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This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision...

A profound rumination on the concept of freedom from the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm 'Sebastian Junger bears witness to a hard-won and an uncertain new world, framed in vital and brilliant prose: a true and honest accounting of everything that underlies the frantic performance of life’ Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: commu...

Beneath metaphysical problems there often lies a conflict between what we want to be true and what we believe to be true. Dr Nathan shows how these conflicts can be systematically thought through, and proposes their resolution as a general philospohical objective. he then studies in detail a set of interrelated oppositions about the freedom and the reality of the will. He shows how difficult it is to find a freedom either of decision or of action which is both an object of reflective desire and...

Manifest Activity presents and critically examines Thomas Reid's doctrines about the model of human power, the will, our capacities for purposeful conduct, and the place of our agency in the natural world. Reid is one of the most important philosophers of the 18th century, but hitherto under-appreciated; through the reconstruction of his arguments, many of which have never before been discussed, Gideon Yaffe demonstrates that Reid's simple prose and direct style belie the complexity of the views...

Die Autorin geht davon aus, dass ein Letztprinzip nur dann begrundet werden kann, wenn es die ontologische Differenz zwischen idealer und realer Seinssphare durch ontologische Relationen zu fundieren vermag. Durch die gewahlte Methodik, die den systematischen Aspekt der Problemstellung betont, wird sich herausstellen, dass das Prinzip der Freiheit die Anforderungen an ein derart strukturiertes Letztprinzip erfullen kann."

This text presents a discussion and an evaluation of Leibniz's contribution to the discussion of the problem of freedom and determinism with special reference to earlier contributions by both Aquinas and Molina. Leibniz clearly states that his solution is a synthesis of Aquinas' and Molina's views and yet Leibniz scholars often merely make a passing comment to Leibniz's views in relation to these two philosophers. This text aims to expose and discuss the specific details of these philosophers fr...

Reviewing Annette Baier's 1995 work Moral Prejudices in the London Review of Books, Richard Rorty predicted that her work would be read hundreds of years hence; Baier's subsequent work has borne out such expectations, and this new book further extends her reach. Here she goes beyond her earlier work on David Hume to reflect on a topic that links his philosophy to questions of immediate relevance-in particular, questions about what character is and how it shapes our lives. Ranging widely in Hume'...