Agnes Gellen Callard
Department of Philosophy
314 Moses Hall #2390
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2390
1110 Jackson St., apt #918
Albany, CA 94706
agellen@socrates.berkeley.edu
phone: (510) 717-7103
Born January 6, 1976 in Budapest, Hungary.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Ethics (esp. moral psychology), Ancient Philosophy
AREAS OF COMPETENCE
Modern Philosophy (esp. Kant, Hobbes and Hume), Applied Ethics
DISSERTATION
An Incomparabilist Account of Akrasia In this dissertation, I offer a new account of the relationship between reason
and desire, and use it to explain weak-willed action. Please see the attached one page abstract.
COMMITTEE
Professors Samuel Scheffler (chair), R. Jay Wallace and John Ferrari (Classics). Alan Code was on the committee
until he left for Rutgers University in June 2007.
EDUCATION
Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy
Passed qualifying examinations
Began graduate study in Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
Visiting student at Princeton University Dept. of Philosophy
Passed Ph.D. Latin Translation Examinations
Received M.A. in Greek language and literature
Began graduate study in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley
Undergraduate study at the University of Chicago (B.A. in Philosophy)
Ph.D. expected May 2008
Nov. 4, 2003
Sept. 2001
Sept. 2000- June 2001
Nov. 2000
May 2000
Sept. 1997
Sept. 1993- June 1997
AWARDS, HONORS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Mabel Mcleod Lewis dissertation scholarship, May 2006
Charlotte W. Newcombe dissertation fellowship (declined in order to accept McLeod), May 2006
Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship (tuition and stipend for one year of post-orals work), Sept. 2004
France-Berkeley Fund award ($10,000 to organize two conferences, in Paris and Berkeley, bringing together
French and American scholars), March 2002
Heller Fund Award for study with Reginald Foster (Latin secretary to the Pope, teaches Spoken Latin Course in
Rome), March 1999
Awarded Jacob Javits Fellowship (1998-2001)April 1998
Commencement Speaker at the University of Chicago June 1997
Mellon Fellowship (tuition and stipend for one year of graduate work), April 1997
Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study at the University of California, Berkeley, April 1997
Square-D France Grant ($5000 for study at a French institution; used at the Sorbonne, Paris), March 1997
Elected member of Phi Beta Kappa honors society, Sept. 1996
College Honors Scholarship (Merit-based, includes full tuition waiver for four years), April 1993
PAPERS DELIVERED
"Aristotle on Akrasia," UC Berkeley Ancient Philosophy Group, April 2006
“On the Two Kinds of Thinking,” Wollheim Society, UC Berkeley, April 2005
“Two Paradoxes of Prayer” at the France-Berkeley Fund Kant conference in Berkeley April 2003
“Kant’s Theory of Wish” at the France-Berkeley Fund Kant conference at the Sorbonne, Paris November 2002
“The Problem of Historicism: Why Popper Had to Misread Plato,” Karl Popper Centennial Congress in Vienna,
Austria, July 2002
“Ambidextrous Reason and the Importance of Realism in Ethics,” Wollheim Society, UC Berkeley, November
2001
“The Relevance of Psychoanalytic Theory to the Problem of Instrumental Reasoning,” Philosophical Society,
Princeton University December 2000
“Philosophical Days, Tyrannical Nights: Plato’s Republic” Poseidon Ancient Philosophy Conference, Princeton
University May 2000
“The Structure of Plato’s Republic,” Ancient Philosophy Group, UC Berkeley, February 2000
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
As Primary Instructor
--Ancient Philosophy, Summer 2007, UC Berkeley
--Political Philosophy (Plato, Hobbes, Rawls), Summer 2006, UC Berkeley
--Adjunct Professor of Latin, Latin-Greek Institute of the City University of New York, Summer 2000
--Introductory Latin, Spring 2000, UC Berkeley
--Introductory Greek, Fall 1999, UC Berkeley
As Teaching Assistant (GSI) at UC Berkeley
--Ancient Philosophy taught by Prof. John MacFarlane, Fall 2007
--Upper division course on Metaphysics, taught by Prof. Barry Stroud, Spring 2006
--Upper division course on Ethical Theories, taught by Professor R. Jay Wallace, Summer 2004
--Upper division course on Kant, taught by Professor Hannah Ginsborg, Summer 2003
--Personal Identity, with emphasis on student writing, taught by Professor Janet Broughton, Fall 2002
--Individual Morality and Social Justice, Summer 2002
--Ancient Philosophy course at UC Berkeley, Summer 2001
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Editor's Assistant to G.R.F. Ferrari for The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic , Fall 2006
Organized conference (with France-Berkeley Fund grant, see above): What Can I Know? What Ought I Do? What
May I Hope? Normativity and the Kantian Project, Keynote speaker: Beatrice Longuenesse, Spring 2003
Editor's Assistant to Sarah Broadie for the Broadie/Rowe edition of Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford University
Press), Spring 2001
LANGUAGES
Hungarian—
Ancient Greek and Latin—
German—
French—
Italian—
native speaker
reading fluency
reading and speaking: excellent; writing: good
reading: excellent; speaking: fair; writing: poor
reading: good; speaking: fair; writing: poor
REFERENCES
Sarah Broadie, Wardlaw Professor, University of St. Andrews (sjb15@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Alan Code, Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University (acode@philosophy.rutgers.edu)
G.R.F. (John) Ferrari, Professor of Classics, University of California, Berkeley (gferrari@berkeley.edu)
Niko Kolodny, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
(kolodny@calmail.berkeley.edu)
John MacFarlane, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley (jgm@berkeley.edu)
Samuel Scheffler, Class of 1941 World War II Memorial Professor of Philosophy and Law, University of
California, Berkeley (scheffler@berkeley.edu)
R. Jay Wallace, Professor of Philosophy and Chair, University of California, Berkeley (rjw@berkeley.edu)
Departmental Contact: David Lynaugh, Graduate Student Affairs Officer, Department of Philosophy, 314
Moses Hall #2390, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-2390. Email: dlynaugh@berkeley.edu. Phone:
(510) 642-2722.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: AN INCOMPARABILIST ACCOUNT OF AKRASIA
Humeans think that desires motivate us; rationalists think that, at least when it comes to intentional
action, only reasons can be motives. Both sides are "monists" about motivation; championing the one
motive, they describe the other as motivating derivatively: a desire 'gives rise to' a reason; desire is 'the
appearance of something as a reason'; reasons 'contain' desires; reasons 'depend on' desires; a desire is
'taken to be a reason,' etc. I reject all such attempts to integrate desire and reason, arguing instead that
the two are mutually independent sources of motivation. Furthermore, I show how a theory equipped
with two distinct sources of motivation can help unravel the puzzle of weakness of the will.
We won't, I argue, understand the relationship between the mental items in question (reasons and
desires) until we see them as parts of mental processes. I distinguish between two kinds of mental
processes: the thoughts involved in active thinking are normatively connected to one another—some
thoughts follow from others—while passive thinking is not thus rule-governed. I develop the idea that
practical reasoning is a way of thinking actively about the good, while desiring is a way of thinking
passively about the good. This theory of motivation does without the dependence relations between
reason and desire that characterize both its Humean and Rationalist opponents: an active, rational
thought and a passive, desiderative thought represent independent, and essentially opposed, ways of
thinking about the good. I call this thesis incomparabilism. The heart of my dissertation is an argument
that there are good grounds for characterizing reason and desire in this way; moreover, that such a
picture opens up the possibility of a solution to the problem of weakness of the will.
A weak-willed (or akratic) agent acts against her better judgment, in full awareness that she is doing so.
She appears to be a counterexample to a principle, widely held since the work of G.E.M. Anscombe,
that intentional actions are actions done for reasons. But the supporters of the Anscombe principle
caution us to distinguish between acting on a reason and acting rationally: they want to allow for akrasia by
describing such an agent as, though irrational, nonetheless acting on a reason. More specifically, these
supporters typically advance what I call the "weaker reasons thesis," which admits that the akratic agent
does not act on (what she takes to be) her best reason, but claims that she acts on a reason nonetheless,
namely, her outweighed reason to perform the akratic action. My dissertation opens with an argument
that we cannot act on a reason acknowledged as weaker.
I urge a retreat from the Anscombe principle to a principle with which it is often conflated and from
which (I argue) it gets its intuitive force: the sub specie boni or 'guise of the good' principle says that
intentional actions are actions motivated by the representation of goodness. When the sub specie boni
principle is combined with the assumption that to represent an action as good is to see oneself as having
a reason to pursue it, we get the Anscombe principle, which, as we have seen, is inconsistent with the
possibility of akrasia. But when the sub specie boni principle is, instead, combined with the incomparabilist
idea that there are two ways of thinking about the good, a new description of akrasia become possible:
akratic actions are intentional but not done for reasons.
Interestingly, Aristotle offers a precedent for this line of argument. I show that in Nicomachean Ethics
VII.3 he likewise uses akrasia to argue for the existence of a heterogeneity of motivational forces,
dividing the soul into appetitive and rational parts in response to the Socratic view that everyone always
does what he thinks best. This is at odds with the traditional interpretation of Aristotle, which, identifying
Aristotle's view with Socrates', has Aristotle diagnose akrasia as ignorance of the superior alternative
choice. Far from denying the possibility of akrasia, Aristotle, I claim, laments it, seeing our vulnerability
to passive thinking, in the face of our superior active thinking, as an unqualified stain on human
character. On this point I depart, in the final chapter, from Aristotle. Exploring a connection between
akrasia and other forms of defective agency (e.g. self-destructive asceticism, depression-induced apathy,
teenage defiance) I develop a conception of akrasia as a rebellion against reason. There are limitations
inherent in the project of practical reasoning, I argue, and for this reason there is something salutary, for
all of us, about the possibility of having more than one way to think about the good.