  Let us commence our examination of contemporary discussions of this  issue in appropriately Socratic vein, with an account that gives  expression to and builds on many of the intuitions that lead us to be sceptical about reports like (3) above. For the moral philosopher  R. M. Hare—as for Socrates—it is impossible for a person to do one thing if he genuinely and in the fullest sense  holds that he ought instead to do something else. (If, that  is—to echo the earlier quote from Socrates—he  “believes that there is another possible course of action,  better than the one he is following.”) This certainly seems to  constitute a denial of the possibility of akratic or weak-willed  action. In Hare’s case it is a consequence of the general account of  the nature of evaluative judgments which he defends (Hare 1952;  see also Hare 1963).