Addiction and Responsibility

Addictive behavior threatens not just the addict's happiness and health but also thewelfare and well-being of others. It represents a loss of self-control and a variety of othercognitive impairments and behavioral deficits. An addict may say, "I couldn't helpmyself." But questions arise: are we responsible for our addictions? And what responsibilitiesdo others have to help us? This volume offers a range of perspectives on addiction andresponsibility and how the two are bound together. Distinguished contributors--from theorists toclinicians, from neuroscientists and psychologists to philosophers and legal scholars--discuss thesequestions in essays using a variety of conceptual and investigative tools. Some contributors offermodels of addiction-related phenomena, including theories of incentive sensitization, ego-depletion,and pathological affect; others address such traditional philosophical questions as free will andagency, mind-body, and other minds. Two essays, written by scholars who were themselves addicts,attempt to integrate first-person phenomenological accounts with the third-person perspective of thesciences. Contributors distinguish among moral responsibility, legal responsibility, and the ethicalresponsibility of clinicians and researchers. Taken together, the essays offer a forceful argumentthat we cannot fully understand addiction if we do not also understand responsibility.

Jeffrey Poland teaches in the Department of History, Philosophy, and Social Science at Rhode Island School of Design and in the Science and Society Program at Brown University.