Willing, Wanting, Waiting, by Richard Holton.

Abstract

Richard Holton is willing to tell you, he's wanting to tell you, he's waiting to tell you, why the hoary philosophical concept of the will is psychologically legitimate and the seemingly metaphorical notion of ‘will-power’ a real cognitive capacity. Against sceptics who find talk of the will occult or suppose that it must be reducible to more familiar psychological concepts, Holton's book is a wide-ranging and empirically informed defence of a capacity for choice that cannot be identified with practical judgement, belief, desire, or any combination thereof. The real interest of this claim lies not in its novelty but in the details of the account, and here Holton's development of the non-reductive view of the will is fresh and resourceful. The primary focus is on the role of the will in controlling future behaviour and thereby overcoming temporary shifts in evaluative judgement due to temptation and addiction. Holton argues that we accomplish this by forming special practical attitudes he calls ‘resolutions’, and that the correct account of what resolutions are, how we maintain them, and why it is rational to do so provides insight into the phenomena of weakness and strength of will, temptation, and the experience of freedom.