The Psychology of Freedom

This 1996 book provides an alternative theory of the will and of our capacity for decision-making.

Thomas Pink (Author)

9780521038225, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 July 2007

296 pages, 2 tables
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.6 cm, 0.445 kg

"...an original and interesting book. Pink...offers a comprehensive, unified theory of a number of phenomena. His work should promote inquiry into some central (and some neglected) issues concerning freedom, action, decision, and practical rationality." Randolph Clarke, The Philosophical Review

This 1996 book presents an alternative theory of the will - of our capacity for decision making. The book argues that taking a decision to act is something we do, and do freely - as much an action as the actions which our decisions explain - and that our freedom of action depends on this capacity for free decision-making. But decision-making is no ordinary action. Decisions to act also have a special executive function, that of ensuring the rationality of the further actions which they explain. This executive function makes decision-making an action importantly unlike any other, with its own distinctive rationality. Pink's highly persuasive study uses this theory of the will to provide accounts of freedom, action and rational choice. The author argues that, in a tradition that runs from Hobbes to Davidson and Frankfurt, Anglo-American philosophy has misrepresented the common-sense psychology of our freedom and action - a psychology which this book now presents and defends.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Agency and the will
2. Scepticism about second-order agency
3. Decision-making and freedom
4. The psychologising conception of freedom
5. Decision rationality and action rationality
6. Decision-making and teleology
7. The regress argument
8. In defence of the action model
9. The special-purpose agency of the will
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]