The judgment of a weak will (akrasia, Descartes, 'Meditations')

In trying to explain the possibility of akrasia (weakness of will), it seem s plausible to deny that there is a conceptual connection between motivatio n (what one wants) and evaluation (what one judges to be good); akrasia occ urs when the agent is (most) motivated to do something that she does not ju dge to be good (all things considered). However, it is hard to see how such accounts could respect our intuition that the akratic agent acts freely, o r that there is a difference between akrasia and compulsion. It is also har d to see how such accounts could be extended to the realm of theoretical re ason, but this is generally not taken to be a problem, because it is genera lly assumed that there is no similar phenomenon in the realm of theoretical reason. This paper argues that there is such a thing as theoretical akrasi a, and that we can find a characterization of this phenomenon in Descartes' s Meditations. Drawing on certain passages in the Meditations, we can const ruct an account of theoretical akrasia; this account can then be adapted to resolve the original problem of akrasia in the realm of practical reason. The account asserts that there is a conceptual connection between motivatio n and evaluation in free action, it also enables us to show how the akratic agent is still acting freely when he does something that he does not judge to be the best all things considered.