Two senses of "I"

Consider the sentence: "I sweat."

Who is this I that I refer to? Do I choose to sweat? No. I sweat involuntarily. And yet it's perfectly natural to say "I sweat" or "I digested my food" or "I was breathing hard after the run." But I did not do these things because of a choice I made, but because of bodily processes. So we use "I" to refer to something that does not choose. In fact, I can sweat, digest food, and breathe even while unconscious. So we can use "I" to refer to something that is unconscious.

 

Yet we also use "I" to refer to that which consciously experiences and chooses.

 

Our bodies are so strongly associated with us that we use "I" and "You" statements to refer to them. 

 

I don't sweat, my body does. I don't digest food, my body does. I don't breathe, my body does. 

 

Who is this "I" that doesn't do these things? It is the I of self, mind, soul, consciousness, subjectivity, choice, experience. So we have two senses of I, an embodied sense and an unembodied sense. There are three possible options:

 

The essential I is the embodied sense.

 

The essential I is the unembodied sense. 

 

The essential I is a whole made up of both the embodied and unembodied senses.

 

Another option is that there is no essential I, as the self is empty or an illusion or non-existent. But I take that kind of view to be self-evidently false.

 

I go for option 2: the essential I is the unembodied I that experiences and chooses. All embodied "I" statements can be paraphrased as "my body" statements.

 

One reason why I go for this option is because it seems to me that one of the most essential aspects of what it means to be me involves the pain and happiness I experience, especially the pain. Jordan Peterson once said that nothing is more real than pain.

 

My body might facilitate the experience of pain, but my body is never in pain. I am the one who has to be in pain. Whatever that thing is that is in pain, that first-person, subjective, self-aware, singular, unified, thinking, feeling, remembering, choosing, introspecting, metacognizing, experiencing thing, that is the soul, the self, the mind, the person, and that is what I am.

 

We can make distinctions between these terms. Perhaps person refers strictly to the essential property of being a particular subject, while mind refers to both the personhood as well as the non-essential mental properties associated with that particular person, including mental properties like memory and subconsciousness.

 

"Haecceity" refers to the suchness of something, or the particularity of it. My haecceity is that which differentiates me from things that are not me. So to make sense of my haecceity, we first need to make sense of my essence. What does it mean to be me? It means to be a very particular subject. And so the suchness of one subject (person) is what differentiates the suchness of another subject (person). And so when it comes to persons, the essence and the haecceity are the same, but both answer different questions, with the first answering the question of what it means to be that thing, and the second answering the question of what it is that differentiates this thing from other things.

 

Essence and haecceity usually do not overlap. For example, the essence of my vacuum cleaner probably involves its function (both actual and modal -- a broken vacuum is still a vacuum) and history. Maybe its appearance as well. But there are many other properties associated with my vacuum, like its age, size, location, and so forth. These properties help distinguish it from other objects. Together, these differentiating properties form the haecceity of the vacuum. So a haecceity is a property or bundle of properties that differentiates one object from another.

 

Question: negative space properties. Is differentness between two things a property? It can't be a universal because a particular differentness might lack multiple realizability. But it's not a property, as it's the negative space between two properties. It's a lack of two properties, but shaped by the two properties. So what is differentness exactly?

RF Response and my reply

In the following post I left a comment reacting to William Lane Craig's thoughts on the problem of evil: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/03/react-william-lane-craig-on-problem-of.html

An RF admin left the following response:

We can grant per hypothesis that there can be no morally sufficient reasons for God to actualize the conditions in your thought experiment (max suffering, max sufferers, max duration). That merely shows that God would not actualize such conditions. And, according to both Christianity and everyday experience, the actual world does not have such conditions. There could have been greater degrees of suffering in the world. There could have been more sufferers in the world. And there could have been a longer duration of suffering in the world.

In your last paragraph, you abandon the thought experiment by limiting the scope to max suffering. But then it's unclear whether God could have a morally sufficient reason for actualizing a max duration of max suffering of fewer than the max number of people, or a limited duration of max suffering of fewer than the max number of people. Perhaps there is a moral infraction so great that it merits such suffering, say, disobeying God himself or intentionally drawing others away from him.

You claim that the greatest good that could come from max suffering would be deliverance from or prevention of max suffering. However, this is readily answered by a free will defense. For those who freely disobey God and reject his forgiveness, max suffering just is the good of divine justice. God cannot make people freely choose things because that's a logically incoherent state of affairs. This also entails that the greatest possible good is not outside our ken, even though we can reject it and bring on ourselves max suffering. So, if God decides to create free creatures, then the evil choices of those creatures plausibly entail that they are responsible for their own max suffering, not God. So long as this is even logically possible, then max suffering and the existence of God are not logically incompatible. - RF Admin

I left the following reply (with slight changes to formatting, and added comments in brackets):

I do not "abandon" my thought experiment, but I identify the relevant feature of the nightmare world that proves the God of the nightmare world unloving to be maximal suffering. The number of sufferers and the duration of suffering is irrelevant, because if the suffering of the sufferers is low enough, and if the low-enough suffering appropriately grounds greater goods (in magnitude or order), then the suffering can be justified. It's the max suffering that's causing the problem, because max suffering cannot possibly ground a good greater in magnitude or order. (We can think of orders of goods and evils in terms of "salience", and we can think of salience in terms of the most relevant moral interest of a creature. More on that below.)

"For those who freely disobey God and reject his forgiveness, max suffering just is the good of divine justice."

I think this is the hopeless corner the theist is backed into. They have to say that justice is more important than people. I hope that the Christian, ever sensitive to the importance of love, immediately recognizes that it's people who are more important than justice.

Josh Rasmussen has given the following thought experiment (I don't have a citation; it's in a YouTube interview): Would I allow my children to play in the front yard if I knew there was some chance they would fall into a bottomless pit forever? No, I would not. That would be profoundly unloving.

So too would a loving God never give us freedom if that meant running the chance of our freedom leading to our maximal suffering. Our freedom is not as valuable to us as our freedom from maximal suffering. This makes perfect sense. What possibly could be our greatest moral interest if not for freedom from maximal conscious suffering? [Or: What could possibly be of greater moral urgency than freedom from maximal conscious suffering?]

Josh Rasmussen and his wife Rachel wrote the book When Heaven Invades Hell. There they defend the view that justice serves people; people do not serve justice. And isn't this the spirit of what Jesus was saying when Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath?

And so to say that goodness ultimately finds its foundation in justice is to say something deeply false. We must ground goodness in persons -- in conscious experience. If I'm not mistaken, Craig says goodness is basic and cannot be analyzed. I think that's mistaken. We can analyze goodness in terms of direct conscious awareness. I'm currently reading a book that roughly defends my views: The Feeling of Value by Sharon Rawlette.

If we grant this analysis of goodness (and I admit that this is a big thing to grant; it's a theory that must be defended like any other), then it does logically follow that the most salient goods, the goods of greatest moral interest and urgency for conscious beings, are conscious goods. And God's justice is not a conscious good. So it's not logically possible, in my view, for God and max suffering to be compatible. [I could have said: therefore, it's not possible for the good of justice to be as salient as the good of deliverance from maximal suffering.]

[I could also have asked the following question to promote intuitions: God's justice is good. Good for whom? Good in what way?]

Elsewhere, I argue that free will is not possible either. But that's a massive debate in its own right. For our purposes here, all we need to say is that free will, whatever it is, cannot possibly be more valuable than freedom from maximal conscious suffering. Simply ask yourself: Would I rather be free with a chance of being tortured constantly for eternity, or determined and safe from such a bad fate? 

Christians seem to think the worst possible thing that could happen to a person is to lack free will (which I find funny because, on my analysis, we must and do lack free will anyway, and there are no good reasons to fear the idea that we lack free will, and in fact free will skepticism leads to a more beautiful, and more accurate, picture of the world. Bruce Waller defends this idea in his book Against Moral Responsibility). But we can easily imagine a fate worse than lacking free will: falling into a bottomless pit. And falling, and falling, and falling, with no chance of ever getting out.

React: William Lane Craig on the problem of evil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuBXmn7AO7s

I left the following comment on this video:

I argue there are cases where it is not possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons to allow certain kinds of evil. Take for instance the following thought experiment: God tortures an infinite number of people for an infinite amount of time. So you have max suffering, max sufferers, and max duration of suffering. I know Craig doesn't like actual infinities, so posit potential infinities instead. Still, you have max suffering, max sufferers, and max duration of suffering.

In this nightmare world, it is not possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons to allow for these evils, because the greatest possible good for a member of the nightmare world is to be saved from the nightmare world. No other good comes close. So it's impossible for a person to both be a member of the nightmare world and to enjoy some good greater than the good of being delivered from the nightmare world.

I argue that this generalizes across cases of max suffering. God can never allow max suffering, because God only allows those evils for which there are grounded and greater goods (greater either in magnitude or in kind or order, as there are lower and higher order goods and evils). But the greatest possible good (in magnitude or kind) grounded in max suffering is the deliverance from or prevention of max suffering. And just as max suffering is within our ken, so too is its deliverance within our ken. It's impossible for the greatest possible good in the case of max suffering to be outside our ken.

So all we need to ask is: Is there max suffering in the actual world? If there is, then this proves that there is no perfect God. Max suffering is suffering so bad that it makes death preferable to life for the sufferer. Clearly, there is max suffering in this world. But a perfect God is incompatible with this particular kind of suffering, even if a perfect God is compatible with, as I myself would argue, many other kinds of suffering.

Ambiguity of rationality in addiction behavior

As follow up to this post: https://benstowell.blogspot.com/2025/03/stream-of-consciousness-doxastic.html

I want to revisit an idea. I said that in theory a perfectly rational person is immune to addiction, because a perfectly rational person would be perfectly sensitive to reasons. The reasons to refrain from the addiction behavior would cause the perfectly rational person to be so bothered by engaging in the addiction behavior that this bothering would overpower the bother from the withdrawal symptoms, and so always successfully resist the urges generated by the addiction.

This would seem to mean that, technically, addiction always disparages the rationality of the person addicted. But this is not the case. If all a person's addiction says about them is that they are not perfectly rational, then effectively this says nothing because all humans are not perfectly rational. What we really want to know is whether a person's irrationality is a special cause of their addiction behavior.

There could be two addicts who have identical levels of rationality, and yet one engages in the addiction behavior far more than the other. How could this be? The answer is that susceptibility to addiction depends on one's genetics, brain structure (especially the "reward centers" of the brain), hormones, chemical balances, and so on. Alcoholism is famously strongly genetically correlated.

So if one person is in the throes of an addiction, it's ambiguous to what degree this disparages the addict's rationality. The addict might simply be very unfortunate to be attached to a body and brain that comes with the absolute perfect combination of genetic factors to render them highly susceptible to addiction to the point that even a highly rational person will have their sensitivity to reasons overruled by the pleasure/pain calculation caused by their addiction.

However, if the addict has a strong desire to overcome their addiction, and can express recognition of the reasons to refrain from the addiction behavior, then this is evidence that it’s not the case that this person’s irrationality is a special cause of their addiction behavior, and it's more of their unfortunate biological susceptibility that is driving the addiction behavior.

But if the addict shows no signs of recognition of the reasons to refrain from the addiction behavior, and even expresses a delight or approval of their behavior, or denies that they are addicted or denies any wrongness of the behavior, then this suggests it's more of the innate irrationality of the addict that is driving the behavior rather than the susceptibility of the addict.

This is a bit silly, because no one chooses to have the "innate irrationality" that drives engagement in addiction behavior anymore than anyone chooses to have the genetics that drives engagement in addiction behavior. So both addicts are equally blameless in their addiction. Of course, I don't believe in free will, so I believe that everyone is blameless anyway and is a mere victim of circumstance.

But victimhood comes in different forms, and it's useful to know what kind you are dealing with. A victim-to-genetics, or a rational addict, is someone who can be worked with and is more likely to overcome their addiction. A victim-to-irrationality (which also is to be a victim to genetics, as rationality is partially grounded in genetics, though also grounded in one's upbringing, social environment, access to education, etc.) is someone who is much harder to work with and is less likely to overcome their addiction.

So while it's true that there are no good reasons for judging addicts (or anyone for that matter), there are good reasons to view one addict as having different qualities than another, and that can affect different approaches to treatment. An irrational addict requires more medical-based treatments while a rational addict can be cured using therapy-based approaches.

React: William Lane Craig on Christianity and assurance of salvation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcoXaNy3QIQ

"This is a very common Christian experience, that persons who have come to know Christ and experienced His life-changing power have an assurance, deep down, that their sins are forgiven, that they have eternal life, that they are quote-unquote 'saved' and going to be with God in heaven for eternity. That doesn't mean they don't have doubts, but they do have this deep-seated fundamental assurance, and I think that that is borne by the witness of the Holy Spirit to you."

What on earth could this "deep-seated fundamental assurance" be if not certainty? How can you have this assurance and yet have doubts too?

Craig has claimed that the Christian can know Christianity to be true by the self-authenticating inner witness of the Holy Spirit. This immediately runs into the challenge of epistemic hypocrisy. The Christian would never accept that the Muslim or Mormon has a self-authenticating inner knowledge of the truth of their religion. So how can the Christian make such a claim for themselves without being a hypocrite?

Craig's answer:

"Now certainly, Mormons will speak of something similar, a burning of the bosom when the Book of Mormon is read, but I would say that whereas we do not have defeaters for the witness of the Holy Spirit, in the New Testament sense, we have overwhelming defeaters for the truth of Mormon belief. For anyone interested, read a book on Mormonism, its history, doctrine, and Joseph Smith -- I think that there is just no chance that Mormonism could be true."

But then it follows that not only should the Christian believe that there are no defeaters for Christianity, but that they should be certain that there are no defeaters for Christianity. But surely such certainty is irrational, as there are a host of potential defeaters for Christianity, from problems of evil, divine hiddenness, disturbing Bible passages, the lack of supernatural verification of Christian doctrines, and so on.

 

I would argue that these are real defeaters. But the point is it's not enough for a Christian to merely believe that there are no defeaters for Christianity, which is bad enough. For the Christian to have an assurance of salvation, and assurance that they are not committing epistemic hypocrisy when they reject the assurances of members of competing religions, then they must have certainty that all of the potential defeaters for Christian belief are really not defeaters after all.

 

But surely the defeaters for Christian belief are issues to be investigated, not decided beforehand. The Christian would never accept a Muslim or a Mormon having a similar certainty, prior to investigation, that all potential defeaters against their religion are not defeaters after all. So again, the Christian falls into hypocrisy.

React: Analytic Christian - "The Terrifying Truth About Moral Luck (You’re Not as Free as You Think!)"

I left the following comments on Jordan Hampton's new interview on free will. It's excellent! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW0TO8bG7mg 

Sometimes it's hard being a free will skeptic, because so few people take free will skepticism seriously. (Per the 2020 Philpapers survey, it's something like 77% of philosophers that believe in free will, and only 11% that deny it, with the rest undecided.) So it's nice to see some pressure against free will :)

Curious that Dr. Pendergraft denies 3 for reasons of resilience and austerity. It seems immediately arguable to me that denying 1 is better for those reasons. For resilience, we've already seen how as science has advanced, our human tendency to attribute agency where there is none is shown to mislead us. We attributed lightning strikes to gods, and seizures to demonic possession. Now we know better. So over time, more and more agency has been kicked out, with naturalistic mechanisms taking on the explanatory role. We've also advanced in our understanding in biology, psychology, and psychoanalysis. Human behavior has grown more and more explainable without need to appeal to free will. These are points Robert Sapolsky makes in his book Determined (at least something along these lines). Recently I discovered that BF Skinner denied free will exactly because he thought we can explain human behavior without appeal to it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeK8GNLylkc, skip to 3:00.) Denying free will is the most scientific and future-proof strategy, it seems to me.

On the side of austerity, that's simple: By positing the kind of control you need to be morally responsible, you run the risk of positing something that does not exist. The putative benefit to positing the kind of control needed for moral responsibility is to explain data, such as our moral intuitions, better than free will skepticism can. But I'm convinced that free will skepticism explains our moral intuitions better too.

Doxastic psychology and addiction

Doxastic psychology says we can explain human behavior, in part, through what humans believe. If someone believes that life is meaningless, then we can explain their depression-behavior (lack of motivation, excessive sleeping, inability to enjoy anything, etc.) by this belief.

One question for this idea is from addiction. If someone is addicted to smoking, and yet wants to quit, one option is to say that this person believes against their behavior but the addiction causes them to act contrary to their belief.

Another option is to say that their behavior is in line with their belief, because the addiction causes them to believe that smoking is all-things-considered worth it. If someone wishes they did not have the addiction, then their second-order belief is against their first-order belief. You can believe something but wish you didn't.

Hypocrisy is when you say one thing but do another, like telling your kids that you shouldn't smoke while being a smoker yourself. The smoker has an option: either I be consistent and say smoking is (at least in some cases, such as in my case) worth it, or be a hypocrite and say it's wrong. I'm morally obligated to say it's wrong (to protect my kids), so I'm morally obligated to be a hypocrite.

But is the smoker really a hypocrite here? They could believe that smoking is wrong, and the addiction causes the behavior against the belief. It's exactly because smoking causes you to act against what you know to be right that is one of the reasons why you shouldn't start.

And so belief in some cases does not help us predict or explain behavior. People can behave opposite their beliefs.

And yet, it sounds crazy that someone could perform a voluntary action, like smoking a cigarette, while at the same time not having some belief in the action. There is pleasure in the addictive act, and the pleasure explains the motive behind the act. But the agent has to believe that the act is in fact pleasurable to engage in it. People absolutely can and do have conflicted beliefs, but that doesn't mean one belief doesn't win out at the end of the day. I believe eating junk food is bad for you. I also believe it tastes good. Sometimes the "tastes good" belief is just strong enough to beat out the "is bad for you" belief. How can you tell which belief has won out? By the behavior.

So the smoker really is a hypocrite when they tell their kids not to smoke. You believe smoking is not worth it, hence warning your kids, and yet you believe it's worth it, hence your continued smoking.

But not so fast. The smoker does believe, if only barely, that smoking is worth it, hence the continued smoking. The parent warns their kids because the addiction causes the pleasure to rise to a level so strong that it's able to beat out, if only barely, the belief that you shouldn't smoke. Without the addiction, the irrational belief wouldn't be there, and the addiction behavior wouldn't be there either.

To have a second-order belief that runs against the first-order belief is to believe that the first-order belief is irrational, and yet cannot be shaken (by addiction, genetics, social conditioning, or what have you). Addiction is evil not because it causes you to behave against your first-order beliefs, but because it causes you to take on irrational first-order beliefs, such as the irrational belief that smoking is all-things-considered worth it. I know eating junk food is all-things-considered not worth it. Often I still eat it anyway because I hold an irrational belief, even if just for a moment, that it is worth it, caused by the sneaky chemicals in junk food. In the moment you are engaging in the addiction, your brain is saying "Yeah, this is worth it", even though you know it's not. This is why second-order beliefs (or second-order desires) can run against first-order beliefs (or first-order desires). (You could argue it's not the chemicals in junk food that causes the irrational belief that it's worth it, but our own akrasia, or weakness of will. Or it's just our own irrationality in general. But if that were true, then we wouldn't have a second-order desire that runs contrary to the first-order desire.)

So doxastic psychology is safe. When someone believes smoking is worth it, because of addiction, we can predict that this person will continue smoking. When someone believes smoking is worth it, and yet believes that this belief is irrational, then we can predict that they will warn others against smoking, or will try to quit. This person is not being hypocritical (hypocrisy is always wrong; there can never be a moral obligation to hypocrisy); when engaging in the addiction behavior, they are behaving according to their (irrational) first-order belief, and when giving their warning they are behaving according to their second-order belief.

This does place a limit on doxastic psychology: behavior reveals first-order beliefs, but not necessarily second-order beliefs. As Frankfurt argued (roughly), it's really the second-order beliefs (or desires) that reveal the moral qualities of the person.

If someone has a first-order desire to smoke, but a second-order desire to quit, then the second-order desire places pressure against the first-order desire. Eventually, this pressure may reach a critical mass where the irrationality of the addiction act is felt strongly enough by the agent to where the desire against it wins out, allowing them to break free from the addiction. But if someone has no such second-order desire, then there is no internal pressure against the behavior, and so the irrational behavior is more likely to be permanent. If the irrational belief were caused by addiction, that speaks less against the quality of the agent than if the irrational belief were caused by the agent's innate irrationality.

Whenever there is apparent hypocrisy, there might not be hypocrisy, but a mismatch between first- and second-order beliefs. The addict believes in the addiction act, but believes they shouldn't believe it.

But am I contradicting myself here? I'm saying that if a person truly believed against the addiction act, then they wouldn't engage in it. But if that's true, then wouldn't a person who truly believed against believing in the addiction act not believe in the addiction act? I said you can't act against belief, because act entails belief. But then how could someone believe against belief?

The addiction forces the irrational belief upon the addict. The act follows the belief. So the addiction indirectly forces the act. The act depends on belief(1) (first-order belief), and so the act entails belief(1). Belief(1) obviously entails belief(1), and in that sense you can't believe against belief. But belief(1) does not depend on belief(2) such that the former entails the latter. So you can believe(2) against belief(1). And you can act(2) against act(1), like warning someone to not smoke while smoking yourself.

First-order beliefs and second-order beliefs can come apart, exactly because of things like addiction. But addiction doesn't allow first-order and first-order beliefs to come apart, which is what believing(1) against an act would mean. So you can believe(2) against an act, but you can't believe(1) against an act.

It sounds like I'm saying there can be a clash of mixed-ordered beliefs, but not a clash of first-order beliefs. But then what is hypocrisy, or self-contradiction, if not a clash of first-order beliefs?

I'm not saying you can't have both belief and non-belief. Let's say someone believes that they should not phi. They phi. So they believe that they should not phi and that they should. Contradiction. But in the case of self-contradiction, there is no mismatch between first- and second-order beliefs. The hypocrite believes(1) that they should phi and not phi, and believes(2) that they should believe that they should phi and not phi. (Or at least doesn't believe that they should not believe that they should phi and not phi.)

Often, hypocrisy is not taken to just be self-contradiction. Rather, it's special pleading – when a person makes themselves an exception to a personal rule without good reason for doing so. Hypocrisy is not a failure to recognize contradiction in this case, but a failure to recognize that there is no relevant difference between your case and others' case. Though the contradiction reintroduces itself when the hypocrite would not accept the same special pleading from others. (Which then returns to a relevant difference case when the hypocrite doesn't see the special pleadings as the same. I guess this could go on forever.)

Other than addiction, I wonder if social conditioning could force irrational beliefs the way addiction can? Someone who is raised around extreme ableist language and attitudes might find themselves stuck with that way of looking at things, while believing that such attitudes are irrational.

Or someone raised in a very strict household is stuck with the belief that they should never cuss. But then later comes to the belief that this belief is irrational, and yet is still stuck with it.

Or someone who works a job that they hate might be forced by survival pressures to hold the belief that they ought to work the job, even though they believe that the belief that they ought to do the job is false. Actually, this example is a reverse, where the person desires(1) against the act of doing the job, but desires(2) to desire to do the job so that they would be less miserable (unless they approve of their hatred of the job). But hang on, how can someone do a job they don't believe in? Doesn't act entail belief? That's simple: they believe in the job for its extrinsic rewards, but they don't believe in the job per se.

Summary:

• Doxastic psychology says that because behavior is grounded in belief, we can psychoanalyze and understand someone's behavior in light of their beliefs.
• A challenge to doxastic psychology arises: there are cases, like addiction, where folks can hate their own behavior and believe against it, and yet find themselves falling into the behavior anyway. So behavior doesn't always entail belief, and so we cannot always explain someone's behavior in terms of what they believe. (Which, by the way, of course we cannot understand all human behavior in terms of belief. That would be a silly suggestion. Doxastic psychology is simply an additional tool in the psychoanalyst's toolbox.)
• Obsessive-compulsive behavior, hypocrisy, and self-contradiction are further candidates for when people behave in one way and either lack a belief in that behavior or even believe against it.
• But this challenge runs into its own challenge: how could it be possible for someone to will a voluntary action while simultaneously holding no belief in the action whatsoever? How could the action even be psychologically possible?
• Suggestion: Actions require belief. Some actions are conflicted, meaning that there are considerations pulling in opposite directions for the belief that grounds the action. When the agent acts, their action proves which belief won out in the end, even if it only just barely won out.
• Continuing the suggestion, the badness of addiction is found in, among other things, not the fact that it causes someone to act contrary to what they believe, but because it causes such pain in withdrawal, and such satisfaction in the addiction act, that it forces the person to believe, at least in the moment, that satisfying the addiction is worth it all-things-considered when engaging in the addiction behavior is decidedly not worth it. Therefore, addiction causes irrational beliefs. 
• An addict can recognize the irrationality of these beliefs caused by the addiction, leading to a higher order belief that they ought not believe what they do. The addict desires the object of their addiction, but desires to be rid of this desire. 
• This mismatch between first- and second-order desires (and beliefs) reveals a moral quality in some folks. The irrational behavior of the addict is grounded in the irrationality of the belief caused by the addiction and not caused by the irrationality of the addict per se. The fact that the addict can recognize the irrationality of their first-order beliefs goes a long way in 1) Showing that this person is sensitive to reasons, and 2) Generates internal reason-based pressure against the addiction behavior. This pressure shows potential for the individual to one day feel the pressure generated by this reason-sensitivity strongly enough to one day kick the habit.
• Contrast this with an addict whose second-order beliefs are in line with their first-order ones. This addict fails to display the same sensitivity to reasons, and fails to generate the same internal pressure against the irrational behavior, significantly reducing the chances of overcoming the addiction in the long term.
• But if you cannot act without believing in the act, then how could someone believe without believing in the belief? How could the belief be psychologically possible?
• The belief is psychologically possible for reasons mentioned: the satisfaction of the addiction act. The (reasons-sensitive) addict sees the reasons for abstaining from the addiction act, and sees how these reasons would win out if it weren't for the addiction causing the satisfaction from the addiction act to overpower the addict's sensitivity to reason.
• This irrationality is not subjective (the psychosomatic reasons are real) but objective (the reasons to abstain from the addiction act are real). You could say then that the irrationality is external, imposed by the addiction, and not internal, from the addict's innate capacities. In theory, the more rational someone is, the harder it is for their sensitivity to reasons to be defeated.
• So an addict genuinely believes that the addiction act is worth it, as otherwise engaging in the addiction behavior would not happen. And yet, the (reasons-sensitive) addict believes that the addiction behavior is not worth it (and will thereby warn against it). Is this self-contradiction, or hypocrisy?
• One option would be to say that this is a contradiction, and addiction causes the reasons-sensitive addict to self-contradict. But it's weird that reason-sensitivity would cause contradiction when it should do the opposite.
• Compare two addicts, one that is sensitive to reasons and one that is not. The one who is not does not contradict itself; its lower and higher order beliefs are in sync. The one who is does contradict themselves, because their rationality forces them to believe that the addiction behavior is not worth it, while the addiction behavior forces them to believe it is. So ironically, the more rational addict is the one that self-contradicts. This would suggest that there are cases where self-contradiction is more rational than not.
• Another option is to say that it's totally consistent to have a desire and yet to desire for yourself to not have that desire. You can believe P and yet wish you did not believe P, because you know P is objectively irrational, but subjectively rational because of addiction (i.e. addiction gives you reasons to engage in the addiction behavior. The irrationality of the addiction behavior is not grounded in the subjective irrationality of the behavior, but in the fact that the objective reasons are good reasons for abstaining from the behavior while the "it feels good" reasons are not good reasons for engaging in it, and are mere motivating reasons).
• But if one cannot act without belief and cannot believe without belief, then how is self-contradiction possible?
• Absolutely one can believe P and believe ~P, contradicting oneself. Because act entails belief, one could act, entailing belief in P, while internally holding ~P, generating the contradiction. The mistake is in thinking that acting entails a lack of counter-belief. I do not say this, only that acting entails the positive belief needed to ground the action.
• We might think of hypocrisy as different from simple self-contradiction, but an instance of special pleading where the hypocrite makes themselves an exception to a rule when there are no good reasons for doing so.