WHOLEHEARTEDNESS AND IDENTIFICATION. FRANKFURT'S PROPOSAL

In this paper I intend to discuss Harry Frankfurt's proposal of wholeheartedness and identification concerning an agent's way of making decisions. The text that I am going to both summarize and analyze is Frankfurt's article "Identification and Wholeheartedness", published in the volume Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (1987). The author uses concepts such as consciousness, reflexivity, first/high-order desires, decisive commitments, identification and wholeheartedness in order to construct a system which might explain our decision making. I believe that while his system is a very complex one, it still lacks, at least with regard to the mentioned concepts, some clarification concerning the concepts it introduces, clarification which may help us understand better how his proposal really works. My paper has three main sections: in the first section I present and analyze Frankfurt's proposal, in the second section I write down my personal perspective and in the third one I formulate the conclusions.