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The Vice of Procrastination
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Abstract
My aim in this chapter is to understand more precisely what kind of irrationality is involved in procrastination. I will argue that procrastination is one of the corresponding vices of an overlooked virtue, which I will call “practical judgment”. In the fi rst section, I provide the background model I will employ in my account of procrastination, the Policy as Action Model (PAM). Relying on this model, in the second section, I characterize a form of procrastination that will play a central role in my account of “long-term procrastination.” The third section defi nes the instrumental virtue of practical judgment; I argue there that procrastination is the vice of defi ciency that corresponds to this virtue. The fourth section extends this account of procrastination to cases that do not fall under the heading of long-term procrastination. Finally, the fi fth section argues for an important consequence of this view: procrastination so understood is a failure of instrumental rationality that can be so characterized without assuming the correctness of any further substantive norms of rationality. If this argument succeeds, it constitutes an important objection to Christine Korsgaard’s claim that a purely instrumental conception of rationality is incoherent.