Mario Calderoni ranks next to his teacher Giovanni Vailati as an Italian "Peircean pragmatist." He was graduated in law from the University of Pisa in 1901, and later lectured on the theory of values at the universities of Bologna and Florence.

Calderoni engaged in analyses of human behavior. These began with the interpretation of voluntary acts, which he regarded as the only nonmetaphysical problem of free will. In everyday life we all possess as good a criterion as is necessary to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary acts. To find out whether an act is to be called voluntary or not, we must modify the circumstances in which it usually occurs. If it still occurs in any case, we call it "involuntary"; if not, we call it "voluntary." The difference rests on the "plasticity" of voluntary acts, on their liability to modification by certain influences. A...