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You're Not Trying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2021

GEORGE SHER
GEORGE SHER*
Affiliation:
RICE UNIVERSITYgsher@rice.edu
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Abstract

At one point or another, most of us have been accused of not trying our hardest, and most of us have leveled similar accusations at others. The disputes that result are often intractable and raise difficult questions about effort, ability, and will. This essay addresses some of these questions by examining six representative cases in which the accusation is leveled. The questions discussed include (1) what trying one's hardest involves, and (2) the conditions under which complaints about lack of effort are true, and (3) how much their truth matters. One conclusion that emerges is that both the relevant form of effort and the impediments to making it can vary greatly, while another is that trying one's hardest is less important than trying as hard as one could reasonably be expected to try.

Keywords

effortattentionwillpowercontrolresponsibility
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 2021 , pp. 387 - 397
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

I have benefited from comments by Vida Yao and Wan Zhang. I am especially grateful to my wife Emily Fox Gordon for her very helpful suggestions; for more on Ben and Ruth and the others, see her novel (2009).

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