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Rationality Consciousness Free Will
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Book Synopsis Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will by : David Hodgson
Download or read book Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will written by David Hodgson and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-04 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines the idea of free will, arguing that consideration of human rationality and consciousness together gives us free will.
Book Synopsis Rationality + Consciousness by : David H. Hodgson
Download or read book Rationality + Consciousness written by David H. Hodgson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a fresh approach to the question of free will, David Hodgson contends that close consideration of human rationality and human consciousness shows that together they give us free will, in a robust and indeterministic sense, and in a way that is consistent with what science tells us about the world.
Book Synopsis Freedom and Neurobiology by : John R. Searle
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.
Book Synopsis Rationality, Control, and Freedom by : Curran F. Douglass
Download or read book Rationality, Control, and Freedom written by Curran F. Douglass and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this book is the controversy—one of the oldest in philosophy—about whether it is possible to have freedom in the face of universal causal determinism. Of course, it is crucial to consider what such freedom might mean—in particular, there is an important distinction between libertarian “free will” and the more naturalistic view of freedom taken by compatibilists. This book provides background for laypersons through a historical survey of earlier views and some discussion and criticism of various contemporary views. In particular, it states and discusses the Consequence Argument, the most important argument challenging human freedom in recent literature. The main feature of the book is the argument for a solution: one that is within the compatibilist tradition, is naturalistic and in accord with findings of science and principles of engineering control theory. Some particular features of the offered solution include an argument for a close tie between freedom and control—where what is meant is the voluntary motion control of our bodies, and this “control” is understood naturalistically, by which the author means in accordance with concepts of engineering control theory and modern science. Such concepts are used to explain and demarcate the concept of “control” being used. Then it develops a working conception of what rationality is (since what is crucial is freedom in choice, and rationality is crucial to that), by reviewing texts on the subject by three expert authors (namely, Nathanson, Nozick, and Searle). It is argued that rationality is a species of biological learning control that involves deliberation; and that our freedom in choice is greatest when our choices are most rational.
Book Synopsis Rationality in Action by : John R. Searle
Download or read book Rationality in Action written by John R. Searle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-01-24 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions of a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works.
Book Synopsis The Illusion of Conscious Will by : Daniel M. Wegner
Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Book Synopsis Free Will and Consciousness by : Roy Baumeister
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.
Book Synopsis A Plain Person's Free Will by : David Hodgson
Download or read book A Plain Person's Free Will written by David Hodgson and published by Journal of Consciousness Studi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies David Hodgson defends a simple, robust account of the plain person's position on free will, and intends it to support equally robust views of personal responsibility for conduct.
Book Synopsis Surrounding Free Will by : Alfred R. Mele
Download or read book Surrounding Free Will written by Alfred R. Mele and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cutting-edge volume showcases work supported by a four-year, 4.4 million dollar project on free will and science. In fourteen new articles and an introduction, contributors explore the subject of free will from the perspectives of neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; and philosophy (both traditional and experimental).
Download or read book Free Will written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, "brilliant and witty" (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion. A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion. In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
Book Synopsis Free Will and Consciousness by : Gregg D. Caruso
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.
Book Synopsis Free Will and Luck by : Alfred R. Mele
Download or read book Free Will and Luck written by Alfred R. Mele and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aiming to help readers think more clearly about free will, Mele identifies the conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will. He also attempts to clarify the central issue in the philosophical debate about free will & moral responsibility, & criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will.
Book Synopsis Decision Theory and Rationality by : José Luis Bermúdez
Download or read book Decision Theory and Rationality written by José Luis Bermúdez and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of rationality is a common thread through the human and social sciences — from political science to philosophy, from economics to sociology, and from management science to decision analysis. But what counts as rational action and rational behavior? José Luis Bermúdez explores decision theory as a theory of rationality. Decision theory is the mathematical theory of choice and for many social scientists it makes the concept of rationality mathematically tractable and scientifically legitimate. Yet rationality is a concept with several dimensions and the theory of rationality has different roles to play. It plays an action-guiding role (prescribing what counts as a rational solution of a given decision problem). It plays a normative role (giving us the tools to pass judgment not just on how a decision problem was solved, but also on how it was set up in the first place). And it plays a predictive/explanatory role (telling us how rational agents will behave, or why they did what they did). This controversial but accessible book shows that decision theory cannot play all of these roles simultaneously. And yet, it argues, no theory of rationality can play one role without playing the other two. The conclusion is that there is no hope of taking decision theory as a theory of rationality.
Book Synopsis Inner Life of a Rational Agent by : Rowland Stout
Download or read book Inner Life of a Rational Agent written by Rowland Stout and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical approach to the philosophy of mind, in which states of mind are identified with dispositions to behave in certain ways.The approach taken by Rowland Stout is a thoroughly up-to-date version of behaviourism, although not a form of behaviourism that denies the existence of consciousness, free will, rationality, etc., nor aims to reduce these to other sorts of things. Properly understood, the idea of being disposed to behave in a certain way is seen to be exactly as rich and interesting as the idea of being in a certain state of mind. The fact that our ways of behaving are sensitive to practical rationality is taken to be an essential aspect of our nature as conscious agents. And in describing such a version of practical rationality Stout claims we are describing the mental state of someone whose behaviour is sensitive to it.His account of behaviourism rests on two central notions - that of a causal disposition to behave and that of sensitivity to practical rationality. He explains and develops these notions in some detail, and then uses them to construct powerful and original accounts of belief, intention, knowledge, perception and consciousness.Key Features* A systematic and completely original theoretical approach to the philosophy of mind* A re-evaluation of the history of the philosophy of mind based on a rejection of the generally accepted arguments in the 1960s and 1970s used by functionalists against behaviourists* A serious engagement with the intuitively compelling issues concerning behaviourism.
Book Synopsis Freedom and Neurobiology by : John R. Searle
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 Freedom and Neurobiology, John Searle discusses the possibility of free will within the context of contemporary neurobiology. He begins by explaining the relationship between human reality and the more fundamental reality as described by physics and chemistry. Then he proposes a neurobiological resolution to the problem by demonstrating how various conceptions of free will have different consequences for the neurobiology of consciousness. 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. [...] He argues that consciousness and rationality are the result of the biological evolution of our species. In conclusion, he addresses the problem of free will within the context of a neurobiological conception of consciousness and rationality, and he addresses the problem of political power within the context of this analysis. -- from back cover.
Book Synopsis Why Evolution is True by : Jerry A. Coyne
Download or read book Why Evolution is True written by Jerry A. Coyne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.
Book Synopsis The Neural Basis of Free Will by : Peter Tse
Download or read book The Neural Basis of Free Will written by Peter Tse and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
