Resolutions, salient reasons, and weakness of will

Abstract

Traditionally, weakness of will (WOW) has been identified with an agent acting contrary to her better judgment, or akrasia. Recent empirical findings, however, have led many to conclude that the folk concept of WOW is not amenable to necessary and sufficient conditions. To this end, it has been argued that WOW attributions point to a cluster concept (May and Holton in Philos Stud 157(3):341–360, 2012), a disjunctive account of WOW as either judgment or resolution violation (Mele in Philos Stud 150(3):391–404, 2010), and a two-tiered account including both failures to adhere to commitments as well as failures to commit (Doucet and Turri in Synthese 191(16):3935–3954, 2014). Contrary to these views, I argue that there is indeed an underlying unifying feature of the folk concept of WOW. In particular, I argue that WOW is a matter of violating one’s salient reasons for action. I develop and defend this account in three stages. First, I introduce the theory philosophically, by critiquing the traditional view, i.e. judgment violation, as well as its initial competitor, Holton’s (J Philos 96(5):241–262, 1999; Willing, wanting, waiting, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) view of resolution violation. I then turn to the empirical case for Salient Reasons Violation, arguing that the view best fits the data concerning folk attributions of WOW. Importantly, I argue that folk attributions unsurprisingly include violations of reasons that the attributor finds salient, even when the agent in the case may not. Finally, I turn to an explanatory account of Salient Reasons Violation, which moves beyond establishing the contours of our concept, by providing an explanation as to why the concept functions as it does.