WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SEX ADDICT AND SOMEONE GREEDY FOR SEX?

There seems to be a difference between those who are addicted to a certain substance or behaviour and those who indulge in it (perhaps to the same extent) but are not addicted. A common explanation of this difference is that the addicts can’t help themselves, or that they can’t control their behaviour, whilst the non-addicts could. For this reason it is often thought inappropriate to hold addicts (fully) responsible for their behaviour when they either consume the substance, or engage in the activity, to which they are addicted. However, clarifying what exactly it is that the addict can’t do on this account has proved problematic, and much recent philosophical work has tended to deny that addicts can’t control their behaviour (whilst allowing that they have other defects which might undermine their responsibility).

In this paper I will be focusing on sex addiction and looking at different conceptions of what we might mean when we say that a sex addict can’t control his behaviour. The reason for focusing on sex addiction is that sex is an activity which can be engaged in extensively by those who are not addicts, and where even non-addicts sometimes make the claim that they couldn’t help themselves. These features, I argue, create problems for some accounts of addiction which are not so obvious when we focus only on drug addiction (as most accounts do). I go on to argue that there is a very real sense in which many sex addicts can’t control their behaviour and that this does distinguish them from non-addicts. However, this sense is different from that which has formed the focus of previous philosophical work on addiction. This difference may have an effect on the extent to which we may want to excuse the addict of responsibility for his actions.