It is not willpower that prevents heterosexuals from having homosexual sex (or vice versa), it is not willpower that prevents classical music lovers from indulging in pop music (or vice versa), it is not willpower that prevents young athletes from lying around on the couch all day, and similarly in the typical case it may not be willpower that prevents thin and normal people from becoming fat. If that is so, then what distinguishes a fat person is not necessary a lack of willpower, but something else—such as a damaged sense of hunger which continues to send “I am hungry” messages when they should not be sent.
Even the overweight stop eating at some point. Suppose someone is 240 pounds. It is willpower that prevents him from being 250 pounds? Or is it that he stops being hungry at an earlier point than someone who is 250 pounds?
I think willpower in eating is best defined relative to a person’s sense of hunger. If a person stops eating despite still feeling hungry, and he does this in order to keep his weight down, then he is exerting willpower. The sense of hunger is not easily observable, but in principle it could be observable, once we have worked out the mechanism of hunger.
It’s been recently in the news that there is a finite amount of willpower. Now imagine that many of the obese actually are exerting some willpower—someone who would feel content at 250 pounds may be constantly struggling against his hunger in order to maintain 240 pounds. Indeed many of the obese do struggle. So they are exerting willopower in that area—and therefore presumably have less willpower left for other areas of their lives. We should therefore observe that many of the obese have observably less willpower in various areas of their lives.
Some (though not all) people who are thin or normal do exert some willpower. Someone may, for example, notice that he is 10 pounds (of fat) above the normal weight for his age group, and deliberately keep himself hungry in order to lose that 10 pounds. But he is not necessarily exerting any more willpower than someone who is 220 pounds but who, if he stopped keeping himself hungry, would rise to 230 pounds.
None of this should be interpreted as making any statement about blame. As mentioned in other comments and in the main post, if our amount of willpower itself is something we are given and beyond our control, then we can hardly be blamed for not having enough of it.
Or maybe we can:
Blame is a tool to manipulate and ostracize (and not, I am suggesting here, a factual statement with truth conditions). If we blame someone for something, one of two things is likely to happen: they will change in a way that pleases us, or they will be socially distanced from us. It doesn’t really matter to us which they do—there are other fish in the sea. If people really can’t control their weight, then blaming the fat for their fatness will exclude the fat from our social circles, and so will keep the short lifespan and health problems associated with obesity away from us. It’s better to have longer-lived friends than to have shorter-lived friends, better to have healthier friends than to have sick friends, so it is a wise policy to blame the obese for their obesity, regardless of whether that is “fair”.
If blame can be said to have truth conditions, then those are something like, “enough people refrain from this behavior I am calling blameworthy that I can ostracize all who engage in this behavior and still have many friends”, or more precisely, “blaming people for behavior X will yield an optimal balance between quality and quantity of friends”. To really make this non-subjective, we can define “optimal” in terms of evolutionary fitness.
It is not willpower that prevents heterosexuals from having homosexual sex (or vice versa), it is not willpower that prevents classical music lovers from indulging in pop music (or vice versa), it is not willpower that prevents young athletes from lying around on the couch all day, and similarly in the typical case it may not be willpower that prevents thin and normal people from becoming fat. If that is so, then what distinguishes a fat person is not necessary a lack of willpower, but something else—such as a damaged sense of hunger which continues to send “I am hungry” messages when they should not be sent.
Even the overweight stop eating at some point. Suppose someone is 240 pounds. It is willpower that prevents him from being 250 pounds? Or is it that he stops being hungry at an earlier point than someone who is 250 pounds?
I think willpower in eating is best defined relative to a person’s sense of hunger. If a person stops eating despite still feeling hungry, and he does this in order to keep his weight down, then he is exerting willpower. The sense of hunger is not easily observable, but in principle it could be observable, once we have worked out the mechanism of hunger.
It’s been recently in the news that there is a finite amount of willpower. Now imagine that many of the obese actually are exerting some willpower—someone who would feel content at 250 pounds may be constantly struggling against his hunger in order to maintain 240 pounds. Indeed many of the obese do struggle. So they are exerting willopower in that area—and therefore presumably have less willpower left for other areas of their lives. We should therefore observe that many of the obese have observably less willpower in various areas of their lives.
Some (though not all) people who are thin or normal do exert some willpower. Someone may, for example, notice that he is 10 pounds (of fat) above the normal weight for his age group, and deliberately keep himself hungry in order to lose that 10 pounds. But he is not necessarily exerting any more willpower than someone who is 220 pounds but who, if he stopped keeping himself hungry, would rise to 230 pounds.
None of this should be interpreted as making any statement about blame. As mentioned in other comments and in the main post, if our amount of willpower itself is something we are given and beyond our control, then we can hardly be blamed for not having enough of it.
Or maybe we can:
Blame is a tool to manipulate and ostracize (and not, I am suggesting here, a factual statement with truth conditions). If we blame someone for something, one of two things is likely to happen: they will change in a way that pleases us, or they will be socially distanced from us. It doesn’t really matter to us which they do—there are other fish in the sea. If people really can’t control their weight, then blaming the fat for their fatness will exclude the fat from our social circles, and so will keep the short lifespan and health problems associated with obesity away from us. It’s better to have longer-lived friends than to have shorter-lived friends, better to have healthier friends than to have sick friends, so it is a wise policy to blame the obese for their obesity, regardless of whether that is “fair”.
If blame can be said to have truth conditions, then those are something like, “enough people refrain from this behavior I am calling blameworthy that I can ostracize all who engage in this behavior and still have many friends”, or more precisely, “blaming people for behavior X will yield an optimal balance between quality and quantity of friends”. To really make this non-subjective, we can define “optimal” in terms of evolutionary fitness.
Since the two are definitely and emphatically not mutually exclusive, that’s a pretty bad example. Otherwise, nice comment.
You’re right, the example was not a good one. My bad.