  Let us give a name to the assessment of his options contrary to which Joseph acts. Let us call his judgment that e is a better  thing to do all things considered Joseph’s better judgment.  (“Better judgment” does not mean “superior  judgment”; it simply means a judgment as to which option is  overall better.) Joseph, then, appears to have acted, freely and  intentionally, contrary to his better judgment. And this is precisely the phenomenon the philosophical tradition calls “weakness of   will.”[1]  Philosophers have been perplexed by or dubious about such action for  a very long   time.[2]  Indeed, Plato’s Socrates famously denied its possibility in the  Protagoras. “No one,” he declared, “who  either knows or believes that there is another possible course of  action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on  his present course” (Protagoras 358b–c). And  philosophers have been wrestling with the issue ever since. It is not surprising that weakness of will has such a long and distinguished  pedigree as a topic of philosophical discussion: it is both an  intrinsically interesting phenomenon and a topic rich in implications for our broader theories of action, practical reasoning, rationality, evaluative judgment, and the interrelations among these.