Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience最新文献

{"title":"Actions and Intentions","authors":"Sofia Bonicalzi","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_008","url":null,"abstract":"Results in the cognitive neuroscience of volition and action have been often dismissed as ultimately irrelevant, or too week at best, to legitimately tackle the philosophical issues of free will and intentional agency. By contrast, this chapter seeks to promote a more constructive perspective regarding how philosophy and cognitive neuroscience can jointly improve our comprehension of intentional agency. The chapter is divided into seven sections. In Section 2, I present the causal theory of action as the best attempt to provide a reductive philosophical characterisation of intentional action, introducing some early and ongoing debates concerning the causal role of conscious mental states. In Section 3, I discuss how specific problems for the understanding of intentional agency, as inherited from the causal theory, originate from widely discussed pieces of empirical evidence on how voluntary processes unfold. In Section 4, I go through some of the counter-arguments that have been put forward in order to defend the classic view of intentional agency. To a various extent, these counter-arguments target the lack of ecological validity of widely employed experimental paradigms. In Section 5, I present counter-arguments of a different type, which are based on the underlying claim that no clear causal link between unconscious neural antecedents and actions can be established on the basis of neuroscientific data. The preoccupation expressed by some of these criticisms is shareable. Nonetheless, I will suggest that the following argument is unwarranted: Because it does not straightforwardly rule out the causal theory, the neuroscientific angle is irrelevant to understanding intentional agency. In Section 6, I in fact argue in favour of a different approach concerning the relation between experimental research and philosophical analysis. In particular, I suggest that the former does not simply have the role of validating the latter, but plays a more constructive part in defining the common research target. I articulate these claims with some proposals and examples (Subsections 6.1 and 6.2). Some final remarks are presented in Section 7.","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133582817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Free Will, Language, and the Causal Exclusion Problem","authors":"Bernard Feltz, Olivier Sartenaer","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_010","url":null,"abstract":"The starting point of the present paper is the rather commonsensical idea that mental causation qua mental – that is, at the very least, some minimal degree of irreducible mental causation – is a necessary condition, though perhaps not a sufficient one, for free will (see e.g. List & Menzies 2017). In other words, it is the thought that one can only feel entitled to consider human actions as being freely willed insofar as, among other things, their ultimate origin – what ultimately caused them – is not wholly microphysical in nature (on the model of, let’s say, a bunch of interrelated neurons firing). Much has been said in recent literature about how exactly to make sense of such a thought, essentially by addressing the question of how mentality could be said to be causally potent in spite of its undeniable dependence on a neural basis.1 Here we venture into a different kind of exploration, more specifically related to the question of what irreducible mental causation can be or, more particularly, where it could come from. In this perspective, the particular question we would like to address is the following: could it be the case that what makes mental causation apparently so special or unique is that it is deeply rooted in complex forms – perhaps only to be found in human communication – of language? Put differently, could some form of irreducible linguistic causation be at the basis of the kind of mental causation that would be appropriate, among other things, for having free will? Here is how we plan to deal with such a question. First, we briefly introduce the causal exclusion argument, essentially as an excuse to allow for mapping the space of the possible ways in which linguistic causation could in principle","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127903931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perceptual Decision-Making and Beyond: Intention as Mental Imagery","authors":"A. Sims, M. Missal","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_003","url":null,"abstract":"The standard view in the philosophy of action is the Causal Theory of Action (cta).1 On this view, a behavioural item counts as an intentional action if and only if it is caused by the appropriate sorts of mental states in the right kind of way. On most popular contemporary accounts (e.g. Searle 1983; Bratman 1987; Mele 1992; Pacherie 2008), the appropriate sort of mental state is an intention, with the intention construed as an attitude towards a proposition. The “right kind of way” is thought to be one in which the content of the intention propagates from an abstract level of description (e.g. the intention to investigate a noise) through to more fine-grained specifications that give a bodily movement a rational structure at the moment of bodily movement (e.g. the intention to switch on this light), and finally culminating in motor commands required to execute the right bodily movements. These levels of abstraction respectively correspond to so-called distal intention, proximal intention, and motor intention. These three kinds of intention have distinct roles in the overall dynamics of intentional action (Pacherie 2008; Mele this volume). In our contribution to this volume we offer an alternative theory of intention, on which it is not a propositional attitude at all but rather a distinct kind of mental imagery. For the purpose of our argument, we can provisionally define a mental image as a quasi-perceptual representation that occurs in the absence of the corresponding stimuli. Such imagery need not be conscious; it can also be unconscious. It may manifest in one or more perceptual modalities (Nanay 2017). The main difference that we wish to mark is that mental imagery has a quasi-perceptual format rather than a quasi-linguistic or propositional one. That idea will be developed in more detail in Sections 1 and 2. Our account is inspired by work in the perceptual decision making literature, where decision is modelled as a process of evidence accumulation under conditions of uncertainty and noise. In the paradigms that are central to this","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"15 7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124912778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Free Will and Neuroscience: Decision Times and the Point of No Return","authors":"A. Mele","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_006","url":null,"abstract":"Although I have written many articles and chapters on neuroscientific arguments for the nonexistence of free will, I have not run out of things to say about these arguments. Part of the explanation is that experiments on the topic continue to be conducted and to shed new light on important issues raised by earlier experiments. This is fortunate for me, given that I accepted Bernard Feltz’s invitation to write a chapter for this volume. Experiments performed by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in the 1980s pose an alleged challenge to the existence of free will. Some neuroscientists have followed Libet’s lead, sometimes using electroencephalography (eeg), as he did, and sometimes using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), depth electrodes, or subdural grid electrodes. In Effective Intentions (Mele 2009, chs. 3, 4, and 6), I argued that the neuroscientific work discussed there falls well short of justifying the claim that free will is an illusion. My focus was on the data and on whether the data supported certain empirical claims that have been combined with theoretical claims about free will to yield the conclusion that free will does not exist. There are some interesting new data now. In this chapter, I explore the bearing of some studies published after 2009 on the question whether we have convincing neuroscientific evidence for the nonexistence of free will. Section 1 provides some scientific and terminological background. Section 2 tackles a question about the time at which decisions are made in Libet-style experiments in connection with an examination of a familiar neuroscientific argument for the nonexistence of free will. Section 3 addresses a related neuroscientific argument that features a claim about the point of no return for actions studied in experiments of this kind. Section 4 takes up a skeptical argument that might be thought to have a basis in some recent neuroscientific work. Section 5 wraps things up.","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124405999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why Libet-Style Experiments Cannot Refute All Forms of Libertarianism","authors":"László Bernáth","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_007","url":null,"abstract":"Since Benjamin Libet published the results of his well-known experiments (Libet 1985; Libet–Gleason–Wright–Pearl 1983), it has been heavily debated whether these results refute the existence of free will. Most philosophers who are experts on the topic of free will have reached the conclusion that Libet’s original experiments and other Libet-style experiments have not provided enough evidence for denying free will yet.1 However, the problem as to whether Libet-style experiments could in principle refute free will has not been discussed as much and it seems that there is no consensus on this matter. Recently, Marcelo Fischborn (2016, 2017) has attempted to shed light on why Libet-style experiments can in principle refute libertarian theories of free will. According to Fischborn, Libet-style experiments can in principle refute libertarian free will because (i) libertarian free will is incompatible with a local determinism in the brain that would make choice predetermined by unconscious brain states and (ii) Libet-style experiments are in principle able to support that there is such a local determinism in the brain. Against Fischborn, Adina Roskies and Eddy Nahmias (2017) have argued in accordance with their earlier papers (Roskies 2006, Nahmias 2014) that Fischborn is wrong because it is not true either that libertarian free will is incompatible with local determinism or that Libet-style experiments are able to support local or universal determinism. Although I think that this debate merits attention, both sides share a false presupposition, namely, that the different libertarian theories are similar to each other with regard to what they claim about the role and location of indeterminism in free decisions. Fischborn seems to think that libertarians agree","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133564597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dual-System Theory and the Role of Consciousness in Intentional Action","authors":"Markus E. Schlosser","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_004","url":null,"abstract":"According to the standard view in philosophy, intentionality is the mark of genuine action. In psychology, human cognition and agency are now widely explained in terms of the workings of two distinct systems (or types of processes), and intentionality is not a central notion in this dual-system theory. Further, it is often claimed, in psychology, that most human actions are automatic, rather than consciously controlled. This raises pressing questions. Does the dualsystem theory preserve the philosophical account of intentional action? How much of our behavior is intentional according to this view? And what is the role of consciousness? I will propose here a revised account of intentional action within the dual-system framework, and we will see that most of our behavior can qualify as intentional, even if most of it is automatic. An important lesson will be that philosophical accounts of intentional action need to pay more attention to the role of consciousness in action.","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127847571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Mental, the Physical and the Informational","authors":"A. Drożdżewska","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_009","url":null,"abstract":"One of the core experiences we share as human beings is the impact our intentions and decisions have on our life. We think that the decisions we make, from the major ones like getting married, to small ones, like taking a bottle of water from the fridge on a warm and sunny day, are what causes the actual physical overt actions. However, this shared conviction is problematic for a number of reasons, including questions like: do choices exist at all given the potentially deterministic nature of the universe; are our decisions causal in the action generation or rather the physical brain activations determine all our actions. Most of these questions are parts of a larger framework, the free will problem, which, rather than being a homogenous issue, is an umbrella term for a number of interconnected problems. In recent decades, two most popular angles, discussed in connection to free will, although this division should not be treated as exhaustive, have emerged: (1) is free will possible given the deterministic nature of the universe, and (2) can the conclusions of neuroscientific experiments truly show that our intentions are not causal in the processes of action generation, and therefore we are not free. In this chapter I will argue that these discussions often dismiss one, important component, not only needed for the possibility of free will, but, moreover, implicitly assumed by most of the positions, namely the causal efficacy of the mental. I will argue that, if mental, as mental, does not have a causal impact on the physical, free will is in dire straits or, as Fodor famously put it:","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"135 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114185057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When Do Robots have Free Will? Exploring the Relationships between (Attributions of) Consciousness and Free Will","authors":"Eddy A. Nahmias, Corey H. Allen, B. Loveall","doi":"10.1163/9789004409965_005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004409965_005","url":null,"abstract":"Imagine that, in the future, humans develop the technology to construct humanoid robots with very sophisticated computers instead of brains and with bodies made out of metal, plastic, and synthetic materials. The robots look, talk, and act just like humans and are able to integrate into human society and to interact with humans across any situation. They work in our offices and our restaurants, teach in our schools, and discuss the important matters of the day in our bars and coffeehouses. How do you suppose you’d respond to one of these robots if you were to discover them attempting to steal your wallet or insulting your friend? Would you regard them as free and morally responsible agents, genuinely deserving of blame and punishment? If you’re like most people, you are more likely to regard these robots as having free will and being morally responsible if you believe that they are conscious rather than non-conscious. That is, if you think that the robots actually experience sensations and emotions, you are more likely to regard them as having free will and being morally responsible than if you think they simply behave like humans based on their internal programming but with no conscious experiences at all. But why do many people have this intuition? Philosophers and scientists typically assume that there is a deep connection between consciousness and free will, but few have developed theories to explain this connection. To the extent that they have, it’s typically via some cognitive capacity thought to be important for free will, such as reasoning or deliberation, that consciousness is supposed to enable or bolster, at least in humans. But this sort of connection between consciousness and free will is relatively weak. First, it’s contingent; given our particular cognitive architecture, it holds, but if robots or aliens could carry out the relevant cognitive capacities without being conscious, this would suggest that consciousness is not constitutive of, or essential for, free will. Second, this connection is derivative, since the main connection goes through some capacity other than consciousness. Finally, this connection","PeriodicalId":333678,"journal":{"name":"Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131150717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}