Self-control and mechanisms of behavior: Why self-control is not a natural mental kind

In this paper, I argue for two main hypotheses. First, that (philosophical) self-control is not a natural mental kind and, second, that there is no dedicated mechanism of self-control (indeed, the latter claim forms part of my argument for the former). By the first claim, I simply mean that those behaviors we label as “self-controlled” are a somewhat arbitrarily selected hodgepodge that do not have anything in common that distinguishes them from other behaviors. In other words, self-control is a gerrymandered property that does not correspond to a natural mental or psychological kind. By the second claim, I mean that self-controlled behaviors are not produced by a mechanism (or a set of them) that is not utilized in the production of other (non-self-controlled) behaviors. Not only is there no natural mental property of self-control, there is no mechanism (such as willpower) that is dedicated to producing self-controlled behavior. I further evaluate whether this account of self-control has enough explanatory power to account for a range of phenomena related to self-control (systematic self-control failures, etc.). I argue that my account does a better job of explaining these phenomena than accounts which appeal to a dedicated self-control mechanism.