Download or read book Neurophilosophy of Free Will written by Henrik Walter and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-01-23 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilosophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning. Neuroscientists routinely investigate such classical philosophical topics as consciousness, thought, language, meaning, aesthetics, and death. According to Henrik Walter, philosophers should in turn embrace the wealth of research findings and ideas provided by neuroscience. In this book Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilosophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning. Walter's answer to whether there is free will is, It depends. The basic questions concerning free will are (1) whether we are able to choose other than we actually do, (2) whether our choices are made intelligibly, and (3) whether we are really the originators of our choices. According to Walter, freedom of will is an illusion if we mean by it that under identical conditions we would be able to do or decide otherwise, while simultaneously acting only for reasons and being the true originators of our actions. In place of this scientifically untenable strong version of free will, Walter offers what he calls natural autonomy—self-determination unaided by supernatural powers that could exist even in an entirely determined universe. Although natural autonomy can support neither our traditional concept of guilt nor certain cherished illusions about ourselves, it does not imply the abandonment of all concepts of responsibility. For we are not mere marionettes, with no influence over our thoughts or actions.
Download or read book A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will written by Peter Tse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-10 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an intellectually fierce defence of Libertarian Free Will seen from a neuroscientific and biological perspective. Tse argues that causation in living systems is dominated by non-linear goal-seeking automatic feedback loops and a continual criterial reparameterization of what will count as an adequate solution to goal fulfilment. For this reason, outcomes are neither determined nor random. That is, for each cycle, outcomes could have turned out differently than they actually did. Humans, he argues, have two kinds of libertarian free will. One type concerns the ability to choose freely and is shared with other highly developed animals. Second-order free will, in contrast, is uniquely human, and concerns envisioning a new self, then working toward the realization of that vision over a long period of time. As such, free will is understood to be centrally realized in acts of imagining and deliberation, whether free actions follow or not. A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will discusses these key philosophical issues considering the latest data and theories of neuroscience and will be of interest to academics, students, and anyone interested in the issue of Free Will.
Download or read book NEUROPHILOSOPHY OF LIBERTARIAN FREE WILL written by PROF PETER. TSE and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Libertarian Free Will written by David Palmer (Professor) and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of new essays on the libertarian position on free will and related issues that focuses specifically on the views of philosopher Robert Kane. Written by a distinguished group of philosophers, the essays range from various areas of philosophy including metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind.
Download or read book Mind Brain and Free Will written by Richard Swinburne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Swinburne presents a powerful case for substance dualism and libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental and physical events are distinct, and defends an account of agent causation in which the soul can act independently of bodily causes. We are responsible for our actions, and the findings of neuroscience cannot prove otherwise.
Download or read book Free Will written by Uri Maoz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is free will? Can it exist in a determined universe? How can we determine who, if anyone, possesses it? Philosophers have debated the extent of human free will for millennia. In recent decades neuroscientists have joined the fray with questions of their own. Which neural mechanisms could enable conscious control of action? What are intentional actions? Do contemporary developments in neuroscience rule out free will or, instead, illuminate how it works? Over the past few years, neuroscientists and philosophers have increasingly come to understand that both fields can make substantive contributions to the free-will debate, so working together is the best path forward to understanding whether, when, and how our choices might be free This book contains thirty bidirectional exchanges between neuroscientists and philosophers that focus on the most critical questions in the neurophilosophy of free will. It mimics a lively, interdisciplinary conference, where experts answer questions and follow-up questions from the other field, helping each discipline to understand how the other thinks and works. Each chapter is concise and accessible to non-experts-free from disciplinary jargon and highly technical details-but also employs thorough and up-to-date research from experts in the field. The resulting collection should be useful to anyone who wants to get up to speed on the most fundamental issues in the rising field of the neurophilosophy of free will. It will interest experts from philosophy or neuroscience who want to learn about the other discipline, students in courses on a host of related topics, and lay readers who are fascinated by these profound issues.
Download or read book The Neural Basis of Free Will written by Peter Tse and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
Download or read book Living without Free Will written by Derk Pereboom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-02-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people assume that, even though some degenerative or criminal behavior may be caused by influences beyond our control, ordinary human actions are not similarly generated, but rather are freely chosen, and we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for them. A less popular and more radical claim is that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform. It is this hard determinist stance that Derk Pereboom articulates in Living Without Free Will. Pereboom argues that our best scientific theories have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform, and that because of this, we are not morally responsible for any of them. He seeks to defend the view that morality, meaning and value remain intact even if we are not morally responsible, and furthermore, that adopting this perspective would provide significant benefit for our lives.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Free Will written by Robert Kane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will is intended to be a sourcebook and guide to current work on free will and related subjects. Its focus is on writings of the past forty years, in which there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional issues about the freedom of the will in the light of new developments in the sciences, philosophy and humanistic studies. Special attention is given to research on free will of the first decade of the twenty-first century since the publication of the first edition of the Handbook. All the essays have been newly written or rewritten for this volume. In addition, there are new essayists and essays surveying topics that have become prominent in debates about free will in the past decade, including new work on the relation of free will to physics, the neurosciences, cognitive science, psychology and empirical philosophy, new versions of traditional views (compatibilist, incompatibilist, libertarian, etc.) and new views (e.g., revisionism) that have emerged. The twenty-eight essays by prominent international scholars and younger scholars cover a host of free will related issues, such as moral agency and responsibility, accountability and blameworthiness in ethics, autonomy, coercion and control in social theory, criminal liability, responsibility and punishment in legal theory, issues about the relation of mind to body, consciousness and the nature of action in philosophy of mind and the cognitive and neurosciences, questions about divine foreknowledge, providence and human freedom in philosophy of religion, and general metaphysical questions about necessity and possibility, determinism, time and chance, quantum reality, causation and explanation.
Download or read book Free Will written by John Thorp and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of freedom and determinism is one of the most enduring, and one of the best, problems in philosophy. One of the best because it so tenaciously resists solution while yet always seeming urgent, and one of the most enduring because it has always been able to present itself in different ways to suit the preoccupations of different ages. This book, first published in 1980, sets out to defend free will: it elaborates a sober and systematic case for libertarianism in the face of the overwhelming threat that is posed by the scientific study of the brain.
Download or read book Libertarian Free Will written by David Palmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the libertarian position on free will, people sometimes exercise free will, but this freedom is incompatible with the truth of causal determinism. Frequently maligned within the history of philosophy, this view has recently gained increasingly sympathetic attention among philosophers. But stark questions remain: How plausible is this view? If our actions are not causally determined, how can we have control over them? Why should we want our actions to be breaks in the deterministic causal chain? The recent resurgence of interest in libertarianism is due, most significantly, to Robert Kane, who is the leading contemporary defender of this view of free will. This book is a collection of new essays on the libertarian position on free will and related issues that focuses specifically on the views of Kane. Written by a distinguished group of philosophers, the essays cover various areas of philosophy including metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of mind. Kane contributes a final essay, replying to the criticisms offered in the previous chapters and developing his view in new directions.
Download or read book Free Will Libertarianism alternative possibilities and moral responsibility written by John Martin Fischer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2005 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Neuroexistentialism written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existentialisms arise when the foundations of being, such as meaning, morals, and purpose come under assault. In the first-wave of existentialism, writings typified by Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche concerned the increasingly apparent inability of religion, and religious tradition, to support a foundation of being. Second-wave existentialism, personified philosophically by Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, developed in response to similar realizations about the overly optimistic Enlightenment vision of reason and the common good. The third-wave of existentialism, a new existentialism, developed in response to advances in the neurosciences that threaten the last vestiges of an immaterial soul or self. Given the increasing explanatory and therapeutic power of neuroscience, the mind no longer stands apart from the world to serve as a foundation of meaning. This produces foundational anxiety. In Neuroexistentialism, a group of contributors that includes some of the world's leading philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars, explores the anxiety caused by third-wave existentialism and possible responses to it. Together, these essays tackle our neuroexistentialist predicament, and explore what the mind sciences can tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in life, and purpose.
Download or read book Paradoxes of Free Will written by Gunther Siegmund Stent and published by American Philosophical Society. This book was released on 2002 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Driving human reason too far in the analysis of deep problems often leads to irresolvable inconsistencies and contradictions. In this 2002 J.F. Lewis Award-winning monograph, Gunther Stent traces the origins and development of the paradoxes of free will in this well-crafted introduction to philosophical debates regarding freedom of will. Free will poses one of the oldest and most vexatious philosophical problems, dating back to the beginnings of moral philosophy in ancient Greece. Pure theoretical reason implies that our actions are determined, while practical theoretical reason tells us that our will is free. Stent examines the arguments of moral responsibility versus determinism, from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Immanuel Kant, Niels Bohr, and Max Planck.
Download or read book A Minimal Libertarianism written by Christopher Evan Franklin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Christopher Evan Franklin develops and defends a novel version of event-causal libertarianism. This view is a combination of libertarianism--the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the causal upshots of nondeterministic processes--and agency reductionism--the view that the causal role of the agent in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agent. Franklin boldly counteracts a dominant theory that has similar aims, put forth by well-known philosopher Robert Kane. Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable kind of freedom and responsibility. To Franklin, this position is mistaken. Assuming agency reductionism is true, event-causal libertarians need only adopt the most plausible compatibilist theory and add indeterminism at the proper juncture in the genesis of human action. The result is minimal event-causal libertarianism: a model of free will with the metaphysical simplicity of compatibilism and the intuitive power of libertarianism. And yet a worry remains: toward the end of the book, Franklin reconsiders his assumption of agency reductionism, arguing that this picture faces a hitherto unsolved problem. This problem, however, has nothing to do with indeterminism or determinism, or even libertarianism or compatibilism, but with how to understand the nature of the self and its role in the genesis of action. Crucially, if this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism.
Download or read book The Science of Freedom written by Michael Abraham and published by . This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So how can we know if human beings really have free will? The question of whether or not we have free will (libertarianism) has accompanied us since the beginning of philosophy and history. In recent years, the issue has started to move from philosophy into the field of science, especially neuroscience. This book shows that scientific findings do not decisively demonstrate the correctness of any answer, and that the question is still a philosophical one. It begins by defining the relevant terms, primarily free will and determinism, showing that incautious definitions lead to quite a few errors in the discussion of these issues. For answers, check with philosophers and thinkers! Examining the issue of free will from various angles, in clear, accessible language for the educated reader, it offers a consistent and systematic basis for a libertarian approach that is in accordance with scientific findings, showing that it arises naturally from considerations of common sense and various philosophical aspects. Scroll up now to get your copy of The Science of Freedom!
Download or read book Psychiatry written by Konstantinos N. Fountoulakis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-26 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was the end product of life experiences, thoughts and intellectual wanderings of the author, who through his career and for the last twenty years was always serving all the three aspects of a Psychiatrist: He is a clinician, a researcher and an academic teacher. The book includes a comprehensive history of Psychiatry since antiquity and until today, with an emphasis not only on main events but also specifically and with much detail and explanations, on the chain of events that led to a particular development. At the center of this work is the question ‘What is mental illness?’ and ‘Does free will exist?’. These are questions which tantalize Psychiatrists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, patients and their families and the sensitive and educated lay persons alike. Thus, the book includes a comprehensive review and systematic elaboration on the definition and the concept of mental illness, a detailed discussion on the issue of free will as well as the state of the art of contemporary Psychiatry and the socio-political currents it has provoked. Finally the book includes a description of the academic, social and professional status of Psychiatry and Psychiatrists and a view of future needs and possible developments. A last moment addition was the chapter on conspiracy theories, as a consequence of the experience with the social media and the public response to the COVID-19 outbreak which coincided with the final stage of the preparation of the book. Their study is an excellent opportunity to dig deep into the relation among human psychology, mental health, the society and politics and to swim in intellectually dangerous waters.
