This volume is an edited collection of original papers on the theme of "Values, Rational Choice, and the Will." The editor is a Stanford-trained moral philosopher, and the organizer of a conference held on April 1-3, 2004. The conference succeeded in bringing together a wide range of essays that dealt with most of the central questions of moral philosophy today, in both normative ethics and meta-ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, and especially in moral psychology.

A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis offers a comprehensive, academic and detailed study of the works of Robert Zemeckis, whose films include successful productions such as the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-90), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000) and The Polar Express (2004), but also lesser known films such as I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), Used Cars (1980), and Allied (2015). Most of Zemeckis' major productions were not only successful when they were first released but continue to enjoy popularity-with critics and fans alike-even today. This volume investigates several distinct areas of Zemeckis' works and addresses the different approaches: the philosophical, the artistic, the socio-cultural, and the personal. The methodologies adopted by the contributors differ significantly from each other, thus offering the reader a variegated and compelling picture of Zemeckis' oeuvre, which includes nineteen films. Contrary to the few volumes published in the past on the subject, the chapters in this volume offer specific case studies that have been previously ignored (or only partially mentioned) by other scholars. A Critical Companion to Robert Zemeckis offers a great variety of interdisciplinary approaches to Zemeckis' films, illuminating, re-reading and/or interpreting for the first time the entire career of the director, from his first films to the most recent ones.

The concept of action that requires philosophical analysis is one that concerns behavior characteristically found in humans. In Action Reconceptualized: Human Agency and Its Sources, David K. Chan examines the sources of human agency that are proposed in causal theories of action-namely desire, intention, and trying-and distinguishes them from each other in terms of their roles in practical reasoning and motivation. He conceptualizes them in relation to each other in a way that is consistent and useful for answering a number of questions that are central to the philosophy of action. The action theory in this book addresses the need to understand human agency for its own sake, but it also serves another purpose. When the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe stressed the need to do philosophy of action before doing ethical theory, what she meant was that moral philosophers should first work out a proper account of the relationship between the inner states of a person and the actions that she performs. This book provides such an account, and makes the case that it is desire, rather than intention, that is the basis for the ethical evaluation of an agent. Action Reconceptualized will be of particular interest to students and scholars doing research in action theory and ethics, as well as to those working outside of philosophy in psychology and cognitive science.

This volume is an edited collection of original papers on the theme of "Values, Rational Choice, and the Will." The editor is a Stanford-trained moral philosopher, and the organizer of a conference held on April 1-3, 2004. The conference succeeded in bringing together a wide range of essays that dealt with most of the central questions of moral philosophy today, in both normative ethics and meta-ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, and especially in moral psychology.