Gorman 1
You don’t seem like your Deep Self lately: Responding to Clinical Depression’s
Challenge to the Hierarchical Identification Theory of Autonomous Agency1
The Hierarchical Identification Theory of autonomous agency as first developed by Frankfurt
[1971] is well-known for the elegant explanation it provides for the phenomena of addiction,
compulsion, and phobias—cases in which particularly strong urges seem to overpower a
person’s will. The theory posits that we ought to identify a person’s will not with her firstorder desires, but rather with her self-reflective second-order mental states, which, when a
person is acting autonomously, align or properly “mesh” with her first-order desires.
Compulsive actions, on these views, are those actions that occur as a result of rogue first-order
desires that are out of line with a person’s will and overpower it.
Calhoun [2008] argues that although the Hierarchical Identification Theory provides a
neat explanation for these kinds of so-called volitional disabilities, it is unable to adequately
capture the phenomenology of an even more common volitional disability: clinical depression.
The Hierarchical Identification Theory seems to indicate that the only way a person’s agency
can be threatened is by being defeated by an irresistible urge such as compulsion, but an
examination of the phenomenology of clinical depression reveals that there is more than one
way for a person’s agency to be threatened.2 Calhoun sees the phenomenology of clinical
depression as cause for rejecting the general framework of the Hierarchical Identification
Theory, but my aim in this paper will be to present a version of the theory that can rise to meet
Calhoun’s challenge.3 I will show how a friendly modification of Frankfurt’s theory can make
space for the fact that both irresistible urges and clinical depression threaten agency in different
ways. While my main aim will be to show that the effects of clinical depression on agency do
not undermine the framework of the Hierarchical Identification Theory, I will conclude with a
discussion of some of the advantages of understanding the agency-threatening effects of clinical
depression in such hierarchical terms.
The Hierarchical Identification Theory of Autonomous Agency
The Hierarchical Identification Theory of autonomous agency takes as its jumping-off point the
idea that in order for you to act of your own autonomous agency it is not sufficient that you
merely act in accordance with your desires. For example, an unwilling heroin addict is moved
to take the drug by her desire for the drug, but although she may act intentionally, her desire to
take heroin does not speak for her, as it is not part of her standpoint.4 The unwilling addict’s
desire to take heroin, as well as the claustrophobic’s strong aversion to taking the elevator may
be said to be “external” if they conflict with one’s agential standpoint, or as Wolf [1987] puts it,
one’s Deep Self.5
But what is it to identify with certain desires such that they become a part of your Deep
Self? Although Frankfurt’s account of what this agential standpoint consists in has changed
over the years, the heart of the theory has remained the same. In order to autonomously act in
accordance with your agential standpoint, Frankfurt argues that your act must be caused by a
desire that appropriately meshes within hierarchically ordered elements of your psychology.
I am grateful to Gary Watson, Kadri Vihvelin, Timothy Schroeder, Janet Levin, Aaron Veek, Jennifer Asselin, and
audiences at USC’s Speculative Society and the 2014 Free Will Conference hosted by the Center for Cognition and
Neuroethics in Flint, Michigan for extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
2 Calhoun [1987], 196-197.
3 The problem that clinical depression poses to Frankfurt’s theory of autonomous agency that I address in this paper
should be distinguished from the objection David Velleman and Michael Bratman have pressed against the idea in
Frankfurt’s later work that “satisfaction” with higher-order volitions can solve the problem of infinite hierarchies.
For discussion of this point see Bratman’s “Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency” [2007b] and
David Velleman’s introduction to The Possibility of Practical Reason [2000].
4 Frankfurt 14-16.
5 Wolf.
1
Gorman 2
The hierarchy here is a hierarchy of reflective endorsement, for example, a second-order desire
is a desire to desire something. A second-order volition can be thought of as a special kind of
second-order desire, a desire that one of your first-order desires be motivationally effective, to
provide the motive in what you actually do.6 On the simplest version of Frankfurt’s theory, to
identify with an action is to be moved to it by a first-order desire that aligns with the first-order
desire that appears in the content of your second-order volition.
On this kind of account, agency is threatened when some other first-order desire7 you
have causes you to act, instead of one of the desires you have identified with. Such desires can
be seen as outlaws since they occur outside the bounds of your agential standpoint and act to
overpower it by moving you to act in ways that conflict with your more deeply held priorities.
In this way, Frankfurt is able to give an elegant account of the otherwise-puzzling phenomenon
of intentionally acting in ways that conflict with what you, in a deeper sense, most want to be
doing. It is not at all clear, though, how such an account might be able to give an equally
appealing description of clinical depression’s effect on the will.
How Depression Could Threaten Agency: First Pass
First it will be important to see if Calhoun is really right that clinical depression needs to be
understood as threatening the will in a fundamentally different kind of way from compulsion.
On the face of it, the easiest way for the Hierarchical Identification Theorist to handle a case of
clinical depression would be to treat it in much the same way as she does a case of compulsion,
understanding it as a case in which a strong countervailing motivational pull overpowers the
bits of a person’s psychology that she identifies with. The problem with this is that depression
does not obviously present a person with any such overpowering outlaw urge. In fact,
depression seems to involve quite the opposite: an almost total absence of strong urges.
According to the DSM V, severe depressive episodes are marked by symptomatic behavior like
missing school or work, withdrawing from social interaction, and discontinuation of
extracurricular activities.8 The person suffering from severe depression characteristically feels
that she is unable to go on, to take a shower, to leave the house, or even to get out of bed.
Although depression seems to cause a lack of activity, the Hierarchical Identification
Theorist could try to claim that this lack of activity is caused by a strong motivational urge: a
first-order desire to do not much of anything. This strong desire might threaten agency
because it would conflict with just about all of the depressed person’s second-order volitions
since her second-order volitions would involve pursuits that would require her to get out of bed
and do things. For example, imagine a person who wants to go to class because she truly enjoys
learning and is committed to getting her degree, and so identifies herself with her desires to get
out of bed on Monday morning, leave her house, drive to school, and go to class. In each case,
though, she finds these desires that she endorses to be overridden by the outlaw first-order
desire she has, due to her clinical depression, which motivates her to do nothing instead.
However, this account does not seem to give an accurate picture of the phenomenon of
clinical depression. For one, if we conceive of desires as being individuated by their functional
roles, this account seems to makes the person with depression indistinguishable from a sort of
glorified couch-potato. We may think of a couch-potato as someone who, while she may identify
with her desires to leave the house and get things done, is weak-willed in relation to her
stronger motivational pull to just stay on the couch and watch television. She feels a
motivational pull to leave her couch, but feels a stronger pull towards staying put. Could one
distinguish the first-order desire of the couch-potato to do nothing from the person with
depression’s first-order desire to do nothing on the basis of their phenomenal qualities,
Frankfurt [1971], 15-16.
Understood broadly. Depending on the account of desire, some “outlaw desires” may not, strictly speaking, count as
“desires.”
8 American Psychiatric Association [2013].
6
7
Gorman 3
additional (pessimistic) beliefs, or associated emotional states? Though I am doubtful that the
presence of such desires best capture the phenomenology of clinical depression, there is room for
this kind of view. Such an account implies that being unable to act due to clinical depression is
just to be weak-willed. Most people think being weak-willed is not an impairment of
autonomous agency. So taking this line is tantamount to denying that clinical depression affects
autonomous agency, a claim about which I think we should be highly skeptical. This kind of
account runs into two deeper problems, though. First, the fact that people with clinical
depression seem to take no enjoyment in staying motionless on their couches seems to make it
unlikely that it is accurate to describe them as having overpowering desires to so. One would
need to advocate for an account of desire on which desires for things one takes no enjoyment in
are not only possible but also common. This seems implausible. Second, the version of the view
on which the couch-potato and the person with depression are distinct only in terms of their
beliefs seems to have counterintuitive implications for how depression might be cured.
It seems much more plausible to say that the person with depression, unlike the couchpotato, seems to just find herself lacking the motivational pull she ordinarily has towards
leaving her couch. This aspect of the person with depressions’ phenomenology is corroborated
by the recent scientific evidence that clinical depression involves a lack of pleasure in response
to formerly rewarding stimuli.9 This makes it much more viable to suppose that people with
depression lack desires rather than that they retain them in addition to acquiring new
overwhelming standing desires to do nothing. And so it seems clear that however we explain
clinical depression’s effect on agency, we will need to be sensitive to the fact that the person
with depression suffers not from having a particularly strong motivational pull, but from some
lack of motivational states. Calhoun makes a similar point when she notes that we need to be
sensitive to the fact that in depression agency is not defeated, but depleted.10
How Depression Could Threaten Agency: Second Pass
In what, though, could the depletion of agency consist, on Frankfurt’s account? One initially
tempting thought is that the person with clinical depression’s agency is depleted because she
loses her ability to form second-order volitions. On this view such a person simply stops caring
about things like going to school or talking to her friends because she ceases to have a practical
identity. By failing to identify any of her motivations as truly reflective of her Deep Self, she
disengages from the project of being an agent. She is passive to each of the desires that she acts
on because she fails to identify herself with any desires whatsoever. So while strictly speaking,
her agency is not defeated due to depression, since there are no outlaw bits of her psychology
that overpower her second-order volitions, she ceases to be an agent since she comes to find that
her stake in which of her motivations come to move her has been, in a sense, forfeited. And so
we can speak of depression as undermining her agency insofar as it makes her stop caring about
the process of constituting herself as an agent.
This is not a very flattering portrait of the person suffering from depression. On this
account, the person with depression is identical to what Frankfurt calls a “wanton.” A wanton,
in Frankfurt’s sense, is someone who lacks second-order volitions and so fails to even truly be a
person because she does not care about her will.11 The wanton just pursues whatever course of
action she happens to be most strongly inclined to pursue, and fails to take any stand
whatsoever on what is to motivate her. According to Frankfurt, the class of wantons includes
both very young children and all nonhuman animals that have desires.12 Adult human beings
may also act more or less wantonly over time, as in the case of the wanton addict. Unlike the
unwilling addict, who does not want to be under the sway of her first-order desire to take drugs,
See, for example, Keedwell et. al [2005], “The Neural Correlates of Anhedonia in Major Depressive Disorder.”
Calhoun [1987] 196.
11 Frankfurt [1971]16.
12 Ibid.
9
10
Gorman 4
the wanton addict is someone who pays no mind to which of her first-order desires becomes her
will. In the case in which she has both a first-order desire to take drugs and a first-order desire
not to take drugs, she does not care which desire wins out, either out of a lack of capacity for
self-reflection or out of “mindless indifference to the enterprise of evaluating [her] own desires
and motives.”13 If this account of clinical depression’s effect on the will is correct, we can add the
person suffering from depression to this list of babies, animals, and people who lack the capacity
or concern for self-reflective evaluation.
Not only is this a highly unflattering depiction of the person suffering from depression,
it is also a highly implausible one. What is most implausible about it is that it leaves no room to
explain what is distressing about depression for the person experiencing it.14 If depression
merely made a person revert to a childlike state in which she acted on whichever impulse
happened to move her, then we might judge her life to be lacking something, from an external
perspective. However, she would not be able to see herself as lacking anything of great
importance to her since she would have stopped caring about the project of being an agent. We
see something lacking in the life of a dog, but the dog sees nothing lacking. Falling into a
clinical depression, though, is nothing like adopting such a lack of concern and a lack of interest
in one’s own motivation.
How Depression Could Threaten Agency: A Non-Frankfurtian Third Pass
If anything, the typical person with depression seems to exhibit just the opposite tendencies of
the wanton. Recent studies suggest that depressive episodes are actually more common in
people with excessive self-preoccupation, and such episodes can worsen due to selfpreoccupation.15 Far from being the carefree person who has stopped caring about what she
really thinks she should be doing, the person with clinical depression often finds herself
obsessively worrying about how what she should be doing compares to what she finds herself
capable of doing. Michael Stocker makes a related point when he notes that
One’s lessened desire need not signal, much less be the product of, the fact that, or one’s
belief that, there is less good to be obtained or produced, as in the case of a universal
Weltschmertz. Indeed, a frequent added defect of being in such ‘depressions’ is that one
sees all the good to be won or saved and one lacks the will, interest, desire, or
strength.16
It seems right to note that the person with depression does not forget what is good, but just
lacks the strength to be moved by it. But could it be that “seeing all the good to be won or
saved” in acting while not desiring to act could by itself explain the agency-disabling effects of
Ibid, 19.
At least, not given a Frankfurtian framework. While a non-Frankfurtian might try to explain away what is
distressing by drawing on the person with depression’s mere wishes, or perhaps beliefs that she was better off when
she did have a stake in her agency, and take these to be matters quite separate from the person’s will, the
Frankfurtian does not seem to me to have the resources to make these distinctions in a non ad hoc way. Regardless,
such notions are a bit obscure, for how are we to understand a person’s wish as being completely devoid of any desire
for it to be made true?
15 Sakamodo [1999]; Sakamodo, Tamoda, and Kijima [2002]
16 Stocker [1979], 744. Stocker makes this point in a slightly different context. The point is made in service of
arguing against Motivational Judgment Internalism, the view that there is a necessary connection between moral
judgments and motivation. Stocker argues that people with depression provide a counterexample to this view
because it seems as though they can make moral judgments, see them as reasons to act, and yet fail to be motivated to
act. While in some ways importantly related to the topic of discussion in this paper, this debate is somewhat
orthogonal to the main debate I address here. For more on clinical depression’s challenge to Motivational Judgment
Internalism, see also Mele [1996], Roberts [2001].
13
14
Gorman 5
depression? If so, it is not clear how the way in which clinical depression affects agency might
show up on Frankfurt’s account.17
Let’s examine a case. Suppose Maria has always loved her job as a kindergarten teacher
and has been happy to get out of bed in the morning to go to work. Now that she has fallen into
a deep depression, though, she is having trouble motivating herself to get out of bed in the
morning. If Maria has retained only her evaluative judgments then we would have to imagine
her thinking I know I ought to get out of bed and go to work, but I no longer care at all about going to
work or being a kindergarten teacher. This severance between evaluative judgments and
motivation does not get us any closer to being able to account for what is distressing or agencyundermining about having depression, for the experience of thinking there is something we
know we ought to do while simultaneously lacking any desire to do it is common and is not
sufficient by itself to show that one’s autonomous agency is undermined.
The failure of this account of depression’s effect on the will is all the better for
Frankfurt, though. As becomes clearer in Frankfurt’s later writings, second-order volitions are
not mere evaluative judgments.18 Take, for example, the case in which a woman has conflicting
first-order desires about whether or not to give her baby up for adoption. While she might
recognize that all things considered she ought to give up the baby, she might still align her
standpoint with her desire to keep the baby, therefore forming a second-order volition that is in
conflict with her evaluative judgment. And so insofar as it is right to say that what is agencyundermining about depression is the fact that it causes a failure to mesh between second-order
and first-order states, it cannot be mere evaluative judgments that fail to align with first-order
desires.
We want to accommodate the fact that the typical person with clinical depression seems
to exhibit just the opposite tendencies of the wanton, obsessing about what she would like to be
motivated to do. However, we need to be sensitive to the fact that the failure to act in
accordance with what one believes one ought to do does not seem sufficient to undermine
autonomous agency, while clinical depression does. The person with clinical depression seems
to retain not just her sense of which actions are most choice-worthy, but additionally, she seems
to retain her commitment and longing to pursuing the ends she identifies herself with in the
face her inability to carry them out.
Accounting for Depression: A Modified Account of Second-Order Volitions
What it seems right to say is that during clinical depression a person retains her second-order
volition to desire to φ and have it be her will, while simultaneously lacking any first-order desire
to φ. People suffering from depression quite frequently express frustration and upset over the
fact that they are not able to be their full or best selves. They care about their projects and
commitments deeply because they still identify with things they most want to do, but find
themselves unable to find the motivation to engage in those pursuits. In the introduction to a
popular self-help book called, Get it Done When You’re Depressed, the authors describe this
familiar aspect of the condition:
The first-order account of autonomous agency advocated in Watson [1975] is interesting to consider in this
regard. The states relevant for autonomous agency on Watson’s account are not special due to their hierarchical
status, but rather, they are of a fundamentally different type of motivational state. We might think that valuings, as
he calls them, are somehow affected by clinical depression, while other desires are not. It is my view that is not
accurate to conceive of clinical depression as causing a rift in motivation that is particular to one’s ability to act on
motivation towards things one thinks one ought to do, however, so I will not develop this idea further here.
18 Frankfurt makes this point most explicitly in his “Reply to Gary Watson” [2002] when he writes that his use of
certain locutions like “evaluative capacity” in earlier writings has been a source of frequent misinterpretation. He
clarifies: “what is essential to persons is not, in my view, a capacity to measure the value of their desires or to assess
the desirability of their impulses. Rather, it is a capacity to identify themselves with (or to refrain from identifying
themselves with) their tendencies to be moved in one way or another” (160).
17
Gorman 6
There’s a big difference between the great feeling of motivation that comes when you
want to do a project and the lack of motivation you feel when you wake up feeling down
with low energy. It’s natural that when you feel motivated, you can get things done
more easily and feel a sense of accomplishment while you work. When you’re depressed
you often lack motivation, so as much as you might want to feel the desire to work, it
simply isn’t there.19
This passage suggests that what makes clinical depression a disability of the will is that it
involves a disconnect between the person’s second-order volitions with which she is identified,
and the economy of her first-order desires. Whereas she wants to feel the desire to engage in
her projects, after all, that’s why she bothers reading a book like Get it Done When You’re
Depressed, she finds that she lacks the first-order desires to work on her projects.
A further advantage of this account is that it helps explain another puzzling aspect of
depression: when a person’s depression is cured she frequently goes back to having the same
kinds of first-order desires that she had before the depression set in. If all that is affected by
depression are first-order states, we can best explain how her second-order states remain fairly
consistent before and after depression. Additionally, since we might think these second-order
states have a role in affecting the production of first-order states, we can explain what causes
the formation of similar first-order desires both before and after depression.20
In order to adequately account for the actual phenomenology of clinical depression, I
propose, Frankfurt’s account needs to be able to explain how someone could retain her secondorder volition to desire to φ and have it be her will, while simultaneously lacking any first-order
desire to φ. Frankfurt is, however, committed to the position that a person’s second-order
volition that endorses a first-order desire to φ entails that that person has a first-order desire to
φ. For Frankfurt, a second-order volition must always be a reflective endorsement of some
first-order desire that the agent already has.21 This is evident in Frankfurt’s first formulation of
the idea of second-order volitions. In this passage Frankfurt arrives at his conception of secondorder volitions by distinguishing two kinds of situation that may be described by “A wants to
want X.”22 In the first situation, A has a second-order desire to X. It may be the case, however,
that A merely wants X to be among the desires which she is moved by to one degree or another,
but he has a univocal desire to refrain from X-ing. Frankfurt provides an example of a doctor
who for research purposes wants to know what it feels like to be addicted to a drug and so
wants to experience the desire to take the drug, but does not want to actually take the drug.
From this Frankfurt infers that having a concurrent second-order desire to X while X-ing
cannot be sufficient for autonomously X-ing.
In the second situation, A wants to want X in that he wants his desire for X to be
effective. This is the case of A having not just a second-order desire to X, but a second-order
volition, which for Frankfurt can be understood as a second-order desire with a special content;
a second-order volition is a desire about which first-order desire is to become one’s will. Of
these cases Frankfurt writes,
Now when the statement that A wants to want to X is used in this way, it does entail
that A already has a desire to X. It could not be true both that A wants the desire to X
to move him into action and that he does not want to X. It is only if he does want to X
that he can coherently want the desire to X not merely to be one of his desires but, more
decisively, to be his will.23
Fast and Preston [2008], 1.
I owe this point to Jennifer Asselin
21 Note that this problem is not easily fixed by appeal to a diachronically extended version of the Hierarchical
Identification Theory of the kind proposed by Bratman [2007]. See Appendix for a discussion of this matter.
22 Frankfurt [1971],15.
23 Ibid.
19
20
Gorman 7
So, for Frankfurt, second-order volitions cannot come apart from the first-order desires that
they target. But the phenomenon of depression shows us that one’s agential viewpoint can come
apart from one’s first-order desires not just in the case of being overtaken by outlaw desires, but
also by persisting even when one’s relevant first-order desires cease to exist.
In order to account for this I want to suggest we think of second-order volitions as not
necessarily endorsements, but rather, as desires to be effectively moved to certain actions. An
agent acts autonomously, on this view, just when she has a desire to be moved to a certain
action and in fact is moved to that action. Whereas on Frankfurt’s account a second-order
volition is a desire that a certain of one’s first-order desires be effective, on my account a secondorder volition is a compound attitude consisting of both a desire to have a particular first-order
desire and a desire to have that first-order desire be effective.
This account not only has the space to explain how the phenomenon of clinical
depression is both possible and agency-threatening, but also can explain how depression
threatens autonomous agency in a fundamentally different kind of way from the way that
addiction, compulsion, phobias, and irresistible urges threaten autonomous agency. Since
second-order volitions, on my account, are compound attitudes, a second-order volition can fail
to be satisfied in two different ways. Returning to the case of Maria who loves being a
kindergarten teacher but lacks the motivation to go to work, we can now say that her agency is
compromised because although she has a second-order volition that she be moved to go to work,
she lacks the first-order desire to move her. The unwilling addict’s autonomous agency is
compromised in a different way, however, because for her it is the case that she has the firstorder desire to stop taking drugs, but it is overwhelmed by her irresistible urge to take drugs.
We can also say in this case that her second-order volition fails to move her, but now it is not
because she does not have the relevant first-order desire, but because it fails to be the desire that
moves her to action.
A Substantial Revision?
But why in the first place does Frankfurt think an entailment relation holds between secondorder volitions and their respective first-order desires such that we need think of them as
endorsements of one’s own psychological states? In truth, he does not do much to motivate this
point, instead seeming to regard it as a conceptual impossibility for a person to lack a desire to
X while simultaneously wanting X to be not merely one of her desires but also to be her will.
But why think that it is a conceptual impossibility to have a desire to desire to X and to have my
desire to X be my will, but not want to X? After all, it seems clear that wishing we had certain
desires does not entail that we do in fact have those desires. Why should it be any different in
the case in which we wish not only that we had certain desires but also that we be moved by
them?
In a footnote, Frankfurt actually concedes that the entailment relation he builds into his
account seems not to hold in certain special cases.24 This should provide us with at least a clue
as to why he thinks the entailment relation does hold in ordinary cases. This is the kind of case
he has in mind that he thinks might undermine his entailment claim: Imagine that A greatly
admires B. In fact, A admires B so much that A wants to be effectively moved by whatever
desire effectively moves B, though he does not know what desire it is. This is a case in which
the entailment does not hold, Frankfurt thinks, since A has a second-order volition to desire to
do something, but no presently occurring desire to do that thing since he does not even know
what that thing is. The implication here is that if A did know what desire effectively moves B, A
would necessarily have that desire as a consequence of having the second-order volition. What
accounts for the difference between the two scenarios is that in the latter, since A knows what
24
Frankfurt [1971],15-16, footnote 4.
Gorman 8
the desire that moved B was, that desire features in the satisfaction conditions of A’s secondorder volition.
For my desire to write a novel to be satisfied it must be the case that I write a novel.
Likewise, for my second-order volition to be moved by a desire to write a novel to be satisfied, it
must be the case that I write a novel. So in order for my second-order volition to be satisfied, I
must write a novel. In a sense we can say that as a logical part of my wanting to be moved to
action by a desire to write a novel, I want to write a novel; so there is a sense in which we may
rightfully say that I want to write a novel. However, Frankfurt is wrong to draw from this
reasoning the conclusion that if a person has a second-order volition to be moved to act on a
desire to φ she necessarily must have a first-order desire to φ with independent motivational
pull.
Consider the following analogy: in order for my desire to drink a cup of coffee to be
satisfied, it must be the case that I drink a cup of liquid. So, given that I have a desire to drink a
cup of coffee, it is right to say that I want to drink a cup of liquid. But this does not mean that I
have a desire to drink a cup of liquid that has motivational pull independently of my desire to
drink a cup of coffee. In terms of the economy of my desires, my “desire” to drink a cup of liquid
is nothing over and above my desire to drink a cup of coffee; they are not two different desires
that feature in my motivational make-up. Just as it is a mistake to think that I have a first-order
desire to drink a cup of liquid that ought to be counted as part of the economy of my desires in
any robust sense, I think it is a mistake to say that just because I have a second-order volition to
be moved to action by a certain desire to φ that I must have a first-order desire to φ that
features in the economy of my desires. If what I have said about the phenomenology of
depression is correct, then it seems to provide a clear counterexample to the idea that a secondorder volition to be moved to φ entails that the agent has a first-order desire of any independent
strength to φ. Other examples outside of the case of clinical depression, too, push us towards
this revised account. Suppose you are on a first date with a very rich and famous person. You
may decide you would really like to desire this person and to act on such a desire, because of the
advantages that would result for both your status and your bank account. It seems that this
could be the case without it also being the case that you have a first-order desire for this person.
This lends further support to the idea that the entailment relation Frankfurt posits does not
hold up.
I want to suggest, however, that the revised Hierarchical Identification model I propose
might be considered friendly to Frankfurt’s project because it attends to the problem without
substantively altering any of Frankfurt’s other claims. Although my account might seem on
first glance like a substantial revision of Frankfurt’s ideas, I think there will, in practice, be few
cases in which the two accounts diverge in their description of events. From one perspective,
my proposal can be seen as merely expanding the scope of Frankfurt’s second-order volitions.
Second-order volitions are identified as endorsements on Frankfurt’s view but not on mine.
However, many of the cases of wanting to be effectively moved to action by a desire are
tantamount to endorsing a desire. In order to see how this is the case, note that it seems
plausible to suppose that for a desire to be endorsed, it just needs to be the case that two
conditions hold: 1) the desire currently exists in the agent’s psychology, and 2) the agent wants
the desire to exist in her psychology. This means that in cases where on my proposal an agent
has a second-order volition to φ and also a first-order desire to φ, she has done the equivalent of
endorsing her first-order desire: she both has the desire as a component of her psychology and
wants the desire to exist in her psychology. An endorsement of a desire, on my view, just is the
combination of those two conditions holding. The accounts only diverge in cases in which a
person has a desire to be effectively moved to action by a first-order desire, but that desire is not
part of the make-up of her present psychology, as is often the case in depression.
Gorman 9
Objections and Replies
I anticipate a few objections to the view I have defended. First, one might worry that a
consequence of my view is that wantons cannot have clinical depression.25 Since wantons either
do not have the capacity for self-reflective formation of second-order desires and volitions, or do
have the capacity but never exercise it, it seems as though my account predicts that they will
not be subject to the effects of depression. This consequence is of concern since it may be that
the very young, the very old, and perhaps certain cognitively advanced animals do not exercise
these capacities yet it seems possible that they can suffer from depression. While it is certainly
an interesting question whether or not such beings do in fact suffer from depression, nothing I
have said should rule out the possibility that wantons can have depression. I have neither tried
to provide necessary nor sufficient conditions for having clinical depression, but rather have
aimed to show how depression can hinder autonomous agency on the Hierarchical Identification
Theory of the will. What I am committed to saying is that wantons are not subject to the same
disability of the will that results from depression as non-wantons are who have their
autonomously settled second-order volitions hindered, since wantons already lack such
autonomy. This does not seem like a counterintuitive result.
One might worry, relatedly, that my view suggests that a way to cure yourself of
depression is to become a wanton. Again, though, I have not tried to argue for any necessary or
sufficient condition for a person to have clinical depression. It is unlikely that becoming a
wanton would solve anyone’s persistently dull affect, lack of feelings of self-worth, fatigue, or
any number of other symptoms of her depression. However, becoming a wanton would, in a
sense, rid her of the upset of not being able to act on the first-order desires that align with her
second-order volitions. Given that Frankfurt’s view provides a way for a person to relinquish
being an agent, though, we should not find it surprising that the view provides a way for an
agent to rid herself of conditions that hinder her agency, that is, by relinquishing her agency
altogether. Note that this option is also available to the addict. Rather than having her agency
frustrated by her overpowering first-order desires for heroin, the heroin addict can simply give
in by giving up her agency, instead following her urges whatever they may be.
A different kind of objector might worry that I have too quickly dismissed the view on
which the way that depression threatens agency is by causing the person with depression fail to
form second-order volitions. Being depressed amounts to having a lack of care about one’s own
will, such an objector might argue. I have argued here that one of the biggest problems with
this view is that it cannot make sense of the fact that depression is distressing for the person
experiencing it. There does, however, seem to be something to the idea that over time, given a
long depressive episode, a person can come to let go of some of her second-order states and
come to no longer produce second-order volitions. Rather than this being best captured by the
view that a person suddenly ceases to care about any of her second-order volitions once
depression hits, though, it seems more accurate to say that this seems to be a gradual process
that happens in response to her depression. My view can actually provide an explanation for this
phenomenon, and so there is reason to prefer it. Giving up on second-order volitions can be
explained by the fact that though the person at first retains her ability to form second-order
volitions, they are unable to motivate her when she does, and so the process of developing the
states over time comes to seem altogether futile. As a consequence, such a person eventually
resigns due to the perceived, or perhaps actual, futility of her agential project.
Finally, one might agree that what I have claimed about the phenomenology of clinical
depression is largely correct, but disagree that accommodating it requires modifying Frankfurt’s
entailment relation. While remaining completely faithful to Frankfurt’s view we can posit that
the person with clinical depression does retain her first-order desires, though they are
25
I am grateful to Kadri Vihvelin for posing this objection to me.
Gorman 10
diminished. The presence of a fairly diminished desire to φ suffices for being able to form a
second-order volition that one’s first-order desire to φ be effective, while still explaining how
depression depletes willpower. One worry with this proposal is that one would need to have an
account of desire on which one could have a desire while not being able to become aware of its
presence. If such desires are possible though, making the claim that they are present each time a
person with depression wants to act on her second-order volition, despite the fact that this runs
contrary to the person’s own perception of the economy of her desires, seems quite ad hoc.26
Advantages of the Theory
My primary aim in this paper has been to show that the phenomenology of clinical depression’s
effect on the will does not provide us with a reason to reject the general framework of
Frankfurt’s Hierarchical Identification Theory. I have suggested that with slight modification
the Hierarchical Identification Theory can make room for the existence of a previously puzzling
aspect of clinical depression, which involves identification with certain pursuits that one finds
oneself unable to get motivated to do, even in the face of no conflicting impulses. This
hierarchical model is not, however, the only option for capturing this aspect of depression. This
naturally raises the question: are there any independent reasons to favor a hierarchical theory?
I think there are. Consider the alternate explanation that the phenomenon in question
happens entirely on the first order. Although the person with depression has a strong firstorder desire to go to work, she is not motivated by her desire. The problem with this sort of
explanation is that it is restricted to certain accounts of desire, and not available on several of
the most widely held views of desire. Strength of desire, on many views, is thought to have a
direct correlation to strength of motivation. On the most common view, for example, strength
of desire is to be understood as constituted by a desire’s causal power regarding the control of
action.27 Since these views cannot permit the case in which a person’s strongest first-order
desire fails to motivate her, there is a reason to try to explain the phenomenon in some other
way. Proponents of accounts of desire that tie the strength of first-order desire to motivation
may be able to account for depression’s effect instead by appealing to the hierarchical account.
Another advantage of the hierarchical account of clinical depression’s effect on the will
is that it might be used to help explain why suicides undertaken by people with depression are
often not the results of autonomous decisions of a robust sort.28 On the hierarchical account the
actions which are undertaken autonomously are those that are motivated by first-order desires
that align with second-order volitions. Since when a person is clinically depressed, she is not
motivated in this way, it can be reasonably assumed that the actions to which she is motivated
are non-autonomous. This may help explain why intervention is often justified in such cases.
I am not claiming that these advantages are unique to the hierarchical account, but
merely that together they constitute at least some reason to be interested in the account in its
own right. As Calhoun puts it, mention of the clinical depression in philosophical work is
“surprisingly infrequent and brief, given its agency-disabling effects.” Pair this with the fact
that it is estimated that 5% of people suffer from depression worldwide, and we can see that
underappreciating the reality of depression would be a substantial oversight.29 I agree with
Calhoun that clinical depression is clearly worthy of sustained philosophical investigation as
well as that there is great need to bridge the gap between philosophizing about agency in the
abstract and understanding how depression affects experiences of agency in the real world.
That said, Frankfurt’s theory may prove to provide a more fruitful framework in which to carry
out this project than it has previously been thought.
I am thankful to Janet Levin for pressing me on this point.
For more on theories of desire, see Schroeder [2009].
28 For an alternate take on this, see Radoilska [2013].
29 Calhoun [2008] 195; Iliades [2013].
26
27
Gorman 11
Appendix
The Appeal to Diachronic Agency
One way we might think the account ought to be modified is to reflect the fact that while having
a second-order volition to desire to φ does not rely on having any particular contemporaneous
first-order desires, it does involve having had particular first-order desires that were endorsed
in the past. Second-order volitions, once acquired, it might be thought, have the feature of
projecting one’s identity into the future by ‘locking-in’ one’s plans and commitments. On such
an account, the fact that a person with depression still retains precisely the second-order
volitions she had before her depression set in is explained by the fact that everyone’s secondorder volitions persist regardless of their first-order desires.
On the face of it, this kind of approach seems to capture some of our intuitions about
depression’s interaction with agency. By looking at a snapshot property of the will of a person
with depression we cannot tell that anything is wrong per se, we might think; it is only when
we look at things diachronically that the problem that depression presents for the will even
comes into view. The person with depression finds herself unable to get motivated to do the
things she always loved doing before she fell into her depression. It is this rupture in the
sequence of which things motivate her to action that is indicative of depression, rather than any
snapshot property of her will during the time of the rupture.
Michael Bratman’s intention-based theory of agency is a version of the Hierarchical
Identification Theory that, unlike Frankfurt’s, takes this diachronic aspect of agency seriously,
and so it might seem as though it would be better able to account for depression’s disruption of
the will. Whereas Bratman’s theory shares with Frankfurt’s the appeal to a higher-order
conative attitude, on Bratman’s theory an agent identifies with her first-order desire to φ just in
case she forms a higher-order policy in favor of treating her desire to φ as providing
justificatory reason to φ in practical deliberation.30 This means that my second-order attitude,
my standing policy about my first-order desire, stays in place after I set it and it continues to
have an influence upon my practical reasoning, while also facilitating the maintenance of my
cross-temporal agency. For example, if I evaluatively judge that the pursuit of a career in music
and a career in academia are both equally worthy pursuits in a life31, and desire both equally, I
can come to identify myself with the pursuit of a career in academia by forming a reflexive
policy to treat my desire to pursue an academic career as having more weight by means of this
very policy I set. This policy might remain in place long after I initially commit to the policy,
and helps maintain my cross-temporal connectedness.
In a certain way, Bratman’s proposal does better at accounting for the phenomenology
of depression than Frankfurt’s because it is not committed to the presence of the second-order
attitude entailing the presence of any particular contemporaneous first-order desires.
Independently of any current first-order desires I may or may not have at the present moment, I
can retain my identification with certain concerns and my commitments to treating certain
desires as providing a justificatory reason to act. However, Bratman’s proposal falls short of
being able to give any explanation of how depression could threaten agency. If a person has
plans about how to weigh first-order desires A B and C when they factor as considerations in
her practical deliberation, and her autonomous agency has to do with her being able to form and
30
31
Bratman [2007a], 142.
Or perhaps incomparable or ‘on a par.’
Gorman 12
maintain such policies, but she now lack first-order desires A B and C due to depression, her
plans are now irrelevant. Her normative standpoint might still be in place, but it simply does
not speak to her current condition. And so Bratman’s account seems to predict that lacking
first-order desires cannot in and of itself impair autonomous agency. By adopting Bratman’s
proposal we gain the ability to explain how the person with depression can have the secondorder conative attitudes that are crucial to agency while lacking first-order desires, but it is at
the cost of being able to say that lacking those first-order desires is in any way an impairment to
agency.
Gorman 13
Works Cited
American Psychiatric Association [2013]. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bratman, Michael [2007a]. “A Desire of One’s Own.” Oxford: Oxford University Press. 137161.
----------------------[2007b].“Reflection, Planning, and Temporally Extended Agency.” Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 21-46.
Calhoun, Cheshire [2008] “Losing one’s self.” Catriona Mackenzie and Kim Atkins, (eds.)
Practical Identity and Narrative Agency. London: Routledge.
Fast, Julie A. and John D. Preston [2008].Get it Done When You’re Depressed. New York:
Penguin.
Frankfurt, Harry [1971].“Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” The Importance of
What We Care About. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 11-25.
---------------------[2002]. “Reply to Gary Watson.” Contours of Agency. eds. Sarah Buss and Lee
Overton. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Iliades, Chris [2013]. “Stats and Facts About Depression in America.” Everyday Health.
<http://www.everydayhealth.com/health-report/major-depression/depressionstatistics.aspx>
Keedwell, Paul A. et. al [2005]. “The Neural Correlates of Anhedonia in Major Depressive
Disorder.” Biological Psychiatry 58, no. 11: 843-853
Mele, Alfred R [1996]. “Internalist Moral Cognitivism and Listlessness.” Ethics, 106, no. 4:
727-753.
Roberts, John Russell [2001]. “Mental Illness, Motivation, and Moral Commitment.”
Philosophical Quarterly. 51, no. 202: 41-59.
Radoilska, Lubomira [2013]. Autonomy and Depression. In K. W. M. Fulford, Martin Davis,
George Graham, John Sadler, Giovanni Stanghellini & Tim Thornton (eds.), Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry. Oxford University Press. 1155-1170.
Sakamodo [1999].“A Longitudinal Study of the Relationship of Self-Preoccupation with
Depression.” Journal of Clinical Psychology. 55, no.: 109-116.
Sakamodo, Tamoda, and Kijima [2002]. “Association of Self-Preoccupation and Self-Reported
Duration and Severity of Depressive Episodes.” Psychological Reports 90, no. 3.1: 861868.
Schroeder, Timothy [2009]. Desire. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2009):
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/desire/#ActBasTheDes>
Solomon, Andrew [2008]. “Depression, Too, is a Thing With Feathers.” Contemporary
Psychoanalysis 44, no. 4: 509-530.
Stocker, Michael [1979]. “Desiring the Bad: An Essay in Moral Psychology.” Journal of
Philosophy 76, no. 12: 738-753.
Velleman, J. David [2000]. The Possibility of Practical Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watson, Gary [1975]. “Free Agency.” Journal of Philosophy 72 (April): 205-220.
Wolf, Susan [1987]. “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility.” Ferdinand David Shoeman
(ed.), Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.