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There is a voluminous philosophical literature on akrasia that at least purports to be about weakness of will. Richard Holton has developed a view of the nature of weak-willed actions that, as he reports, departs from most of the literature on the subject. If his view is correct, much of what has been written about akrasia and akratic actions is not about weakness of will and weak-willed actions. This chapter argues that the author’s view of the nature of akratic actions in earlier work—a view that accommodates both core akratic actions and akratic actions of other kinds—fares considerably better in the sphere of weakness of will than Holton’s view does. The argument benefits from some studies of folk conceptions of weakness of will that employ techniques of experimental philosophy. The chapter’s aim is to clarify the nature of weak-willed actions.

This chapter investigates whether procrastination is a species of weakness of will. Procrastination resembles weakness of will: the procrastinating agent is not doing x even though he in some sense thinks he ought to be. However, the more precise characterizations of weakness of will that have been developed in the literature do not capture the full range of cases of procrastination. Is procrastination simply a variety of akrasia? No, because akrasia is a purely synchronic phenomenon, whereas procrastination is poor performance in the management of one’s agency over time. On a recent revisionist account from Holton and McIntyre, weakness of will centrally involves a failure to act on antecedently formed intentions. But this account, even though diachronic, cannot cover all cases of procrastination, either: weakness of will in this sense is exclusively a defect in plan implementation, whereas procrastination is sometimes constituted by defects in plan drafting and adoption.

The argument of the previous chapter suggests that, in general, people act in the way that they have best reason to act. This constitutes a tacit denial of the view that there is such a thing as intentional counterpreferential choice. The argument of this chapter makes this denial more plausible, by drawing out the philosophical implications of the phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting. The philosophical literature on weakness of will is marred by a failure to render explicit any assumptions that may be being made about individual time-preference. Incorporating an explicit discount rate resolves many of these issues, but also shows how many of the phenomena traditional classified as weakness of will can easily be given a rationalizing explanation, as temporary preference reversals.

Economists, psychologists, and philosophers have written extensively on the causes of procrastination. While their work helps us understand why people procrastinate, it does not explain how they can resist the urge to procrastinate. This chapter argues that this is a result of a refusal to acknowledge a faculty of choice, or a will, separate from preferences or desires, which can overwhelm their pull. Based on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as contemporary work in volitionism, this chapter applies to procrastination a Kantian-economic model of decision making that emphasizes strength of character and willpower, which can serve as alternatives to the coping strategies offered elsewhere in the literature.

This chapter explores similarities and differences between Kant’s ideas about moral virtue and various ideas associated with virtue ethics. It identifies some misconceptions of Kant’s ethics and highlights features that may be overlooked. As in the previous chapter, Kant’s distinctive understanding of virtue as moral strength is highlighted. Finally the chapter comments on the apparent differences between Kant’s theory and some views associated with “virtue ethics” regarding (A) the need for moral rules, (B) sensitivity to particular contexts, (C) morally good motivation, and (D) the standard for right action. Kant treats virtue as a kind of strength of the will to do what is right. Virtue is more than having good intentions, and we need to develop it over time. We have a duty to try to develop virtue, but we are also responsible if, lacking sufficient virtue, we do wrong through weakness of will. We have particular virtues insofar as our will to fulfill various specific duties is strong, but it is not the implications of Kant’s position for particular virtues (and vices) of character that is most interesting. Apart from that, Kant’s ideas raise questions about moral responsibility and strength and weakness of will that present special problems of understanding, even though (arguably) in some respects Kant’s ideas reflect familiar common sense views.

This chapter focuses on Humean accounts. It first examines Donald Davidson's distinctly Humean account of reasons for action in his paper ‘How is the Weakness of the Will Possible?’, and looks into his characterization of practical reasoning and weakness of will. It then investigates the possibility argued for by Jackson, Biglow, Dods, and Pargeter, that the akratic conflict is not what the folk theorists thought it was, and that the problem does not arise. However, the chapter argues that these alternative constructions of akrasia, with their explicitly reductive view of evaluation, do not succeed in capturing the phenomenon they set out to explain. The chapter concludes that the conceptual resources available to Humeans are too thin to enable them to sufficiently address the issue of justification to explain and distinguish the various failures of agency that are of main concern.

The “radical evil” of human nature is, in Kant's view, our enduring predisposition to deviate from the moral law. It comes in three degrees: frailty (moral weakness), impurity, and depravity (wickedness). We are evil in these ways by an act of free choice antecedent to moral experience, in the intelligible world. In this world we can make progress in combating radical evil by strengthening our moral resolve. Our being evil by nature does not preclude our having a good will, however. In Kant's view a good will is universal. It is our common “predisposition to personality”, our tendency to feel respect for the moral law, and the basis of our human dignity. Acting on that incentive gives an action “moral worth”.

Chrisoula Andreou says procrastination qua imprudent delay is modeled by Warren Quinn’s self-torturer, who supposedly has intransitive preferences that rank each indulgence in something that delays his global goals over working toward those goals and who finds it vague where best to stop indulging. His pair-wise choices to indulge result in his failing the goals, which he then regrets. This chapter argues, contra the money-pump argument, that it is not irrational to have or choose from intransitive preferences; so the agent’s delays are not imprudent, not instances of procrastination. Moreover, the self-torturer case is intelligible only if there is no vagueness and if the agent’s preferences are transitive. But then he would delay only from ordinary weakness of will. And when it is vague where best to stop indulging, rational agents would use symmetry-breaking techniques; so, again, any procrastination would be explained by standard weakness of will, not vagueness.

Most recent accounts of will power have tried to explain it as reducible to the operation of beliefs and desires. In opposition to such accounts, this essay argues for a distinct faculty of will power. Considerations from philosophy and from social psychology are used in support.

Akrasia is weakness of the will, where a person knows what choice is in his best interest, but lacks the strength of will to make it. The akrates might be in the grip of an overpowering passion; he might be an addict; he might be self-deceived about his strength of will; he might be a divided self, where a strong- and weak-willed person battle for control, or undergo a reversal of preferences in which a later self regrets choices made by a prior self. Finally, he might be a hyperbolic discounter who over-consumes in the present and doesn't save enough for the future. None of this makes a case for paternalism if the person might remove temptation from his path through self-binding strategies.

The possibility of akrasia or weakness of will, i.e., the phenomenon of agents acting against their best judgement or reasons, presents a problem for internalism. This chapter reviews and rejects a number of accounts of weakness of will by Donald Davidson, Christine Korsgaard, Alfred Mele, Gary Watson and others. It ends by providing an account weakness of will which is consistent with internalism, as acting against the best reasons that are dispositionally stored in the agent’s mind, but which fail to be causally operative by failing to become occurrent.

Kant's concept of incentives is the key to solving the problem of justification and explanation. The “incorporation” of incentives into the maxims that justify actions enables them also to explain actions. Incentives have both objective and subjective dimensions: they refer to objects of desire, and they are also subjective motive forces, with the power to explain actions. As psychological forces, incentives can be identified with “practical pleasures”. They can be either sense-based (stimuli) or intellect-based (motiva). The greater the practical pleasure the stronger the incentive, and so the stronger its action-explaining, motive force. Moral weakness of will is weakness in the intellect-based moral incentive, compared with sense-based inclination.

This chapter develops the account of weakness of will suggested in the preceding chapter by indicating some factors which could prevent dispositional reasons from receiving episodic mental representation. One such factor is a bias towards the perceived (or a bias towards the present, as Derek Parfit calls it), i.e., a tendency to have one’s attention glued to what one currently perceives. Another such factor is derived from David Hume’s principles of association of ideascalled the mechanism of spontaneous induction, which induces one to imagine that the future will be like what one has experienced.

A practical judgement is one which enjoys an internal, necessary relation to subsequent action or intention, and which can serve as a sufficient explanation of such action or intention. Does the phenomenon of weakness of will show that deliberation does not characteristically issue in such practical judgements? The author argues that the possibility of akrasia does not threaten the view that we make practical judgements, when the latter thesis is properly understood. Indeed, the author suggests that the alleged possibility of global akrasia actually supports the practical‐judgement model over what she considers its main rival, a kind of ‘Humean externalism’ about practical reason.