There may be a difference between indolence and boredom, but I think that Hursthouse exaggerates this difference, especially on page 22.
Hursthouse describes indolence as a feeling that nothing is worth the effort, despite possibly being attractive, whereas she describes boredom as nothing even having an attraction.
Yet I wonder if anyone has truly felt a total lack of desire to do anything. For instance, a child might say that "he doesn't feel like going outside," not necessarily because he doesn't find anything attractive about going outside, but because he simply feels that the physical effort is not worth it. Many of the things we commonly describe as being the product of boredom are actually the product of indolence, which leads to the question: does a distinction between boredom and indolence really exist?
Human beings are creatures that often have desires independent of their upbringing, such as hunger, shelter, thirst, etc. Is it possible that any human, for any extended amount of time, could truly not have a desire for any of these things? Even the suicidal seem to often have a desire to avoid pain. What all of these desires signal is that humans always have an attraction, or want to do something, and the reason that they often do not is that they simply feel that the obstacles are not worth overcoming.
By Hursthouse's definition, only indolence, and not boredom, exists.
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I think there is definitely a clear distinction between indolence and boredom. We can even use Taylor’s own rhetoric of internal and external objects to show how different the cases are. Let’s say you wake up one day and have no desire to get out of bed. You don’t want to do your homework, you would rather lay around the house doing nothing all day. If you thought to yourself “It would be beneficial to me to do my homework because I would learn the material for class; however, it’s so hard and there is so much of it that I can’t possibly complete it so I won’t even bother,” you would be indolent. This would be entirely different than if you said to yourself “I don’t feel like doing my homework, I would rather watch television instead.” The difference is that you might not even think that the homework is out of your level of abilities, you simply can’t be bothered to spend the time getting through it.
To put it in the framework of internal and external objects, if you were being indolent about the situation you would be internalizing the problem. The homework is worth the effort that would be put into it, but you view yourself as unable to complete the task no matter how hard you try. People who are bored don’t even acknowledge whether or not it would be worth their time, they just don’t feel like bothering (even if they could accomplish it).
Taylor mentions herself that the bored are also likely to be indolent, but the indolent are not necessarily going to be bored. This should let you know that you are on the right track with your thoughts, but the distinction is critical for our discussion purposes.
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