George Ainslie embraces the traditional view that willpower is the psychological function that resists temptations, such as impulses and addictions. This view relies on a confrontation between positive and negative behaviors or actions, with willpower dragging the individual away from negative behaviors. Thus, willpower is viewed as persistence and focusing of attention to beneficial behaviors against distraction from harmful behaviors. But semantics left aside and regarding involved mechanisms, there is nothing structural or syntactic that makes persistence to positive behaviors different from persistence to negative ones. Even more disturbing appears the fact that, unlike momentary impulse, addiction is a form of persistence as well. Additionally, we can imagine many otherwise noble and, in principle, benign behaviors that we can call addictions, if we dare: addiction to reading, to playing music, to socializing, and so on. Willpower is, therefore, at its root an instantiation of the generic ability of an individual to persist despite opposites, as is addiction. The timeline of the presence of opposites is in reality irrelevant, whether momentary (e.g., distraction), periodic (e.g., interference), constant (e.g., a static external environment), or irregular or anything else.

Within this broader dialectic perspective, a large set of possible actions and behaviors may interact, compete, and give rise in a bottom-up manner to a range of emergent phenomena such as routines, intermittent behaviors, oscillatory or hesitant patterns, persistent habits, and so on. This is then the basis of complex self-organization because each behavioral candidate struggles for excellence, often to the detriment of others. Self-organization is well-established at the neurocomputational level (Cisek & Kalaska, Reference Cisek and Kalaska2010; Doya, Reference Doya2008; Kelso, Reference Kelso1995; Prescott, Bryson, & Seth, Reference Prescott, Bryson and Seth2007) but here we abstract it at the subsymbolic level (Hurley, Reference Hurley2007) (and even a dual system counts; Berridge, Reference Berridge2009), loosely in a neo-behaviorist ecological view (Ross, Sharp, Vuchinich, & Spurrett, Reference Ross, Sharp, Vuchinich and Spurrett2008). We also use the term behavioral candidate as an umbrella term to regroup all motivational and/or emotional components that participate in behavioral expression and development. Where do these candidates come from? Some may be innate and intrinsic, such as some urges, incentives, and desires. Some others may be socially or culturally imitated, taught, or learnt, such as ambitions and morals. Finally, there are contingencies of all sorts. A richer environment presents to the individual more candidates and thus more chances for internalization or for conflict, selecting or rejecting in passing some of the intrinsic or social motivations and shaping the relevant rewards. It is no surprise that more willpower is necessary in our modern urban environment that is both overcrowded with stimuli and extremely as well as irreversibly fast-changing.

Back to the traditional view. Willpower is tacitly situated at a higher level than the temptations that need to be controlled. This is right and fortunate and no different than in the self-organizational view. In reality, the distributed interaction between behaviors, desires, drives, and the like depends on a set of organizational parameters, such as rates (e.g., rates of desire decay), thresholds (e.g., switching thresholds between preferences), and delays (e.g., abandonment period for unsuccessful habits). These parameters are largely independent of the behavioral components involved but not unrelated with one another. Rather they show systematicities and internal consistency. This is what corresponds to a character or personality profile that constrains and channels activity without fully predicting future behavior. For example, consistently short reaction delays to a larger range of stimuli are often correlated with anxiety and are not pathological per se. Despite carrying an initial exploratory advantage in times of social stress when innovations are necessary, such an individual is expected to need more willpower to resist distractions in regular times, unlike a calm and diffident conformist.

Moreover, it is imaginable that some intrinsic or developed urges are not about doing anything in the real world but are indeed about spying, interfering with and controlling other internal desires, therefore meta-urges. For example, one may take personal intrinsic pride, thus a form of reward, in modulating expression of anger and even anger itself. Any behavioral component in the system may have multiple such internal dependencies and influences, sometimes amplifying one another, sometimes canceling out each other. It is reasonable to assume that all of the above personality dimensions are continuously shaped in the joint external/internal environment and co-adapt and develop accordingly. Pertinent questions about such behavioral development are predominantly whether a higher-order urge can develop de novo and whether an abstract urge can develop from concrete ones (it is less demanding to be able to suppress something than to be able to suppress anything). We can be fairly confident in answering positively to both questions because these phenomena pertain to various forms of learning (instrumental, generalization, and so on). This also answers positively another emerging question, whether higher-level monitoring and controlling urges can be learnt through adequate stimulation. Positive functions such as suppression and resolve are possible within this configuration, but they are not the only ones. For example, behavioral replacement in a rich or merely different environment is also a possibility. This can be gesturally homomorphic, such as vaping instead of smoking, or arbitrary behavioral replacement, such as painting instead of smoking. Negative phenomena are also possible, such as obsession when no replacement or suppression works.

Depending on the nexus of personal, social, cultural, and contextual factors present at the time, the behavioral trajectory may naturally veer toward or away from positive or negative attractors, that is, with minimal effort. Substantial and probably conscious effort might be necessary to revert to the other direction, whichever this is. It is perfectly possible to abandon effortlessly a malignant habit, for example, thanks to the appearance of a significant other, and to have a hard time sticking to a desired creative behavior, for example, because of social constraints. The conscious nature of some of these activities is reflected in the perceived effort it takes to engage in them, itself also an outcome of self-organization.

What appear ultimately as powers or weaknesses are emergent phenomena in a self-organized motivational/emotional system that feeds itself on the wealth and the contingencies of complex internal and external interactions and that is in constant motion. Our battles are lifelong.