TO THE QUESTION OF THE CORRELATION OF LABILITY AND CAUSATIVE IN THE AVAR LANGUAGE

The article establishes that one or another form of a labile verb can be transitive or intransitive, even when it implements the same semantics. Historically, the opposition transitivity ~ intransitivity was preceded by opposition on the basis of static ~ dynamic, which led to the emergence of two syntactic constructions – the absolutive and the ergative. Opposition on the basis of static ~ dynamic determines the specificity of the entire grammatical structure of the Avar language, including the formation of the causative. The specificity of the formation of the causative by labile verbs in the Avar language is that only a form repre-senting the semantics of an action is capable of expressing direct or intentional causation, and a form repre-senting the semantics of a state expresses only an unintentional causation.

Contemplative Neuroscience as an Approach to Volitional Consciousness

This chapter presents a methodological approach to volitional consciousness for cognitive neuroscience based on studying the voluntary self-generation and self-regulation of mental states in meditation. Called contemplative neuroscience, this approach views attention, awareness, and emotion regulation as flexible and trainable skills, and works with experimental participants who have undergone training in contemplative practices designed to hone these skills. Drawing from research on the dynamical neural correlates of contemplative mental states and theories of large-scale neural coordination dynamics, I argue for the importance of global system causation in brain activity and present an “interventionist” approach to intentional causation.

Event Causation and Agent Causation

It is a matter of dispute whether we should acknowledge the existence of two distinct species of causation – event causation and agent causation – and, if we should, whether either species of causation is reducible to the other. In this paper, the prospects for such a reduction either way are considered, the conclusion being that a reduction of event causation to agent causation is the more promising option. Agent causation, in the sense understood here, is taken to include but not to be restricted to the intentional causation of an event by a rational agent. But, it is argued, there are certain special features of intentional causation, understood as a sub-species of agent causation, which make the agent-causation approach to human agency a particularly promising one with which to tackle the problem of free will.