Minimal Event-Causal Libertarianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action

This chapter explains the differences between agency reductionism and nonreductionism, explains the varieties of libertarianism, and sets out the main contours of minimal event-causal libertarianism, highlighting just how minimal this theory is. Crucial to understanding how minimal event-causal libertarianism differs from other event-causal libertarian theories is understanding the location and role of indeterminism in human action, the kinds of mental states essential to causing free action, the nature of nondeterministic causation, and how the theory is constructed from compatibilist accounts. The chapter argues that libertarians must face up to both the problem of luck and the problem of enhanced control when determining the best theoretical location of indeterminism.

A Minimal Libertarianism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Unsolved Problem ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

In this book Franklin develops and defends a version of event-causal libertarianism about free will and moral responsibility. This view is a combination of libertarianism—the view that humans sometimes act freely and that those actions are the upshots of nondeterministic causal processes—and agency reductionism—the view that the causal role of agents in exercises of free will is exhausted by the causal role of mental states and events (e.g., desires and beliefs) involving the agents. Many philosophers contend that event-causal libertarians have no advantage over compatibilists when it comes to securing a distinctively valuable and robust kind of freedom and responsibility. But Franklin argues that this 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. If this problem proves unsolvable, then not only is event-causal libertarianism untenable, so also is event-causal compatibilism.

scholarly journals Physicalism and the determination of action

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Good News ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
Single Argument

There is no single version of physicalism. There is no single argument for physicalism. There is, accordingly, no standard answer concerning the implications of physicalism for the causation of human action by mental states. This chapter begins by describing a preferred version of physicalism and its implications about the connection between subjects' mental states and what they do, and thereby for the determination and predictability of our actions. This serves as a precursor for a short discussion of the implications of physicalism for the possibility of free action. The chapter also discusses an anomalous physicalism that holds it is a mistake in principle to identify the mental and the physical, in the sense of identifying mental and physical kinds. At first blush, this kind of physicalism might seem good news for those who worry about the implications of physicalism for freedom. However, it is shown that the good news is not that good.

Aboutness

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Made In

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

The role and relationship of mindreading and social attunement in HRI – position statements of interdisciplinary researchers. Workshop HRI'20

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wykowska ◽  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Stefan Kopp
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This booklet is a collection of the position statements accepted for the HRI’20 conference workshop “Social Cognition for HRI: Exploring the relationship between mindreading and social attunement in human-robot interaction” (Wykowska, Perez-Osorio & Kopp, 2020). Unfortunately, due to the rapid unfolding of the novel coronavirus at the beginning of the present year, the conference and consequently our workshop, were canceled. On the light of these events, we decided to put together the positions statements accepted for the workshop. The contributions collected in these pages highlight the role of attribution of mental states to artificial agents in human-robot interaction, and precisely the quality and presence of social attunement mechanisms that are known to make human interaction smooth, efficient, and robust. These papers also accentuate the importance of the multidisciplinary approach to advance the understanding of the factors and the consequences of social interactions with artificial agents.

Parentheticalism and (Ir)rational Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Willingness To Use

This chapter considers various cases of irrationality (such as akrasia, weakness in executive commitments, doxastic incontinence, etc.), all of which involve a break between an agent’s considered judgment and her effective mental states. It is shown that parentheticalism can solve puzzles that these phenomena typically raise. The discussion leads into a deeper grasp of the rationale behind parenthetical and non-parenthetical uses of verbs like “believe” and “want”: They are associated with aspects of rational agency that normally coincide but can come apart. In the latter cases, our willingness to use verbs like “believe” and “want” is conflicted in a way that confirms parentheticalism. Finally, I suggest that parentheticalism can help us understand the role of the agent in rational agency and solve the Missing Agent Problem.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Affective and Cognitive Empathy

2020 ◽  
pp. 8-30
Author(s):  
Ross Buck ◽  
Zhan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Emotional Empathy ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Current State ◽  
Communication Processes ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
Emotion Displays ◽  
Central Nervous Systems

Individual differences in the ability to recognize emotion displays relate strongly to emotional intelligence, and emotional and social competence. However, there is a difference between the ability to judge the emotions of another person (i.e., emotional empathy) and the ability to take the perspective of another person, including making accurate appraisals, attributions, and inferences about the mental states of others (i.e., cognitive empathy). In this chapter, we review the concept of emotional empathy and the current state of the field, including emerging and converging evidence from neuroscience research that emotional and cognitive empathy involve doubly dissociable brain systems. We also discuss emerging literature on the physiological mechanisms underlying empathy in the peripheral and central nervous systems. We then distinguish spontaneous and symbolic communication processes to show how cognitive empathy emerges from emotional empathy during development. Development starts with the prelinguistic mutual contingent responsiveness of infant and caregiver yielding “raw” primary intersubjectivity, then secondary and tertiary intersubjectivity advances with increasing social experience, and finally cognitive empathic abilities expand in perspective taking and Theory of Mind (ToM) skills. We then present an Affect-Reason-Involvement (ARI) model to guide the conceptualization and measurement of emotional and cognitive empathy. We consider emotion correlation scores as a flexible and valid approach to empathy measurement, with implications for understanding the role of discrete emotions in decision making. Finally, we apply this reasoning to recent studies of the role of emotion and empathy in bullying.

scholarly journals Activity in the brain’s valuation and mentalizing networks is associated with propagation of online recommendations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa C. Baek ◽  
Matthew Brook O’Donnell ◽  
Christin Scholz ◽  
Rui Pei ◽  
Javier O. Garcia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Opinion Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mentalizing System

AbstractWord of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective valuation) and understanding others’ mental states (i.e., mentalizing) play key roles. The current study used neuroimaging and natural language classifiers to extend these findings in a naturalistic context and tested the extent to which the two systems work together or independently in responding to social influence. First, we show that in response to text-based social media recommendations, activity in both the brain’s valuation system and mentalizing system was associated with greater likelihood of opinion change. Second, participants were more likely to update their opinions in response to negative, compared to positive, recommendations, with activity in the mentalizing system scaling with the negativity of the recommendations. Third, decreased functional connectivity between valuation and mentalizing systems was associated with opinion change. Results highlight the role of brain regions involved in mentalizing and positive valuation in recommendation propagation, and further show that mentalizing may be particularly key in processing negative recommendations, whereas the valuation system is relevant in evaluating both positive and negative recommendations.

scholarly journals The Effect of Fear of the COVID-19 on Depression Among Chinese Outbound Students Studying Online in China Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic Period: The Role of Resilience and Social Support

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yikang Chen ◽  
Yifan Liu ◽  
Yuxuan Zhang ◽  
Zheng Li ◽  
Tianshu Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
Positive Correlation ◽  
Online Mode

Objective: The present study focused on examining fear of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is correlated with depression and explored the potential role of resilience and social support on the association between fear of the COVID-19 (FoC) and depression among Chinese outbound students studying online in China amid the COVID-19 pandemic period.Methods: A total of 476 Chinese outbound students from different universities worldwide, currently studying via online mode in China, completed an online survey including measures on FoC, resilience, social support, and depression.Results: (1) Fear of the COVID-19 was positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with resilience and social support. Both resilience and social support were negatively correlated with depression. Social support showed a positive correlation with resilience. (2) The effect of FoC on depression mainly occurred through two paths: the mediating effect of resilience and the moderating effect of resilience. However, the moderating effect of social support on the association between FoC and depression was not sustained in this study.Conclusion: This study indicated the mediating and moderating effects of resilience on the association between FoC and depression among Chinese outbound students studying online in China during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The current findings confirmed that resilience has significant implications in preventing negative mental states under the COVID-19 context among this particular group.

Child

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Sheldon
Keyword(s):  
Children's Literature ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Young Adult Literature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
Self Similar ◽  
To Come

In the conclusion of The Child to Come, the book asks, ‘What happens when the life figured by the child--innocent, self-similar human life at home on a homely Earth--no longer has the strength to hold back the vitality that animates it?’ This chapter looks at two kinds of texts that consider this question: Anthropocene cinema and Young Adult Fiction. By focusing on the role of human action, the Anthropocene obscures a far more threatening reality: the collapse of the regulative. In relation, both children’s literature and young adult literature grow out of and as disciplinary apparatuses trained on that fraught transit between the presumptive difference of those still in their minority and the socially necessary sameness that is inscribed into fully attained adulthood.

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