Abstract
Socratic Skepticism of akrasia denies the existence of free and intentional action contrary to one's best judgment. The rationalistic assumption behind this idea is that we can reinterpret the central cases of akrasia as preceded by the preference reversal, or the change of best judgment which is caused by the temporal or physical proximity of the rewards, i.e., the immediate pleasure. I will show that the skeptic substitute for akrasia has exactly the same structure as what Pears calls “self-deceptive akrasia” and examine the scope of this approach to cover all the cases of akrasia, with a view to confirming the ontological possibility of genuine cases.
