Future Philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 261-294
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Constraint Satisfaction ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Coherence Relations ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Philosophy hangs together by coherence relations tied to scientific evidence. Multilevel materialism in the philosophy of mind fits well bidirectionally with reliable coherentism in epistemology. Understanding the brain as operating with neural mechanisms of parallel constraint satisfaction supports and is supported by the view that knowledge is based on reliable coherence. Both of these views fit with scientific realism as the most plausible approach to metaphysics. There are internally coherent alternatives to my system of social cognitivism, such as religious philosophies that espouse faith and supernaturalism, but these are incompatible with centuries of accumulated evidence. This concluding chapter addresses three important philosophical questions that remain unresolved despite relevant advances in cognitive science: the existence of free will, the nature of mathematical knowledge, and the mental capacities of machines and nonhuman animals.

Lessons Learned From Coaching Postsecondary Students With Traumatic Brain Injury

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Mary R. T. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Sudden Onset ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Exhaustive List

Purpose The purpose of this clinical focus article is to provide speech-language pathologists with a brief update of the evidence that provides possible explanations for our experiences while coaching college students with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method The narrative text provides readers with lessons we learned as speech-language pathologists functioning as cognitive coaches to college students with TBI. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather to consider the recent scientific evidence that will help our understanding of how best to coach these college students. Conclusion Four lessons are described. Lesson 1 focuses on the value of self-reported responses to surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. Lesson 2 addresses the use of immediate/proximal goals as leverage for students to update their sense of self and how their abilities and disabilities may alter their more distal goals. Lesson 3 reminds us that teamwork is necessary to address the complex issues facing these students, which include their developmental stage, the sudden onset of trauma to the brain, and having to navigate going to college with a TBI. Lesson 4 focuses on the need for college students with TBI to learn how to self-advocate with instructors, family, and peers.

The brain minds whether we believ in free will

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Rigoni ◽  
M. Brass ◽  
B. Burle
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The Brain

Consciousness, law of nature, and nomological determinism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Brain

Nomological determinism does not mean everything is predictable. It just means everything follows the law of nature. And the most important thing Is that the brain and consciousness follow the law of nature. In other words, there is no free will. Without life, brain and consciousness, the world follows law of nature, that is clear. The life and brain are also part of nature, and they follow the law of nature. This is due to scientific findings. There are not enough scientific findings for consciousness yet. But I think that the consciousness is a nature phenomenon, and it also follows the law of nature.

The ”true me”—one or many?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Berent ◽  
Melanie Platt
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Optimality Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
True Self ◽  
Behavioral Test ◽  
Brain Scan ◽  
Moral Behaviors ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Constraint Ranking

Recent results suggest that people hold a notion of the true self, distinct from the self. Here, we seek to further elucidate the “true me”—whether it is good or bad, material or immaterial. Critically, we ask whether the true self is unitary. To address these questions, we invited participants to reason about John—a character who simultaneously exhibits both positive and negative moral behaviors. John’s character was gauged via two tests--a brain scan and a behavioral test, whose results invariably diverged (i.e., one test indicated that John’s moral core is positive and another negative). Participants assessed John’s true self along two questions: (a) Did John commit his acts (positive and negative) freely? and (b) What is John’s essence really? Responses to the two questions diverged. When asked to evaluate John’s moral core explicitly (by reasoning about his free will), people invariably descried John’s true self as good. But when John’s moral core was assessed implicitly (by considering his essence), people sided with the outcomes of the brain test. These results demonstrate that people hold conflicting notions of the true self. We formally support this proposal by presenting a grammar of the true self, couched within Optimality Theory. We show that the constraint ranking necessary to capture explicit and implicit view of the true self are distinct. Our intuitive belief in a true unitary “me” is thus illusory.

scholarly journals Francis Hutcheson on Liberty

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 121-142
Author(s):  
Ruth Boeker
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Character Development ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Philosophical Writings ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Independent Thinking

AbstractThis paper aims to reconstruct Francis Hutcheson's thinking about liberty. Since he does not offer a detailed treatment of philosophical questions concerning liberty in his mature philosophical writings I turn to a textbook on metaphysics. We can assume that he prepared the textbook during the 1720s in Dublin. This textbook deserves more attention. First, it sheds light on Hutcheson's role as a teacher in Ireland and Scotland. Second, Hutcheson's contributions to metaphysical disputes are more original than sometimes assumed. To appreciate his independent thinking, I argue, it is helpful to take the intellectual debates in Ireland into consideration, including William King's defence of free will and discussions of Shaftesbury's views in Robert Molesworth's intellectual circle. Rather than taking a stance on the philosophical disputes about liberty, I argue that Hutcheson aims to shift the focus of the debates towards practical questions concerning control of desire, cultivation of habits, and character development.

scholarly journals Consciousness, decision making, and volition: freedom beyond chance and necessity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Liljenström
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Neural Information ◽  
Neural Information Processing ◽  
Stochastic Population Model ◽  
The Brain

AbstractWhat is the role of consciousness in volition and decision-making? Are our actions fully determined by brain activity preceding our decisions to act, or can consciousness instead affect the brain activity leading to action? This has been much debated in philosophy, but also in science since the famous experiments by Libet in the 1980s, where the current most common interpretation is that conscious free will is an illusion. It seems that the brain knows, up to several seconds in advance what “you” decide to do. These studies have, however, been criticized, and alternative interpretations of the experiments can be given, some of which are discussed in this paper. In an attempt to elucidate the processes involved in decision-making (DM), as an essential part of volition, we have developed a computational model of relevant brain structures and their neurodynamics. While DM is a complex process, we have particularly focused on the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) for its emotional, and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) for its cognitive aspects. In this paper, we present a stochastic population model representing the neural information processing of DM. Simulation results seem to confirm the notion that if decisions have to be made fast, emotional processes and aspects dominate, while rational processes are more time consuming and may result in a delayed decision. Finally, some limitations of current science and computational modeling will be discussed, hinting at a future development of science, where consciousness and free will may add to chance and necessity as explanation for what happens in the world.

Psychology: Autonomous or Anomalous?

Dialogue ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kernohan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Anomalous Monism

In a recent series of papers, Donald Davidson has put forward a challenging and original philosophy of mind which he has called anomalous monism. Anomalous monism has certain similarities to another recent and deservedly popular position: functionalist cognitive psychology. Both functionalism, in its materialist versions, and anomalous monism require token-token psychophysical identities rather than type-type ones. (Token identities are identities between individual events; type identities represent a stronger claim of identities between interesting sorts of events.) Both deny that psychology can be translated into, or scientifically reduced to, neurophysiology. Both are mentalistic theories, allowing psychology to make use of intentional descriptions in its theorizing. Anomalous monism uses a belief/desire/action psychology; cognitive science makes use of information-bearing states. But these similarities must not be allowed to conceal an essential difference between the two positions. Cognitive psychology claims to be a science, making interesting, lawlike generalizations for the purpose of explaining mental activity. Anomalous monism denies that psychology is a science by denying that psychological laws can be formulated. Davidson has other ideas for psychology connected with his work on meaning and truth. Hence, the title of one of his essays on anomalous monism is “Psychology as Philosophy”.

Еnactivist Criticism of the Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-80
Author(s):  
Anastasia O. Shabalina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
Critical Revision ◽  
Concept Of Information ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Person Experience

The article considers the main arguments against the neurobiological theory of consciousness from the point of view of the enactivist approach within the philosophy of mind. The neurobiological theory of consciousness, which reduces consciousness to neural activity, is currently the dominant approach to the mind-body problem. The neurobiological theory emerged as a result of advances in research on the phenomena of consciousness and through the development of technologies for visualizing the internal processes of mind. However, at the very heart of this theory, there is a number of logical contradictions. The non-reductive enactivist approach to consciousness, introduced in this article, contributes to the existing argumentation against the reduction of consciousness to neural processes with remonstrations that take into account the modern neuroscientific data. The article analyzes the argumentation of the sensorimotor enactivism developed by A. Noe and offers the account of the teleosemantic approach to the concept of information provided by R. Cao. The key problems of the neurobiological theory of consciousness are highlighted, and the objections emerging within the framework of the enactivist approach are analyzed. Since the main concepts on which the neural theory is based are the concepts of neural substrate, cognition as representation, and information as a unit of cognition, the author of the article presents three key enactivist ideas that oppose them. First, the enactivist concept of cognition as action allows us to consider the first-person experience as a mode of action, and not as a state of the brain substrate. Second, the article deals with the “explanatory externalism” argument proposed by Noe, who refutes the image of cognition as a representation in the brain. Finally, in order to critically revise the concept of information as a unit of cognition, the author analyzes Cao’s idea, which represents a teleosemantic approach, but is in line with the general enactivist argumentation. Cao shows that the application of the concept “information” to neural processes is problematic: no naturalized information is found in the brain as a physical substrate. A critical revision of beliefs associated with the neural theory of consciousness leads us to recognize that there are not enough grounds for reducing consciousness to processes that take place in the brain. That is why Noe calls expectations that the visualization of processes taking place in the brain with the help of the modern equipment will be able to depict the experience of consciousness the “new phrenology”, thus indicating the naive character of neural reduction. The article concludes that natural science methods are insufficient for the study of consciousness.

Who's in charge? Free will and the science of the brain

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. J. Linden
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
The Brain
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document