Intro: Attempt to make sense of a loss of freedom from internal interference without appeal to hierarchical model. Main apparatus: the distinction between Wanting and Valuing.

1. The Problem of Freedom

1. Freedom (a tentative definition): being able to do or get what one wants.
2. The Problem: intentional acts all seem to qualify under this notion of freedom.

1. Familiar Approach: What I most want and what I end up doing can (often?) diverge –when what I did was what I wanted. So I seem unfree in an important sense, because something inside prevented me from doing what I most want.
2. Reflective attitudes: The notion of freedom above doesn’t seem to have the resources to distinguish not wanting to intend to x and wanting to intend to x .
3. The Problem isn’t just weakness of will (I failed to follow through), but a loss of freedom from the inside.

1. Humean and Platonic Reason

1. Hume: Reason is a faculty of discrimination and association, an inference machine (i.e. a pinkish calculator)
2. Plato: Reason is more than mere inference machine, it is a discerner of Value

1. Value independent of Desire (manifested)
2. Source of Action: valuing x can lead to desiring x
3. This function of Reason is (impartial) Judging (c.f. appreciating a piece of art, but not wanting to own it)

1. Bayesian Deliberation (useful way to understand Watson’s point)

1. Preference Scales and Value Assignments: Reason’s role
2. Hume: crunch the numbers
3. Plato: assign weights to states of affairs

1. Wanting and Valuing (commonly thought equivalent)

1. Two ways of distinguishing Wanting and Valuing

1. No Value, but Desire
2. Some Value, but Disproportionate Desire
3. Ex: Mom & Baby, Unsportsman-like impulses, idiot bridge jumper.

1. Content vs. Source of Attitude

1. No special quality of the content imbues it with character of a Value
2. Why an agent "wants" x is key question, i.e. what is source of interest in x-ing.

1. Appetites (wants) vs. Values

1. Each can have an independent existence, i.e. want something without valuing, and value something without wanting it.
2. Intricate Relations: generally great overlap, and often we value specific appetites –eating favorite food and sex with right partner.

1. Acculturated Attitudes: apparent values (esp. given language of judgment), but like appetites/passions insofar as source is not the agent’s Reason.

1. Watson’s Model: Valuational System and Motivational System

1. Valuational System: considerations that assign worth to states of affairs
2. Motivational System: considerations that move one to act
3. Free Agency

1. Source of Action: free agents actions flow from their Values
2. Overlap: Both "systems" are intimately connected with considerations that move one to act often the ones deemed worthwhile.
3. Standpoint: how one judges things is articulated from within the valuational system, i.e. it provides a ground from which to make judgments, because it constitutes the major features of one’s identity ("I don’t steal, because I am not a thief –this is who I am.")

1. Critique of Frankfurt

1. Structural Critique: All that Frankfurt attempts to accomplish can be done without appeal to hierarchy by using independent sources of motivation (one of which is associated with the agent’s identity).
2. Regress Problem

1. Hierarchical structure only invites the regress problem
2. Frankfurt’s "resounding" notion is a "lame reply": simply stipulating that further scrutiny is not permitted is arbitrary.

1. First Order Model:

1. Use Acts as focus of Judgments (read: reflection): agents typically are concerned with their actions first and foremost.
2. First order desires resulting from judgment about whether or not doing x is worthwhile "generate 2^nd order volitions," i.e. considerations that doing x is valuable and thus desirable.
3. To the extent that agents have 2^nd order Volitions, they are secondary to (and really just are) 1^st order Valuations about what to do.

1. Closing Observations (note: instructor observations, not Watson's)

1. Frankfurt acknowledges that Hierarchy is not crucial.
2. Reflection is crucial: F just doesn’t see how he can adequately capture this without a hierarchical structure.
3. Watson’s distinction closely resembles F’s notion of reflection insofar as agents Value things upon certain Judgments (i.e. reflections upon them)
4. Both take their notions to be of an independent source of motivation (independent of immediate desires to do x) and associate these sources with an agent’s identity (thus, legitimizing the "freedom" entailed).
5. While Watson’s reduction of 2^nd order Volitions to 1^st order Valuations is both elegant and successful, this fails to capture the "self-as-project" aspect of Frankfurt’s model, which is why F thinks he needs a hierarchical structure –to capture the sense of reflecting upon one’s self (i.e. one’s motives, preferences, and principles).