Will as intertemporal bargaining: Implications for rationality

Rationality has been understood as conducting yourself according to reason rather than passion. In modern times this endeavor has become synonymous with maximizing your expected goods, with the value of expected but delayed goods discounted exponentially. However, behavioral research has found a robust tendency for delayed goods to be discounted hyperbolically,. that is, for their value to be divided by their delay. This finding supplies a simple hypothesis about the origin of irrationality, but greatly complicates the problem of rationality, since it depicts a limited warfare relationship among interests within an individual. Recent research on the combining properties of hyperbolically discounted rewards supports the hypothesis that a person's will arises from a prisoner's-dilemma-like relationship among successive motivational states. This picoeconomic 'hypothesis provides a mechanism for both the strength and "freedom" of the will, and predicts pathologies of overcontrol that make strength of will something very different from pure rationality. This approach offers insights into current puzzles about criminal responsibility and the disease model of addiction.