The Psychology of Freedom

This 1996 book provides an alternative theory of the will and of our capacity for decision-making.

This 1996 book considers our freedom of action, and what sort of mind, or psychology, that freedom requires. It argues that our freedom of action depends on our being able to decide freely which actions we shall perform. The book seeks to resolve a range of problems about the nature of both action and rationality.This 1996 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.