Don Ross

Harold Kincaid

David Spurrett

G. Lynn Stephens

Recent scientific findings about human decision making would seem to threaten thetraditional concept of the individual conscious will. The will is threatened from "below"by the discovery that our apparently spontaneous actions are actually controlled and initiated frombelow the level of our conscious awareness, and from "above" by the recognition that weadapt our actions according to social dynamics of which we are seldom aware. In DistributedCognition and the Will, leading philosophers and behavioral scientists consider how much,if anything, of the traditional concept of the individual conscious will survives these discoveries,and they assess the implications for our sense of freedom and responsibility. The contributors alltake science seriously, and they are inspired by the idea that apparent threats to the cogency ofthe idea of will might instead become the basis of its reemergence as a scientific subject. Theyconsider macro-scale issues of society and culture, the micro-scale dynamics of the mind/brain, andconnections between macro-scale and micro-scale phenomena in the self-guidance and self-regulationof personal behavior. Contributors: George Ainslie, Wayne Christensen, Andy Clark,Paul Sheldon Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, Lawrence A. Lengbeyer, Dan Lloyd, Philip Pettit, Don Ross,Tamler Sommers, Betsy Sparrow, Mariam Thalos, Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Daniel M. Wegner, Tadeusz W.ZawidzkiDon Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Finance, Economics, and QuantitativeMethods at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Professor of Economics at the University ofCape Town, South Africa. David Spurrett is Professor of Philosophy at the Howard College Campus ofthe University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Harold Kincaid is Professor and Chair of theDepartment of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham. G. Lynn Stephens is Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Alabama at Birmingham.

Individual Volition and Social Context

Distributed Cognition and the Will

John Collier

James Ladyman

Every Thing Must Go argues that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science. In addition to showing how recent metaphysics has drifted away from connection with all other serious scholarly inquiry as a result of not heeding this restriction, they demonstrate how to build a metaphysics compatible with current fundamental physics ('ontic structural realism'), which, when combined with their metaphysics of the special sciences ('rainforest realism'), can be used to unify physics with the other sciences without reducing these sciences to physics itself. Taking science metaphysically seriously, Ladyman and Ross argue, means that metaphysicians must abandon the picture of the world as composed of self-subsistent individual objects, and the paradigm of causation as the collision of such objects. Every Thing Must Go also assesses the role of information theory and complex systems theory in attempts to explain the relationship between the special sciences and physics, treading a middle road between the grand synthesis of thermodynamics and information, and eliminativism about information. The consequences of the author's metaphysical theory for central issues in the philosophy of science are explored, including the implications for the realism vs. empiricism debate, the role of causation in scientific explanations, the nature of causation and laws, the status of abstract and virtual objects, and the objective reality of natural kinds.

Metaphysics Naturalized

Every Thing Must Go

Leading addiction researchers survey the latest findings in addiction science,countering the simplistic cultural stereotypes of the addict.

David Spurrett

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