Weakness of Will (Acracy): Contemporary Challenges around Meaning

In contemporary philosophical literature, acting against one's better (all things considered) judgment is referred to as akrasia as well as "weakness of will". But the possibility of such an action and the way one can explain this possibility, is debatable. However, the debate has gone further and the very definition of the term "weakness of will" appears to be questionable. Richard Holton, claimed that when we look at discussions on "weakness of will", we see something other than what is supposed to be. He continues that common sense takes "weakness of will" to be something other than acting against one's better judgment. According to Holton, people attribute "weakness of will" to over-readily revising a resolution and failure to act on one's intention. He argues that philosophical debate is on akrasia (acting against one's better judgment) rather than weakness of will and there is a misconception here. Since he declares something about common sense, his claim would be experimentally falsifiable. Alfred Mele tried to examine the Holton's claim using the methods of experimental philosophy. Finally, Mele found that neither Holton nor the philosophical literature is correct. He proposed a disjunctive model for the attribution of 'weakness of will'. Then Holton and May criticized Mele's model and proposed a new model based on various experiments. Since then there is an ongoing debate on this issue. In this article I try to make a critical review of this current debate and to examine why Holton made such a claim, what are the implications of claiming that? Finally I propose a Hybrid model which covers the findings of experiments and reserves the importance of classical problem of "weakness of will" (i.e. the explanation of such an action) as discussed by philosophers.