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 Neuroexistentialism written by Gregg Caruso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 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 Neo Existentialism written by Markus Gabriel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original book, Markus Gabriel offers an account of the human self that overcomes the deadlocks inherent in the standard positions of contemporary philosophy of mind. His view, Neo-Existentialism, is thoroughly anti-naturalist in that it repudiates any theory according to which the ensemble of our best natural-scientific knowledge is able to account fully for human mindedness. Instead, he shows that human mindedness consists in an open-ended proliferation of mentalistic vocabularies. Their role in the human life form consists in making sense of the fact that the human being does not merely blend in with inanimate nature and the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans rely on a self-portrait that locates them in the broadest conceivable context of the universe. What distinguishes this self-portrait from our knowledge of natural reality is that we change in light of our true and false beliefs about the human being. Gabriel’s argument is challenged in this volume by Charles Taylor, Andrea Kern and Jocelyn Benoist. In defending his argument against these and other objections and in spelling out his theory of self-constitution, Gabriel refutes naturalism’s metaphysical claim to epistemic exclusiveness and opens up new paths for future self-knowledge beyond the contemporary ideology of the scientific worldview.

Download or read book Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.

Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, with advances in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences, the idea that patterns of human behavior may ultimately be due to factors beyond our conscious control has increasingly gained traction and renewed interest in the age-old problem of free will. In this book, Gregg D. Caruso examines both the traditional philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will, as well as recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to consciousness and human agency. He argues that our best scientific theories indeed have the consequence that factors beyond our control produce all of the actions we perform and that because of this we do not possess the kind of free will required for genuine or ultimate responsibility. It is further argued that the strong and pervasive belief in free will, which the author considers an illusion, can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness. Indeed, the primary goal of this book is to argue that our subjective feeling of freedom, as reflected in the first-person phenomenology of agentive experience, is an illusion created by certain aspects of our consciousness.

Download or read book Philosophy of Psychedelics written by Chris Letheby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent clinical trials show that psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin can be given safely in controlled conditions, and can cause lasting psychological benefits with one or two administrations. Supervised psychedelic sessions can reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction, and improve well-being in healthy volunteers, for months or even years. But these benefits seem to be mediated by "mystical" experiences of cosmic consciousness, which prompts a philosophical concern: do psychedelics cause psychological benefits by inducing false or implausible beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality? This book is the first scholarly monograph in English devoted to the philosophical analysis of psychedelic drugs. Its central focus is the apparent conflict between the growing use of psychedelics in psychiatry and the philosophical worldview of naturalism. Within the book, Letheby integrates empirical evidence and philosophical considerations in the service of a simple conclusion: this "Comforting Delusion Objection" to psychedelic therapy fails. While exotic metaphysical ideas do sometimes come up, they are not, on closer inspection, the central driver of change in psychedelic therapy. Psychedelics lead to lasting benefits by altering the sense of self, and changing how people relate to their own minds and lives-not by changing their beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality. The upshot is that a traditional conception of psychedelics as agents of insight and spirituality can be reconciled with naturalism (the philosophical position that the natural world is all there is). Controlled psychedelic use can lead to genuine forms of knowledge gain and spiritual growth-even if no Cosmic Consciousness or transcendent divine Reality exists. Philosophy of Psychedelics is an indispensable guide to the literature for researchers already engaged in the field of psychedelic psychiatry, and for researchers-especially philosophers-who want to become acquainted with this increasingly topical field.

Download or read book Consciousness in Locke written by Shelley Weinberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shelley Weinberg argues that the idea of consciousness as a form of non-evaluative self-awareness runs through and helps to solve some of the thorniest issues in Locke's philosophy: in his philosophical psychology and in his theories of knowledge, personal identity, and moral agency. Central to her account is that perceptions of ideas are complex mental states wherein consciousness is a constituent. Such an interpretation answers charges of inconsistency in Locke's model of the mind and lends coherence to a puzzling aspect of Locke's theory of knowledge: how we know individual things (particular ideas, ourselves, and external objects) when knowledge is defined as the perception of an agreement, or relation, of ideas. In each case, consciousness helps to forge the relation, resulting in a structurally integrated account of our knowledge of particulars fully consistent with the general definition. This model also explains how we achieve the unity of consciousness with past and future selves necessary for Locke's accounts of moral responsibility and moral motivation. And with help from other of his metaphysical commitments, consciousness so interpreted allows Locke's theory of personal identity to resist well-known accusations of circularity, failure of transitivity, and insufficiency for his theological and moral concerns. Although virtually every Locke scholar writes on at least some of these topics, the model of consciousness set forth here provides for an analysis all of these issues as bound together by a common thread.

Download or read book Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis written by Paul W. Glimcher and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroeconomics has emerged at the border of the social and natural sciences. This book argues that a meaningful interdisciplinary synthesis of the study of human and animal choice is not only desirable, but also well underway, and so it is time to develop formally a foundational approach for the field.

Download or read book Rejecting Retributivism written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caruso argues against retributivism and develops an alternative for addressing criminal behavior that is ethically defensible and practical.

Download or read book Bioprediction Biomarkers and Bad Behavior written by Ilina Singh and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many decisions in law and elsewhere depend on predictions of crimes and mental illnesses. Can biology make these predictions more accurate? Do we want our government to use biology in this way? These questions and more are discussed in this volume by prominent scientists, ethicists, and legal scholars.

Download or read book Just Deserts written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso – to debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. Just Deserts introduces the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous, and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue between two leading thinkers.

Download or read book Structuring Mind written by Sebastian Watzl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective.

Download or read book Neurocognitive Mechanisms written by Gualtiero Piccinini and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gualtiero Piccinini presents a systematic and rigorous philosophical defence of the computational theory of cognition. His view posits that cognition involves neural computation within multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms, and includes novel ideas about ontology, functions, neural representation, neural computation, and consciousness.

Download or read book Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society written by Elizabeth Shaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-29 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Free will skepticism' refers to a family of views that all take seriously the possibility that human beings lack the control in action - i.e. the free will - required for an agent to be truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. Critics fear that adopting this view would have harmful consequences for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and laws. Optimistic free will skeptics, on the other hand, respond by arguing that life without free will and so-called basic desert moral responsibility would not be harmful in these ways, and might even be beneficial. This collection addresses the practical implications of free will skepticism for law and society. It contains eleven original essays that provide alternatives to retributive punishment, explore what (if any) changes are needed for the criminal justice system, and ask whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about the real-world implications of free will skepticism.

Download or read book The Reality of the Mind written by Ludger Hölscher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the various approaches to the question of the nature of the mind (or soul), Augustine’s philosophical arguments for the existence of an incorporeal and spiritual substance in man and against materialism are here thoroughly examined on their merits as a source of insight for contemporary discussion. This book, originally published in 1986, employs Augustine’s method of introspection, and argues that, as a philosopher, Augustine can teach the modern mind how to detect the reality of such a spiritual subject in and through basic human acts and faculties, such as imagination, memory, knowledge, free-will and self-knowledge. It presents a critical dialogue with various materialistic anthropologies directly addressed by Augustine himself, or those which have arisen at later periods, including epiphenomenalism, mind-brain identity theory, Marxism and others.

Download or read book Accuracy and the Laws of Credence written by Richard Pettigrew and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Pettigrew offers an extended investigation into a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern our credences (or degrees of belief). The main principles that he justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are discussed along the way. These are: Probabilism, the claims that credences should obey the laws of probability; the Principal Principle, which says how credences in hypotheses about the objective chances should relate to credences in other propositions; the Principle of Indifference, which says that, in the absence of evidence, we should distribute our credences equally over all possibilities we entertain; and Conditionalization, the Bayesian account of how we should plan to respond when we receive new evidence. Ultimately, then, this book is a study in the foundations of Bayesianism. To justify these principles, Pettigrew looks to decision theory. He treats an agent's credences as if they were a choice she makes between different options, gives an account of the purely epistemic utility enjoyed by different sets of credences, and then appeals to the principles of decision theory to show that, when epistemic utility is measured in this way, the credences that violate the principles listed above are ruled out as irrational. The account of epistemic utility set out here is the veritist's: the sole fundamental source of epistemic utility for credences is their accuracy. Thus, Pettigrew conducts an investigation in the version of epistemic utility theory known as accuracy-first epistemology. The book can also be read as an extended reply on behalf of the veritist to the evidentialist's objection that veritism cannot account for certain evidential principles of credal rationality, such as the Principal Principle, the Principle of Indifference, and Conditionalization.

Download or read book Evolution of the Cerebellar Sense of Self written by John C. Montgomery and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses an evolutionary perspective to open up the exciting body of work that is cerebellar research. Understanding the brain is of interest to many people, from many different backgrounds, and for many different reasons, and understanding the cerebellum is a significant step towards the wider challenge of understanding the brain.