The chapters from an international group of researchers and scholars in this book explore how our increasing knowledge of the brain can elucidate the concept of the will and whether or to what extent it is free. They also examine how brain science can clarify our normative judgments of moral and criminal responsibility without explaining them away. The book is distinctive in its interdisciplinary approach to free will, showing that we can gain a better understanding of it when philosophy, clinical neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and criminal law inform and are informed by each other in the study of human thought and behavior. The volume is also distinctive in that a number of the authors are both neuroscientists and philosophers, which gives them expertise in and a unique perspective from which to examine the normative aspects of free will and responsibility as well as the neurobiological underpinning of the mental capacities associated with them. Some of their insights into free will come from treating actual patients with mental disorders that impair the will. Many of the chapters are written by authors from overlapping or complementary disciplines, resulting in a book that is more richly textured than other works addressing these questions solely from the view of philosophy. Another prominent feature of the book is that many of the authors are at the forefront of research in psychology, clinical and forensic psychiatry, functional neurosurgery, and legal theory. All of this makes the volume a valuable source of information, analysis, and discussion of how brain function enables and how brain dysfunction disables the capacity for reasoning, decision-making, and action.

I thank my editors at Cambridge University Press, Hetty Marx and Rebecca Taylor, for supporting this project as well as for their guidance and excellent advice. I am also grateful to the three reviewers commissioned by Cambridge University Press for their constructive comments on the book proposal – Jonathan Lowe, Peter Clarke, and Steven Quartz. I regret that Professor Lowe, who died in January 2014, did not live to see this book. The following comments he made on the book concisely capture its aim: “Recent developments in neuroscience, drawing on findings from brain-imaging experiments and the like, have prompted exaggerated and philosophically naïve claims about the ‘illusory’ character of free will, and have been met with equally ill-conceived criticisms from some scientifically uninformed philosophers. The present volume promises to be a valuable corrective to such fruitless debates and a genuine meeting of minds.” Most of all, I am grateful to the authors for their contributions to the book. This project was made possible in part through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the editor and authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the John Templeton Foundation.