Abstract

Human folly, it seems, traces not only to ignorance and impulsiveness but also to the power of wishes that the erring agent acknowledges as unfit to motivate him. The possibility of genuinely perverse preference can be either denied or explained. To explain it, sense must be made of how a person’s understanding of the choices before him could fail to decide his preference—how what convinces could fail to persuade. The question is how the influence a given consideration has over a person’s choice can be other than a function of the beliefs he holds about its merits, so that as between competing considerations the one esteemed best doesn’t win, despite continuing to be esteemed best.