The project addresses a number of philosophical issues surrounding how to properly understand and evaluate the behavior of people with addictions. The central feature of addictive agency that gives rise to these problems is its ambivalent status as intentional action. On the one hand, the consumption actions performed by a person with addiction appear to be explicable in the usual terms for motivated behavior, involving beliefs, desires, intentions, and decision-making processes instrumentally aligned with the ends the person is pursuing. At the same time, it is a behavioral pattern with some features that clearly distance it from ordinary action, in that it is a behavior that is not fully under the control of the individual. In addiction behavioral control is impaired but also retained to some relevant degree. The actions of a person with addiction are thus located in a difficult to conceptualize middle ground between full voluntariness and total lack of it, which raises a number of conceptual difficulties that can be analyzed from a philosophical perspective. How can we make sense of the very idea of someone doing something intentionally and, at the same time, having diminished control over the actions they perform? Can a person be fully responsible for their actions under such conditions? And is a person in such conditions fully capable of making decisions about eventual treatments for their condition? Starting from such questions, the general objective of the present project is to illuminate, using the conceptual tools of philosophical analysis, three axes of problems linked to this ambivalence. The common thread that articulates the different aspects of the project is the proposal to understand the deterioration of behavioral control in terms of a decrease in sensitivity to reasons. The first axis of work focuses on theoretical problems about how to understand addictive behavior, integrating elements of philosophy of mind, philosophy of action and philosophy of psychiatry. The second and third axes of work address the implications of adopting the proposed view of addictive behavior on issues of ethical relevance, integrating elements from theories of moral responsibility and philosophical theories of autonomy.
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