Voluntary Action An Issue at the Interface of Nature and Culture

by Maasen, Sabine; Prinz, Wolfgang; Roth, Gerhard

• ISBN13: 9780198572282
• ISBN10: 019857228X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 psychologyand 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 brainactivation 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.

Table of Contents

Voluntary action: brains, minds, and sociality	3	(17)
Sabine Maasen
Wolfgang Prinz
Gerhard Roth
Section I Introduction---Between motivation and control: psychological accounts of voluntary action	17	(94)
Wolfgang Prinz
How do we know about our own actions?	21	(13)
Wolfgang Prinz
Acquisition and control of voluntary action	34	(15)
Bernhard Hommel
Voluntary action and cognitive control from a cognitive neuroscience perspective	49	(37)
Thomas Goschke
Voluntary action from the perspective of social-personality psychology	86	(25)
Ute C. Bayer
Melissa J. Ferguson
Peter M. Gollwitzer
Section II Introduction---Between cortex and the basal ganglia: neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action	111	(56)
Gerhard Roth
The interaction of cortex and basal ganglia in the control of voluntary actions	115	(18)
Gerhard Roth
How do we control action?	133	(20)
Rudiger J. Seitz
Self-generated actions	153	(14)
Marc Jeannerod
Section III Introduction---Between epiphenomenalism and rationality: philosophical accounts of voluntary action	167	(66)
Tillmann Vierkant
Mental causation: the supervenience argument and the proportionality constraint	172	(16)
Jurgen Schroder
The explanatory role of consciousness in action	188	(14)
Naomi Eilan
How voluntary are minimal actions?	202	(18)
Joelle Proust
Rational and irrational intentions: an argument for externalism	220	(13)
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl
Section IV Introduction---Between the normative and the symbolic: juridical and anthropological accounts of Voluntary Action	233	(70)
Sabine Maasen
First-person understanding of action in criminal law	238	(25)
Bjorn Burkhardt
Voluntary action and criminal responsibility	263	(18)
Klaus Gunther
Culture and human development in a theory of action beliefs	281	(22)
Charles W. Nuckolls
Section V Introduction---Questioning the multidisciplinary field	303	(58)
Sabine Maasen
A polytheistic conception of the sciences and the virtues of deep variety	307	(16)
Richard Shweder
A view from elsewhere: the emergence of consciousness in multidisciplinary discourse	323	(38)
Sabine Maasen
Author Index	361	(14)
Subject Index	375