Voluntary Action: Brains, Minds, and Sociality

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Sabine Maasen (, Professor of Science Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland) Wolfgang Prinz (, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, Germany)

Voluntary Action

Brains, Minds, and Sociality

Sabine Maasen (, Professor of Science Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland), Wolfgang Prinz (, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, Germany), Gerhard Roth (, Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany)

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English

Oxford University Press
01 June 2003

Philosophy of mind; Cognitivism, cognitive theory; Physiological & neuro-psychology, biopsychology; Conscious & unconscious; Neurosciences

We all know what a voluntary action is - we all think we know when an action is voluntary, and when it is not. First, there has to be some wish or goal, then an action designed to fulfil that wish or attain that goal.

This standard view of voluntary action is prominent in both folk psychology and the professional sphere (e.g. the juridical) and guides a great deal of psychological and philosophical reasoning. But is it that simple though?

For example, research from the neurosciences has shown us that the brain activation required to perform the action can actually precede the brain activation representing our conscious desire to perform that action.

Only in retrospect do we come to attribute the action we performed to some desire or wish to perform the action.

This presents us with a problem - if our conscious awareness of an action follows its execution, then is it really a voluntary action?

The question guiding this book is: What is the explanatory role of voluntary action, and are there ways that we can reconcile our common-sense intuitions about voluntary actions with the findings from the sciences?

This is a debate that crosses the boundaries of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and social science.

This book brings together some of the leading thinkers from these disciplines to consider this deep and often puzzling topic.

The result is a fascinating and stimulating debate that will challenge our fundamental assumptions about our sense of free-will.

Edited by: Sabine Maasen ( Professor of Science Studies University of Basel Switzerland), Wolfgang Prinz (, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, Germany), Gerhard Roth (, Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 248mm, Width: 174mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 745g
ISBN: 9780198572282
ISBN 10: 019857228X
Pages: 390
Publication Date: 01 June 2003
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Voluntary action: brains, minds, and sociality Section I: Between motivation and control: psychological accounts of voluntary action 1: How do we know about our own actions? 2: Acquisition and control of voluntary action 3: Voluntary action and cognitive control from a cognitive neuroscience perspective 4: Voluntary action from the perspective of social-personality psychology Section II: Between cortex and the basal ganglia: neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action 5: The interaction of cortex and basal ganglia in the control of voluntary actions 6: How do we control action? 7: Self-generated actions Section III: Between epiphenomenalism and rationality: philosophical accounts of voluntary action 8: Mental causation: the supervenience argument and the proportionality constraint 9: The explanatory role of consciousness in action 10: How voluntary are minimal actions 11: Rational and irrational intentions: an argument for externalism Section IV: Between the normative and the symbolic: juridicial and anthropological accounts of Voluntary Action 12: First-person understanding of action in criminal law 13: Voluntary action and criminal responsibility 14: Culture and human development in a theory of action beliefs Section V: Questioning the multidisciplinary field 15: A polytheistic conception of the sciences and the virtues of deep variety 16: A view from elsewhere: the emergence of consciousness in multidisciplinary discourse