Abstract

Edward Pols is no stranger to these pages; indeed, his three most recent articles in The Review of Metaphysics are all versions of chapters in this, his fourth book. Those of us who have followed his philosophical development closely will recognize that The Acts of our Being elaborates and clarifies--but does not presuppose knowledge of--Meditation on a Prisoner. His general aim with regard to human agency and human action is to show that, yes, things really are as they seem, i.e., that our common sense view that we ourselves originate our actions and are responsible for them, a view which more often than not is found to be contrary to scientific dogma, is in fact the correct view. His general strategy is to blaze a via media between the immediate prejudice which favors prima facie rational agency and the authoritative physiology which pretends to dispense with the concept of "agent." Realizing his task to be a tough one, Pols shrewdly substitutes the term "ontic responsibility," i.e., the state of being of such an ontological nature that accountability is appropriate and seemly, for the old bugaboo of a term "free will," thus perhaps facilitating a serious encounter with his more scientifically inclined readers. While acknowledging that reductionist science has been largely successful in shifting the everyday perception of human nature away from the ancient common sense view toward physicalist explanations and toward a broad faith in the eventual accomplishment of an exhaustive "perfected physiology," he takes great pains to demonstrate that it is not this newly popular scientific view, but the prima facie view, which is the philosophical ground of the entire legal structure, and hence, by extension, of social organization and civilization in general. Addressing the intelligent layperson rather than his professional colleague, Pols claims fundamentally that science's current project is to prove to us that we are actually something other than what we seem to ourselves to be. But science ought, instead of cancelling our prima facie knowledge of ourselves, to contribute to a fuller understanding of this prima facie knowledge.