Getting Hooked: Rationality and Addiction

The essays in this volume offer the most thorough and up-to-date discussion available of the relationship between addiction and rationality. This is the only book-length treatment of the subject and includes contributions from philosophers, psychiatrists, neurobiologists, sociologists, and economists. The volume offers an up-to-date exposition of the neurophysiology of addiction, a critical examination of the Becker theory of rational addiction, an argument for a visceral theory of addiction, a discussion of compulsive gambling as a form of addiction, several discussions of George Ainslie’s theory of hyperbolic discounting, analyses of social causes and policy implications, and an investigation of the problem of relapse.