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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the emergence of a neuromolecular vision of the brain. This means a new scale at which the brain and nervous system was conceptualized, and a new way in which their activities were understood. At this molecular level, the structure and processes of the brain and central nervous system were made understandable as material processes of interaction among molecules in neurons and the synapses between them. These were conceived in terms of the biophysical, chemical, and electrical properties of their constituent parts. At this scale, in a profoundly reductionist approach, despite the recognition that there was much that could not yet be explained, there seemed nothing mysterious about the operations of the nervous system. Indeed, mental processes—cognition, emotion, volition—could be explained in entirely material ways, as the outcome of biological processes in the brain.

Ch. 3 moves on from the question of why responsibility matters to that of what we are responsible for. It asks what a political, rather than a metaphysical, account of responsibility demands in terms of its preconditions and assesses attributions of responsibility on the basis of claims about volition and affirmation. From there, it moves on to examine claims about responsibility, as these are made in the context of principles of equal opportunity.

This chapter provides some core data comparing the attitudes and experiences of permanent and temporary workers on a range of outcomes. Contrary to initial assumptions, it reveals that temporary workers report more positive attitudes and outcomes than permanent workers on most variables. The chapter seeks explanations for this result. First, it explores whether different work experiences of temporary and permanent workers can explain the differences in attitudes and well‐being but finds no evidence of mediation. Secondly, it explores variations within the temporary workforce based on objective characteristics such as contract type, duration and time left before the contract ends. It finds that differences between types of temporary worker based on these characteristics are small and less than those between all types of temporary worker and permanent workers, confirming that they can sensibly be treated as a single group when compared with permanent workers. The chapter reports subjective characteristics of temporary workers including the reasons why people undertake temporary work and shows that it is mainly used as a stepping stone or arises from the difficulty of finding a permanent job. These are more frequently cited than deliberately choosing temporary work. However the subjective characteristics, including reasons for undertaking temporary work and perceived employment prospects, have little impact in explaining variations in the well‐being of temporary workers.

This chapter applies the various interpretive tools developed in the previous chapters to the question of the relationship between Berkeley's metaphysics and occasionalism. It is widely believed that Berkeley's own views on human and divine agency imply a commitment to some form of occasionalism. This chapter makes plain just how deeply incompatible Berkeley's views and occasionalism are, and shows how difficult it is within Berkeley's metaphysics to raise the sort of problems that motivate occasionalism in the first place.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book and summarizes each of the chapters. The book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways psychologists deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will. Topics include the relationship between determinism and free will, the cognitive processes or mental structures that underlie volition, the role of consciousness in the exercise of free will, personal responsibility for actions, the possibility that free will is an illusion; how free will might emerge and function, even in a psyche that is run largely via unconscious processes; how we might explain the nearly universal belief in free will, and how a psychology of conscious free will be tested and demonstrated experimentally.

Volitional choice is assumed in morality, law, religion, business, and everyday social discourse. Free will can be understood as one of multiple factors influencing action, and thus accounting for a proportion of variance in human behavior. It interacts with the influences of genetics, environment, and experience. The volitional controllability of a behavior is measurable. The proportion of variance attributable to volition would be expected to vary across individuals, across behaviors, and for the same behavior within the same individual over time. The capacity for volitional control of behavior (self-regulation) emerges gradually over the course of development. Specific interventions have been developed and tested to strengthen volitional control of behavior. A comprehensive psychology of human nature should incorporate volition as one determinant of behavior, rather than conceptualizing it as antithetical to biological and environmental influences.

This chapter discusses semantic parameters relevant to the alignment systems of nine lesser-known languages of eastern Indonesia. The alignment is primarily determined by the proto-Agent feature ‘volition’ and the proto-Patient feature ‘undergoer of change of state’. The distinction between dynamic and static predicates plays only a limited role.

This chapter examines the semantic, morphosyntactic, and sociolinguistic properties of the three AVCs in Ancient Greek (5th–3rd c. BC). It illustrates the fact that the most frequent FC, “μέλλω + Infinitive” had the basic meaning of intention, which could give rise to prediction in specific contexts, through contextual implicatures. The analysis of μέλλω and of the other AVCs is based on an extended corpus, comprising texts of various registers.

The chapter emphasizes a level of analysis at which subdivisions are avoided until shown to be fundamental. It helps especially in investigations of short-term memory, selective attention, and the relationship between them. Fundamental, seemingly obvious concepts actually have been questioned in the literature and so are revisited. The chapter summarizes ways in which memory and attention appear to be closely interrelated. This is important because it includes observations that could be drawn only by aggregating across previous chapters. Directions for evolution of the theoretical framework are considered. The cognitive concepts are mapped onto brain structures. Moreover, both behavioral and brain research methods are challenged to make the best use of multiple levels of analysis. In this regard, even positing a homunculus, a portion of the mind that somehow carries out volition, is useful to divide human information processing into subcategories, allowing some of them to be better understood.

Actions are partially identical with bodily movements; they are fully identical only with the sequence, volitions-cause-bodily movement. Volitional causation of bodily movements is thus an essential feature of actions. What sort of mental state a volition is claimed to be is examined in nine successive steps. Why we have reason to think that volitions exist is given in two steps: first, that there are mental states of intention that are not reducible to beliefs or desires, either singly or in combination; and second, that among the hierarchy of intentions that guide rational action there will be an intention to do the simplest thing we know how to do, which intention will be a volition. A variety of scepticisms about volitions, many stemming from ordinary language philosophy, are also examined and rejected.

Central to human agency and thus to moral responsibility is the idea of human action. An earlier book (Act and Crime) defended a version of a causal theory of action according to which all human actions are in essence willed bodily movements and nothing else. This theory is defended against the extended secondary literature criticizing this theory.

This chapter is an examination of the details of Malebranche’s account of divine activity in his occasionalism, and in particular his notion of divine general volitions. Contrary to a reading first offered by Arnauld in his correspondence with Leibniz, according to which Malebranche’s God acts by way of volitions with general content (or laws), this chapter argues that Malebranche’s God acts constantly and ubiquitously in nature by way of volitions with particular contents, although these volitions are always in accordance with general laws of nature.

Some commentators, such as Leibniz and Steven Nadler, think that, for Malebranche, God must will each and every physical event as such. Others, such as Nicholas Jolley (and perhaps Arnauld), hold that Malebranchean divine volitions are conditional in form, so that God need not meddle directly in each event that occurs. This chapter settles the controversy. It emerges that Leibniz is indeed correct. And yet this does not mean that God is continuously active, constantly adjusting his will to new situations; instead, he can timelessly will an indefinitely long string of individual states of affairs. A corresponding difficulty arises when we try to see how Malebranche can claim that the divine laws are efficacious. This chapter argues that Malebranche offers two analyses of laws — a conditional analysis, whereby laws have the logical form of conditionals, and a summary analysis, whereby laws are nothing more than convenient ways of speaking about God's individual volitions. It is only in the latter sense that Malebranchean laws can be efficacious.