cigarettes. Whatever arguments I can derive from the aches and pains of ageing or illness, mean nothing if what I am smarting from has a direct, recognizable, preventable cause different from getting old or sickness. So I cannot say it doesn't make much difference whether I smoke or not to the way I feel in general. There's the argument that pains come and go and that the pleasure of smoking, including the expectation of that pleasure, will always be there. But these so-called pleasures are short-lived, they are not ever quite as pleasurable as I expect them to be, and I can dispense with them without any lessening of my productivity and without making myself particularly miserable. Quite the contrary. I can choose to go on feeling badly on the basis that I really don't give a damn about life, so I might as well let the end come as quickly as possible and take whatever pleasures mixed with pain smoking gives me. But this is arrant nonsense. If I really wanted to die, I would kill myself and not remain alive to the possibility of a long, painful agony, which would be like being constantly nauseated in a life-long sea voyage instead of jumping overboard. Why would I make suicide unnecessarily long and painful? Although I knew of a heavy smoker who underwent surgery and the first thing he did when he got out of bed was to light up and promptly died, this is carrying things to an unlikely extreme and on the issue of “willing” it is best to keep our feet on the ground (or on the deck).

If I can give up smoking and have done so for long periods, it cannot be a matter of being overcome by the pressure of work, by temptations from seeing people smoking in films—incidentally, the tobacco industry’s greatest promoters—or even by some irresistible physiological craving. There is, in brief, no reason whatsoever why I should go on smoking. Now, I have reasoned like this many times before and I have gone back to smoking the next day. Alternatively, I have given up smoking and returned to it after a few days or some weeks or many months. And this has happened even though all the arguments, the exact same arguments I used to stop, were there absolutely unchanged. Well, maybe not unchanged. There was the feeling better, and the expectation of pleasure, which is greater the better I feel, ironically because I have stopped smoking. But I also have known in such cases that if I smoked one cigarette I would be hooked for another long period of smoking with all the concomitant discomforts. So what has been wrong with the decision process? One possibility is that I lack discipline over the long haul: I can give up a relatively pleasurable habit only on the prompting of the immediate pain it can cause. Another is my pessimism about the rewards of life. A most significant one is that it may be that the times I have stopped smoking, I have not actually been firmly committed to giving up smoking permanently. Having gone over all these considerations: knowing why I would smoke, knowing why I should not smoke, knowing that I can stop, and knowing the possible causes for relapsing, I should now be in an insuperable situation to finally and permanently kick the habit. I could relapse again and it wouldn't make any difference to my argument, because the point is: do I find volition in this description? What I see are cognitive propositions pushing and pulling, the temporary predominance of different arguments, and the relativity of such a predominance. In other words, even when the pain of smoking is close to being constant and unbearable, physical affects will not constitute a volitional force over and above the propositional considerations that we have expressed as determining whether we will or will not smoke. In sum on the question of affects, it would seem that it is not the case that even strong physical pain necessarily leads to kicking the habit. First, it is not the case because we can quit even when smoking is not entirely painful, and second, we would go back to smoking as soon as the pain is over, which is a frequent but not an invariable case. Our propositions for or against smoking are still the crucial component of volition. We are then back to the question of why some propositions “pip” other propositions.

Since we have said that volition implies the predominance of some propositions over other propositions and that affects do not give a satisfactory account for this state of affairs, let us argue then that it consists in the greater or superior rationality of the predominant propositions. Let us set affects aside and consider whether reason per se is sufficient to account for volition as the sway of certain propositions over other propositions. Volition in this case would be a cognitive process in which "rationality" has the upper hand. Volition would be not just the result of a cognitive process but the result of a cognitive process in which reason overwhelms less rational propositions. Volition, in sum, would be reason. Since we have started from the assumption of an underlying rational desire to quit, can we find in the decision to kick the habit this supremacy of reason over unreason or over propositions that are less reasonable? What exactly is the "underlying rational desire to quit smoking"? It is the proposition that we should quit because we will be better off not smoking for various reasons: health, feeling better in general as opposed to specific pain, satisfying the desires of others who want us to quit, following a social trend, accepting medical advice, and so on. It is what we will simply term "reason" as against "unreason". Consider now that being rational about smoking basically entails health. Rationally, we know smoking can produce illness and even certain fatal diseases. But if no serious symptoms are involved and keeping in mind the on-and-off-smoker case, we can counter this argument in many ways. One is that the amount of smoking is not of such magnitude as to be likely to kill us. We need not say that this is true, but only that it sounds plausible enough to defeat the fatal-disease argument. Another is that we are usually in good health. Still another is that there's no history of smoking-related diseases in the family. In general, the fear of a distant and uncertain fatal disease is not that frightening. There are the minor health complications, such as coughing, gastric spasms, and so on. But the logic of pain and pleasure on the whole applies here: they come and they go, pain follows pleasure and pleasure follows pain, and so on. It is not as if in giving up smoking we were entering into a state of total euphoria. Whether we smoke or not, we still cough and we still get sick on occasions and we still have trouble sleeping and so on. There is a strong argument in that when we do not smoke we tend to sleep better than when we do, but this is subjective because we have slept well after smoking and slept badly at times when not smoking.

Since awareness can only have one thought at a time, however instantaneous, let us focus on the idea that not smoking will not make me happy but that it will make me feel “generally better” as possibly a "marginal" argument which rationally should be decisive. It can be said that, all in all, we feel better when we give up smoking or when we spend some time without smoking. But not smoking makes us feel marginally but not dramatically better, and life does not lose its sting because we do not smoke, so that when the craving returns, i.e., the “combined” force of propositions for not quitting, we really have nothing that powerful to oppose to the craving and the giving in. Rational considerations about health are not going to help us out. They may sway many people, but the point is that they can be easily countered if smoking or not smoking were a question of will as reason. By themselves, they are relatively weak "forces", and usually they tend to shade into questions of pleasure and pain. The search for volition in reason in terms of health reverts to its characterization as an ineffectual calculus about pain and pleasure. In wanting to specify volition in terms of reason as arguments about health, we can find no grounds for claiming that there are powerful objective reasons greater than the reasons that the specificity of self and cognition can elaborate. In other words, we can easily disregard robust, rational arguments. The specificity and subjectivity of cognition is as powerful as any demonstration with which objective reason tries to free itself from its own specificity. Kant wrote that morality is the “categorical imperative” to act according to reason without regard to pain or pleasure, but he did not explain why reason should have the power to be “imperative”. Reason does not work as volition even if we reinforce it with the "theurgy" argument or the appeal to God. God can only want our good. In smoking we are flouting God's benevolent will. But what this implies is that somehow volition would consist in the thought of God and his benevolence, which is just another proposition. It could be that the appeal to God is not for Him to decide in our place but for Him to strengthen our will. But our will is subject to processes which can easily be stronger than our prayers. Even if we go to the length of committing ourselves to not smoking in obedience to God's will, we can always find arguments to interpret His will in one direction or another, e.g., even if we relapse time and again, He will forgive us every time because of his infinite mercy, and so on.

So far we have mainly considered smoking and quitting and at the start we mentioned three possibilities: smoking, quitting, and relapsing. In regards to smoking or quitting, we argued strictly in terms of propositions. We discarded nicotine-dependence. But if we assume quitting and relapsing, we are raising again the issue of dependence. Dependence implies a direct connection between matter and thought. Propositions would be powerless against a "short-circuit" between physiology and behavior. This would invalidate some of our initial assumptions and some of our subsequent inferences about volition. Affects could be powerless against smoking as a physiological dependence, but they could be decisive in cases where no dependence is involved. Since relapsing implies a sort of dependence, then dependence would be a non-propositional explanation of why we choose to smoke. This has the unintended consequence that smoking is volitional but kicking the habit might not be. Can we account propositionally for relapsing? Supposing that there is no physiological dependence, smoking and quitting are both volitional acts. If we can quit, we can relapse. So let us consider that we quit and that a year later we decide to smoke again. We “willed” quitting and we are now “willing” relapse. What has happened? Evidently, something has defeated the affective and the rational/health arguments that inclined will towards not smoking. Was this behavior determined by the “dependence short-circuit”? One reason for relapsing could be that the pain "argument" has lost its force precisely because in stopping we have felt better, or because giving up smoking has not brought the “rewards” we expected. If this accounts for smoking again after a long period of abstinence, it means that the rational argument is even weaker than we have so far made it out to be. It tends to give ground to the claim of affects as an ineffectual calculus about future behavior. There would be no dependence in relapsing; simply the territory we covered on affects.

There is the possibility that we really don't care and that we have not really committed ourselves to giving up smoking, so that an existential “malaise” trips us up into exchanging a relative improvement for an immediate satisfaction, even if short and eventually painful. Under the influence of these propositions, the little propositional "tricks", such as avoiding situations where I might be tempted to smoke and so on, are not very effective, or not lastingly effective. For every little propositional trick involved in quitting, there are "lightning-fast" thoughts that incline us towards smoking, such as we will give up tomorrow, we are not really feeling better, it will do us good to smoke for this or that reason, we can always go back to giving up later, and so on. One particularly contradictory stratagem is the following: for this particularly boring or difficult task we tell ourselves that smoking can be helpful and pleasurable. We can even say the same thing of opposite, even antithetical, tasks: crunching numbers or doing philosophy. Are we then dealing here with a dependence which we refuse to admit? But in all cases we can find propositional grounds for relapsing. At bottom, the cognitive processes for relapsing are not formally different from those for giving up or for continuing to smoke. And if relapsing always involves propositions, then it would seem as if we were not dealing here with the short-circuit posited in dependence.

But the heroin-addict, in whom dependence is usually thought to be decisive, is as subject as the smoker to propositional cognitive processes. Can we deny the dependence argument because relapsing necessarily involves propositions? It is not possible to have at the same time propositions and the propositional exclusion of dependence. And as between arguments for dependence and for propositions, it is more likely that dependence is propositional than that dependence acts independently of our cognitive powers. Even the drug-crazed junkie that goes zombie-like after a “fix”, is acting on the impulsion of his specific cognitive self. What we are saying is not just that smoking is not a dependence but that there is no such thing as “absolute dependence” devoid of some propositional content. There is, of course, addiction, but addiction is not much different from strong craving, which consists in affectively charged propositions that overpower less powerful propositions. The predominance of craving is a giving in and giving in is a result of the specific self. Volition then is propositional and it is propositional even when a physiological influence can be discerned to be acting on cognition. Junkies, for instance, frequently are recruited from people with few prospects in life (or so they might think) and a junkie like William Burroughs self-admittedly chose his addiction as part of an artistic pursuit and could even afford trips all over the world in search of ideal highs. Since volition can be explained propositionally, then this view of addiction is well within our propositional theory on volition.

We have considered different arguments for quitting: the force of physical affects and rational considerations about health. But we have not considered all these arguments together. Could they yield a specification of volition? Does volition consist in an accumulation of propositions, perhaps a subconscious accumulation of "forces", something like a synergy effect, such that it engenders a "combined force" different from all individual propositions and sufficient to overwhelm the force of craving? Even though each argument might be defeated, putting them all together might produce the synergy effect that could lead to quitting. But all we can have are specific propositions that interact and follow one upon the other and all these propositions are the yields of cognitive processes. Mostly, it seems, we smoke from inertia. We give it up from immediate discomforts and the propositions they engender. We relapse from propositions that predominate over the reasons for quitting. Volition seems to be absent in all this except as conflicting propositions some of which at different times predominate over other propositions. There is nothing that can be called volition here different from the specificity of cognition. There is only the specific self and the specificity of cognition and all we can have are specific propositions, and these specific propositions are the only possible manifestation of will.

There is one final argumentative tactic in the search for volition as different from the argument about volition as the prevalence of certain propositions over other propositions. Volition is found neither in affects, nor in arguments based on strong reasons, nor apparently in anything beyond cognition. There is the possibility that volition consists in the "initial decision" to quit. But here what we have is the moment when one proposition “lords” it over other propositions, and why should this proposition be different from other propositions, especially considering that, as we argued, volition in the specific case of smoking or not smoking is not one specific decision but a succession of decisions? It may be that a final or an initial decision—depending on how you look at it: whether as the culmination of a process towards quitting or as the start of quitting—has some force of its own, perhaps the force of volition? Perhaps also the accumulation of propositions for quitting could consist in the "initial decision", different in its "force" from all the successive, individual acts of quitting. In this "initial decision" could conceivably lie volition. What seems to be involved in the initial or final decision is “belief”. We give up smoking because we arrive at a point in which we are committed to the proposition that we should quit. Belief is a propositional attitude. Volition would then consist in the strong assent to a certain proposition, in this case to the proposition that we should quit smoking. And consequently, if we can identify the source of belief, we would be doing the final specification of volition. Belief is not necessarily the result of objective cognitive processes. Cognition implies belief, but it does not explain the why of specific belief-propositions. Generally we believe in what we see and we believe in the validity of logical and mathematical derivations. But we need not believe in such propositions. Logical and mathematical derivations are subject to doubts from the knowledge of our cognitive limitations. We can doubt even the clearest of our perceptions. I can spend an hour looking at a complex painting such as Velasquez’s “The surrender of Breda” and an instant later I could be in trouble trying to recall some detail in it.

Only to the extent that cognition per se determines behavior can it be said that cognition determines belief. The question then is: what explains belief that is not caused by cognitive processes in themselves? We perceive without knowing the rules of perception. Knowing something is acting efficaciously on such knowledge. There are areas of cognition where disputation can arise. But there are also fundamental principles that humanity is agreed upon. We can know when something is patently false and no one can deliberately and honestly believe a falsehood. But even such knowledge as we derive according to rules and on which there exists universal agreement need not constrain belief. It is possible that it may be volition that explains belief. The self could say: "Between two equally valid possibilities, I choose this one rather than the other one". But unless we act on the basis of this choice, this is a cognitive act, no different than volition itself, which has us going around in circles. We can suspend belief. The suspension of belief leads nowhere. But volition always leads somewhere. This is of its essence. Belief must determine volition and not the other way around. To ascribe belief in absurdities and intangibles to an act of will is patently insufficient. We could as easily claim to believe in anything and act as if we believed in nothing, which would not make much sense. To explain belief we have to posit the specific self. All our beliefs stem from a specific self. To make belief a function of specific self is to express the claim that we believe what we need or want or desire to believe in and that it is not objective cognition in itself that induces belief. The propositional model of cognition, cannot account for belief. Belief is explicable from the specific self. It is a product of the specificity of cognition. But it is not volition.

There is then no theory of volition different from “wider” theories about cognition. What's more, even though the initial proposition to quit, perhaps because it could include the "force" of expectation, may have greater force than other propositions, e.g., the proposition that finally we will be getting rid of a harmful and painful addiction, the will to quit, as we saw, is not one act but many successive acts, and some of these successive acts could be as "strong", perhaps stronger, than the initial act. Therefore, the initial decision, in the sense of a strong manifestation of belief, cannot be any less propositional and cognitive than any other proposition about quitting, and volition is certainly not to be found in any specification that takes belief as its ground. We believe in reason and we believe in affects but such beliefs do not constitute a volitional act. So what can we say then about volition? Volition is not an event or a force or anything different from the specificity of cognition and its specific yields. To go on doing or to stop doing this or that is just a matter of behaving according to the yields of subconscious cognitive processes. Volition or will is the result of the conflict of propositions of varying "strengths". These variations in strength can be explained from the specificity of our experience involving affects. But there is little ground for supposing that affects can be used to specify volition differently from cognition. Volition can be accounted for solely from the predominance of propositions. It is the result of cognitive processes that yield propositions. Physical affects involve the nervous system directly, but they are not constant in their effects. Physical affects can also have an effect on conduct through their “representation”, which is as subject to propositional processes as any other type of proposition. As every torturer knows, the belief that you’re going to be tortured can do a lot to concentrate the mind on his questions and can be as effective as torture itself. Propositional affects have to do with our behavior, but we can account for them without invoking volition. A desire or a craving is nothing more than a strong proposition, which varies in its strength from individual to individual. Volition is nothing outside of the specificity of cognition. There is no such thing as "pure will" or "rational will". Since cognition and affects by themselves can account for behavior, then there is no identifiable faculty that can be termed volition. The terms "will" or "volition" can be used to indicate this or that thought or action, but they are inherently meaningless.

We have defined away volition in terms of specific propositions and the specificity of the propositional nature of mind. We have also seen that physical behavior is determined by the predominance of certain propositions. This predominance can involve affects, reason, and other influences, all pertaining to the specific self. These influences give greater "force" to certain propositions. The propositional theory of volition can, therefore, be also expressed as a “theory of forces”. “Forces” can be thought of as propositions that clash over the determination of behavior. Since they are propositional and they do not justify a special characterization of volition over and above a propositional explanation, insofar as propositional attitudes or affects or reason confer force on propositions, a schema of volition involving the concept of forces would not be incompatible with the propositional definition of volition. It would be as if we were peeking inside a subconscious “populated” by some propositions that our previous speculations license. We will not consider in this schema external forces, such as no-smoking signs, or the inaccessibility of tobacco, or the influence of others on the specific self. We assume the means exist and nothing external stands in the way of smoking. The influence of public or "private" criticism can be a force against smoking, but as there is always the possibility of “evasion”, which is an external "factor"—light a joss stick to deodorize a smoke-filled room—we will not include it as an internal force in deciding or willing not to smoke. Admitting that it can be a force, it must be considered as a “psychological force” not unlike the others we will consider.

From the analyses above we can, then, derive the following schema. What drives me to smoke or not smoke are forces. Let us posit that three forces singly or together drive me to smoke: (1) craving, (2) enjoyment or at least absence of pain when we smoke, and (3) "pessimism". Let us also posit that five forces try to dissuade me from smoking: (1) good feeling from not smoking, (2) pain that comes from smoking, (3) fear of pain in the future, (4) reason (the rational desire to quit), and (5) "optimism".

(1) If we face off the two sets of forces, we get: that the absence of pain from smoking (enjoyment) and the pain or the expectation of pain that comes from smoking cancel each other out, and so do optimism and pessimism. That leaves the craving against the good feeling in not smoking and reason. Since I am an on-and-off smoker, reason has little force. And since the good feeling in not smoking is relative—for by not smoking I do not cancel all the discomforts that beset my body—in this confrontation I would probably smoke, but it can also be a toss up.

(2) If all the forces for smoking prevailed, the only two forces against smoking would be the good feeling of not smoking and reason, and I would smoke.

(3) If all the forces against smoking prevailed, the only force for smoking remaining would be the craving, which would entail pain, and so I would not smoke.

(4) If we range the craving and the absence of pain (enjoyment) against the good feeling from not smoking, reason, and optimism, it would be a toss up.

(5) If we range the absence of pain (enjoyment) and pessimism against the good feeling of not smoking and reason, craving would have the field to itself and I would smoke. We cannot posit the absence of pain alone against the pleasure of not smoking, reason, and optimism, for this presupposes the absence of craving and this is not realistic.

(6) Finally, if we place pessimism against all the forces against smoking minus optimism, it is likely I would not smoke, but this is really a toss up. Doing a balance by counting toss-ups as equally valid for smoking or non-smoking, in six cases I would smoke and in four I would not.

(1) This is perhaps the closest to where "will" might come into the picture, for it would be a strong force for (craving) against two mutually reinforcing weak forces against (good feeling plus reason).

(2) The absence of pain from smoking (enjoyment) would be decisive combined with the craving and the pessimism.

(4) There would be more room for the forces against here, but the forces for could be a more than equal match.

(6) This is only a toss up depending on the degree of pessimism, but it does point to the importance of the general existential situation of the individual. The implication here is a that a general attitude or influence can have a specific effect without having anything to do with the specific situation in which the effect occurs.

(4) This is the case that most often comes up in relapses, and another where "will", if we found such a thing, could be decisive.

(6) This is the prototypically irrational case, because something "from the depths" leads me to smoke. This is another relapse situation. "Will" could be influential here as a reinforcement to the forces against smoking.

The variability of forces is evident in the toss-up cases (1, 4, and 6). It is also in these that "will" could come into the picture. These are the cases we have to consider if we wish to find "will". Where is will in these cases? How do we recognize it? Can we pinpoint it at any specific moment?

In craving against good feeling in not smoking and reason, it is a question of reinforcing good feeling and reason or reinforcing craving, but good feeling is not in my power--it is a physical/physiological thing--and craving rises and falls independently of any decision I make: if I feel good because I am not smoking, the craving increases; if I feel badly because I am smoking, the craving decreases (except if I feel very pessimistic or very optimistic). Conceivably, the only reinforcement could lie in applying reason, but reason, as we have seen, can be manipulated for or against smoking.

In craving plus the absence of pain (enjoyment) against the good feeling, reason, and optimism, the same arguments for non-control apply to the craving and the absence of pain as to the forces against smoking. Reinforcing them is not something I can easily do or do at all. I could influence the process by arguing for reason and for optimism, but optimism and pessimism are probably closer to physiological processes than to argumentative ones. Finally, a totally despairing attitude towards life could overcome any force against smoking and the only dam against despair would be some kind of rational or “spiritual” effort, but this would have to involve some affectivity to be effective, and we have seen how theoretically useless affects are to smoking or not smoking.

If we take volition to be a faculty we possess for acting over and above or against forces that would determine my conduct, then there are no clear instances of volition in this examination of forces. Yet I could influence the balances of forces, ineffectually, marginally, but perhaps, in some special cases, crucially, by reasoning, by using arguments. In fact, an exercise of the sort we have undertaken here is probably as close to a manifestation of will as we are capable of. But there are no grounds for mistaking it, in any way or manner, for volition itself.

Could we defend will, finally, as the initial decision with the force of the expectation of pain? Since the initial decision to quit—the repeated "initial decision", be it said in all honesty—is itself the result of a conflict of forces, then will is not more real than the forces determining behavior. And as to the fear of affects, I have merely strengthened a force I had posited before. It could be defined as a sum of forces recognized as such, including the process of rational analysis of the problem, but on the understanding that this sum is itself a force. Thus, our schema and the fundamental conclusion from it—that the clash of subconscious cognitive forces determine smoking or kicking the habit—remain intact.

Since volition is each specific proposition, can we know from the decision to quit that we will really quit? We can make a decision about not smoking, but since we have made this decision many times and we have not stopped or we have stopped and then started again, how can we know that our decision will hold? We cannot really know. All we can do is look at the past and identify behavioral trends. But this is interpretative. Volition is a question of which propositions will prevail when.

Since our propositions are the products of the basic cognitive processes, ultimately volition is a product of these processes and their specific yields. It is the manifestation of our specific self in thought or in behavior. We can kick the habit for a time. We have done so many times for longer or shorter periods of time. Whenever we kick the habit for a time, the proposition we are obeying is that we are kicking it for good. Without this proposition, even if it is not kept, we would not even give up the habit for a time. This means that our saying that we are giving up smoking permanently is really saying unwittingly that we are going to give it up for a time. Volition is not a definitive and un-modifiable propositional stance.

Is there such a thing as "will power" different from volition? Just as to know whether a decision will hold we have to know the past history of our specific self, so the question of will power must also be referred to the specific self. It is undeniable that some individuals manage to make definite decisions about behavior better than others. But this cannot be the result of an entity over and above our cognitive processes or over and above our specific selves and the specificity of cognition.

Is there then no sure-fire way to kick the habit? Not unless through awareness you reinforce the forces that want to wean you away from nicotine. If your work makes you perennially downcast, you could quit (your job, that is), but then you will probably be under more stress, which could increase the craving. You could get a really bad disease which you could only fight back by quitting. But there you run the risk that if your life expectancy is short, you might say: what the hell! These are, of course, extremes you do not want to go to or be in. You could buy a very enticing self-help book strictly for nicotine addicts, but it would probably talk down to you as if you were a real dummy.

Alternatively, you could start from this essay and consider your situation as philosophically as possible. Make a for-and-against list like the one we proposed here, which you adjust to your personality and background. For instance: if you’re one of those who can’t resist a smoke after a cup of coffee, don’t drink coffee, unless your addicted to caffeine, for which you could make a different for-and-against list, a simpler one because the craving for caffeine is not as strong as the craving for nicotine.

Since socially we are responsible for our actions, and rightly so, even if we are determined by subconscious forces, we still have the right to use the language of free will, so whichever way we take to stop smoking, we can still go around saying that we did it out free, unalloyed will power. Who’s going to contradict you? Alternatively, since life is about feeling good about yourself, then, if you cannot give up smoking, go for the “Fahrenheit 451 scenario”. In the Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel with this title, a future totalitarian society has burned all the books, except for those which some misfits have rescued and read aloud to themselves in a secluded forest. Given the persecution of smokers—even in Paris!—you could think of yourself as part of a resistance movement to encroaching tyranny. Who knows? You could start feeling good about yourself and summon the power to quit!

[1] “Susanna: You won’t be jealous anymore? Gil: No, my darling, I will smoke. Together: All is smoke in this world and with the wind it dissipates. But love, sincere and profound, gives off smoke without restraint!”