Failures of rationality and self-knowledge in addiction

The focus of this chapter is the account of akrasia in alcoholism suggested by the Alcoholics Anonymous literature. The chapter begins by sketching out this account of akrasia. It then goes on to raise a number of questions about this account. It attempts to resolve these questions in terms of the idea that alcoholic relapse involves a dis- order of mental state. Various features of alcoholic action and thought in relapse are traced to characteristic features of this state. The chapter develops the idea that such states as “obsession with alcohol” are malformed varieties of the normal condition of wakefulness, and that aspects of the disorder involved in alcoholism can be explained in terms of this relation