Download or read book On the Contexts of Things Human written by Ronald J. MacGregor and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2006 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Besides outlining a new plateau of wider integrative understanding both within and beyond neuroscience, the book advances a theory and model of an integrated functional unity of consciousness and brain, inclusive of freedom of will. Its scope is wide, covering topics ranging from first principles of human awareness and apprehension and the physical foundations of consciousness, through a structured integrative view of consciousness and the brain grounded and developed in neuroscience, to the outline of the ambient contextual influences of human living. Human apprehension, language, value and rational knowing are discussed, and seen to operate within contexts of imagination, holistic sensibility, circumstances, the human condition, and higher thought.
Download or read book On The Contexts Of Things Human An Integrative View Of Brain Consciousness And Freedom Of Will written by Ronald J Macgregor and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is unique in expanding the boundaries of neuroscience, while remaining solidly grounded within it. In this, it outlines a new plateau of wider integrative understanding both within and beyond neuroscience. The book advances the view and implications of an integrated functional unity of consciousness and brain, inclusive of freedom of will. It reaches from first principles of human awareness and apprehension and the physical foundations of consciousness, through a structured integrative view of consciousness and the brain, to outlines of the ambient contextual influences of human living. Comprehensive overviews of brain theory and theoretical neuroscience are given. Fundamental brain functions of human apprehension, language, value, aesthetics, rational and extrarational knowing, biological primals, and adaptive integrations are seen to operate within such ambient influences as whole of nature, human plight, circumstances, personal life, good and evil, inner depths, worlds of man, and enlightenments.Prof Ronald MacGregor has published extensively in theoretical neuroscience since 1965, consistently advocating the foundationality of physiology and physical law in brain-mind function. His work has helped ground neuroelectric signaling within physical science and characterize the neuroelectric patterns of neurons and neural networks.
Download or read book On the Contexts of Things Human written by Ronald J. MacGregor and published by . This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Freedom and Neurobiology written by John R. Searle and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives - money, property, marriage, government - consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Consciousness and Freedom written by Donald A. Crosby and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions relating to human freedom cannot be separated from questions relating to human consciousness. The two are intricately entwined, and neither can be understood apart from the other. There is a widespread assumption today that we can understand the nature of human freedom even though there is an equally widespread acknowledgment that we have a lot yet to learn about the nature of human consciousness and its relations to the human body. This separation of the two issues is false. Attempts to prove it have failed and will continue to fail so long as the concept of freedom in its intimate connections with the nature of consciousness is not properly understood. The kind of genuine freedom of thought and action defended in this book lies at the heart of responsible outlooks on our individual and social lives, our hopes for the future, the whole of our history as human beings, and our relations to the natural world.
Download or read book The Human World in the Physical Universe written by Nicholas Maxwell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it possible for the world as we experience it to exist embedded in the physical universe? How can there be sensory qualities, consciousness, freedom, science and art, friendship, love, justice--all that which gives meaning and value to life--if the world really is more or less as modern science tells us it is? This is the problem that is tackled by this book. The solution proposed is that physics describes only a selected aspect of all that exists--that aspect which determines the way events unfold. Sensory qualities, inner experiences, consciousness, meaning and value, all these exist but lie beyond the scope of physics, and of that part of science that can be reduced to physics. Furthermore, these human features of the world are to be explained and understood, not scientifically, but "personalistically," a kind of understanding distinct from, and not reducible to, science. This view that the world is riddled with what may be called "double comprehensibility" leads to a proposed solution to the philosophical mind/body problem, and to the problem of free will; it leads to a reinterpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution, and to an account of the evolution of consciousness and free will. After a discussion of the location of consciousness in the brain, the book concludes with a proposal as to how academic inquiry might be changed so that it becomes a kind of inquiry rationally designed to help humanity create a more civilized human world in the physical universe.
Download or read book Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will written by William R. Klemm and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will makes a series of arguments that certain human behaviors are impossible to explain in the absence of free will, and that free will emerges from materialistic processes of brain function. It outlines future directions for neuroscience studies that can harness emerging technologies and tools for systems-level analysis. All humans have the sensation that they consciously will certain things to happen and that, in the absence of external constraints, they are free to choose from among alternatives. This notion of free will is deemed obvious by the average person based on common experience. Free will is frequently defended with arguments stemming from social, legal, philosophical, and religious perspectives. But these arguments appeal to consequences—not causes—of choices and decisions. In the past 3 decades, debate has raged within the scientific community over whether free will is in fact an illusion. Because free will would require conscious agency, the supporting corollary is that consciousness itself cannot do anything and is merely an observer rather than an actor. - Considers arguments for and against free will from religious, social, legal, and neuroscience perspectives - Provides thorough coverage of the manifold human behaviors that can be explained only by free will, from consciousness to creativity - Outlines future directions for further neuroscience research into the topic
Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness written by Roy Baumeister and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating how free will and consciousness might operate. It draws from philosophy and psychology, the two fields that have grappled most fundamentally with these issues. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors explore such issues as how free will is connected to rational choice, planning, and self-control; roles for consciousness in decision making; the nature and power of conscious deciding; connections among free will, consciousness, and quantum mechanics; why free will and consciousness might have evolved; how consciousness develops in individuals; the experience of free will; effects on behavior of the belief that free will is an illusion; and connections between free will and moral responsibility in lay thinking. Collectively, these state-of-the-art chapters by accomplished psychologists and philosophers provide a glimpse into the future of research on free will and consciousness.
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 Tides of Mind Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness written by David Gelernter and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-02-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “rock star” (New York Times) of the computing world provides a radical new work on the meaning of human consciousness. The holy grail of psychologists and scientists for nearly a century has been to understand and replicate both human thought and the human mind. In fact, it's what attracted the now-legendary computer scientist and AI authority David Gelernter to the discipline in the first place. As a student and young researcher in the 1980s, Gelernter hoped to build a program with a dial marked "focus." At maximum "focus," the program would "think" rationally, formally, reasonably. As the dial was turned down and "focus" diminished, its "mind" would start to wander, and as you dialed even lower, this artificial mind would start to free-associate, eventually ignoring the user completely as it cruised off into the mental adventures we know as sleep. While the program was a only a partial success, it laid the foundation for The Tides of Mind, a groundbreaking new exploration of the human psyche that shows us how the very purpose of the mind changes throughout the day. Indeed, as Gelernter explains, when we are at our most alert, when reasoning and creating new memories is our main mental business, the mind is a computer-like machine that keeps emotion on a short leash and attention on our surroundings. As we gradually tire, however, and descend the "mental spectrum," reasoning comes unglued. Memory ranges more freely, the mind wanders, and daydreams grow more insistent. Self-awareness fades, reflection blinks out, and at last we are completely immersed in our own minds. With far-reaching implications, Gelernter’s landmark "Spectrum of Consciousness" finally helps decode some of the most mysterious wonders of the human mind, such as the numinous light of early childhood, why dreams are so often predictive, and why sadism and masochism underpin some of our greatest artistic achievements. It’s a theory that also challenges the very notion of the mind as a machine—and not through empirical studies or "hard science" but by listening to our great poets and novelists, who have proven themselves as humanity's most trusted guides to the subjective mind and inner self. In the great introspective tradition of Wilhelm Wundt and René Descartes, David Gelernter promises to not only revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human but also to help answer many of our most fundamental questions about the origins of creativity, thought, and consciousness.
Download or read book Out of Our Heads written by Alva Noë and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alva Noë is one of a new breed—part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist—who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the two hundred-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain. Our culture is obsessed with the brain—how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It's widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious—how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity—has emerged unchallenged: We don't have a clue. In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us.
Download or read book Free Will and Consciousness written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-02-23 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 The Brain Consciousness Illusion of Truth written by Karol Ondrias and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ...How do we know that something is true or false? How does the brain discern the truth? What kind of mechanism allows the brain to interpret the information received in the shape of electrical and chemical impulses to which it is constantly exposed? Is it the case that our brains are endowed with appropriate algorithmic rules for discriminating between truth and untruth, alongside certain rules for handling, say, optical information? Is it the case that the brain produces illusions of truth like it does illusions of vision? My answer is in the positive, and this is what I shall be seeking to show in this essay. An essay in style, The Brain, Consciousness and Illusion of Truth is a valuable addition to the literature on the mind/body problem and an engrossing account of the human brain with its services and disservices to the self. Karol Ondrias is one of the 'disturbing' authors who will not stop at taboos. Problems he addresses here are of our postmodern era, when people, still tightly controlled by their ancestral genetic code and ethnocentric cultural stereotypes, are acquiring an awareness of this and trying to review the authenticated behavioral patterns and preconceived ideas still shaping their lives. The notion of the distorted and manipulated reception of the world cuts through the whole of the essay. ...The human race, the author argues, cannot afford any longer remain content with the illusory certainties provided by the 'selfish' genes and by parochial cultures (however dear to the cockles of our heart the latter might be). But isn't it just another illusion - to try and free the self from the comfortable bondage of biological and cultural forces? The essay will take you to the further and farther reaches of human nature and this may be part of the answer.
Download or read book Are You a Machine written by Eliezer J. Sternberg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Right now, someone in an artificial intelligence lab is fusing silicon circuitry in an attempt to engineer the human mind. In a hospital, a neurosurgeon is attempting to influence a patient's emotions by firing electrical impulses into his brain. In a classroom, a teacher is explaining how neurons in the brain interact to generate thoughts, feelings, and decisions. The question of where consciousness comes from and how it works is likely the greatest mystery we face. Despite progress in our knowledge of the brain, we still don't know how it allows us to do things like enjoy a sunset, solve a math problem, or use our imagination. For those of us who have ever thought about issues of the mind or free will, these developments pose provocative questions. What would happen if those mysterious processes could be understood? Would a scientist be able to know everything about our minds just from studying the systems in our brains? Could he predict how we will think and act? After all, the brain is an organ just like the heart or stomach, and scientists can figure out when the heart will beat and when the stomach will release bile. If such a thing could be accomplished, would that make me a machine? There are those who approach this question from a technological perspective. Someday, an engineer might be able to build a robot with my memories, opinions, and behavior. Would that make me a machine? This concise, lucid primer on neuroscience and philosophy of mind takes the reader to the very depths of the mystery of consciousness, exploring it through the eyes of key philosophers, neuroscientists, and technologists. Avoiding jargon and oversimplification, author Eliezer J. Sternberg illuminates baffling questions of the brain, mind, and what it means to be human.
Download or read book Time and Free Will written by Henri Bergson and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bergson argues for free will by showing that the arguments against it come from a confusion of different conceptions of time. As opposed to physicists' idea of measurable time, life is perceived in human experience as a continuous and immeasurable flow rather than as a succession of marked-off states of consciousness.
Download or read book The Mind and the Machine written by Matthew T. Dickerson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans just complex biochemical machines, mere physical parts of a causally closed materialist universe? Are we approaching the so-called "Singularity" when human consciousness can (and will) be downloaded into computers? Or is there more to the human person--something that might be known as soul or spirit? As this book makes clear, the answers to these questions have profound implications to topics such as heroism, creativity, ecology, and the possibility of reason and science. In exploring this important topic, Dickerson engages the ideas of some well-known twentieth- and twenty-first-century espousers of physicalism, including philosopher Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained), biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), futurist-engineer Raymond Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines), psychologist B. F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity), and mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian). Through a careful reading of their works, Dickerson not only provides a five-fold critique of physicalism, but also offers a Christian alternative in the form of "integrative dualism," which affirms the existence of both a physical and spiritual reality without diminishing the goodness or importance of either, and acknowledges that humans are spiritual as well as bodily persons.
Download or read book Free Will written by Meghan Griffith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of whether humans are free to make their own decisions has long been debated and it continues to be a controversial topic today. In Free Will: The Basics readers are provided with a clear and accessible introduction to this central but challenging philosophical problem. The questions which are discussed include: Does free will exist? Or is it illusory? Can we be free even if everything is determined by a chain of causes? If our actions are not determined, does this mean they are just random or a matter of luck? In order to have the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility, must we have alternatives? What can recent developments in science tell us about the existence of free will? Because these questions are discussed without prejudicing one view over others and all technical terminology is clearly explained, this book is an ideal introduction to free will for the uninitiated.
