Willing the Good: Empirical Challenges to the Explanation of Human Behavior

Science increasingly deals with human behavior: biology, neuroscience, genetics, psychology, evolutionary theory, and ethology all bring new insights into our actions and uncover new facts about our agency. However, what is the philosophical significance of their findings? The answer to this question varies according to one's background philosophical views. On the one hand, the dominant empiricist view contends that the sciences can in principle tell us everything there is to know about human agency. On the other hand, there are other non-empiricist views - such as Kantian or Aristotelian perspectives - which hold that although science can contribute to our understanding of agency, agency itself cannot be reduced to mere scientific facts. This collection of original essays brings together a number of experts from different philosophical fields (history of philosophy, philosophy of action, ethics, and philosophy of science) to discuss how recent scientific developments about human behavior may be interpreted by, and may be relevant for, non-empiricist conceptions of agency. Contributors share the project of reconciling the scientific and the manifest images of the world in order to reach a stereoscopic vision of reality, with the conviction that philosophy is an attempt to establish coherence among our beliefs, while taking, at least prima facie, all the aspects of our experience at face value.
About the Author: Gabriele De Anna has been teaching Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Science at the University of Udine in Italy since 2001. He has received two PhDs in Philosophy: one from the University of Padua, Italy, and one from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He has also completed a Laurea degree (Padua) and Master of literature (St Andrews). He was Visiting Student at the University of Santa Barbara, USA; Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, USA; Marie Curie Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, England; and First Chair of Philosophy at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He has written over thirty articles in professional journals and collective volumes, and five monographs: Azione e Rappresentanza. Un problema metafisico del liberalismo contemporaneo (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2012); Causa, Forma, Rappresentazione. Una trattazione a partire da Tommaso d'Aquino (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2010); Persona e individuo: tre saggi su chi siamo (Milan: Bompiani, 2007; with G. Boniolo and U. Vincenti); Il pensiero filosofico e politico di Sebastiano De Apollonia. Un'introduzione (Udine: Forum, 2004); and Realismo metafisico e rappresentazione mentale. Un'indagine tra Tommaso d'Aquino e Hilary Putnam (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2001). He has edited six volumes, including Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; with G. Boniolo). He has received grants and awards from the British Council, the European Commission, the University of Padua, the University of St Andrews, the Regional Labour and Employment Agency for Friuli-Venezia Giulia Region (Italy), the University of California. He was member of Italian national funded research projects (PRIN) in the years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2008. He has given more than thirty talks at professional conferences and research seminars in Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, USA, and Croatia.