The Psychology of Freedom

This 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.

• Provides an alternative angle on free will and the nature of human decision-making • Defends some of the positions of traditional scholasticism against Hobbes and successors such as Daniel Dennett and Bernard Williams • Written with great clarity, deeply thought out and highly persuasive

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.