  We must put this point about the irrationality of incontinence with  some care, however. For recall that an incontinent action must itself be intentional, that is, done for a reason. The weak-willed agent,  then, has a reason for doing b, and does b for that reason. What he lacks—and lacks by his own lights—is a  sufficient reason to do b, given all the  considerations that he takes to favor a. As Davidson puts  it, if we ask “what is the agent’s reason for doing  [b] when he believes it would be better, all things  considered, to do another thing, then the answer must be: for this,  the agent has no reason” (p. 42). And this is so even  though he does have a reason for doing b (p. 42,  n. 25). Because the agent has, by his own lights, no adequate  reason for doing b, he cannot make sense of his own action:  “he recognizes, in his own intentional behaviour, something  essentially surd” (p. 42). So akratic action, while  possible on Davidson’s account, is nonetheless necessarily  irrational; this is the sense in which it is a defective and not fully intelligible instance of agency, despite being a very real  phenomenon.