Free Will And Consciousness

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Free Will and Consciousness

Gregg D. Caruso
Free Will and Consciousness Book PDF

Author : Gregg D. Caruso
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780739171363

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Free Will and Consciousness by Gregg D. Caruso Pdf

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.

Free Will and Consciousness

Roy Baumeister,Alfred Mele,Kathleen Vohs
Free Will and Consciousness Book PDF

Author : Roy Baumeister,Alfred Mele,Kathleen Vohs
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2010-07-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780195389760

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Free Will and Consciousness by Roy Baumeister,Alfred Mele,Kathleen Vohs Pdf

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.

Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will

William R. Klemm
Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will Book PDF

Author : William R. Klemm
Publisher : Academic Press
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2016-02-11
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780128052891

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Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will by William R. Klemm Pdf

Making a Scientific Case for Conscious Agency and Free Will makes a series of arguments that certain human behaviors are impossible to explain in the absence of free will, and that free will emerges from materialistic processes of brain function. It outlines future directions for neuroscience studies that can harness emerging technologies and tools for systems-level analysis. All humans have the sensation that they consciously will certain things to happen and that, in the absence of external constraints, they are free to choose from among alternatives. This notion of free will is deemed obvious by the average person based on common experience. Free will is frequently defended with arguments stemming from social, legal, philosophical, and religious perspectives. But these arguments appeal to consequences—not causes—of choices and decisions. In the past 3 decades, debate has raged within the scientific community over whether free will is in fact an illusion. Because free will would require conscious agency, the supporting corollary is that consciousness itself cannot do anything and is merely an observer rather than an actor. Considers arguments for and against free will from religious, social, legal, and neuroscience perspectives Provides thorough coverage of the manifold human behaviors that can be explained only by free will, from consciousness to creativity Outlines future directions for further neuroscience research into the topic

The Illusion of Conscious Will

Daniel M. Wegner
The Illusion of Conscious Will Book PDF

Author : Daniel M. Wegner
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 725 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2003-08-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780262290555

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The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel M. Wegner Pdf

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.

Free Will

Sam Harris
Free Will Book PDF

Author : Sam Harris
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 96 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2012-03-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781451683400

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Free Will by Sam Harris Pdf

Sam Harris, bestselling author of THE END OF FAITH takes on one of today's liveliest issues: whether or not we actually have free will.

Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse

Christian D. Schade
Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse Book PDF

Author : Christian D. Schade
Publisher : Springer
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2019-01-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783030035839

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Free Will and Consciousness in the Multiverse by Christian D. Schade Pdf

It is hard to interpret quantum mechanics. The most surprising, but also most parsimonious, interpretation is the many-worlds, or quantum-multiverse interpretation, implying a permanent coexistence of parallel realities. Could this perhaps be the appropriate interpretation of quantum mechanics? This book collects evidence for this interpretation, both from physics and from other fields, and proposes a subjectivist version of it, the clustered-minds multiverse. The author explores its implications through the lens of decision making and derives consequences for free will and consciousness. For example, free will can be implemented in the form of vectorial choices, as introduced in the book. He furthermore derives consequences for research in the social sciences, especially in psychology and economics.

Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will

David Hodgson
Rationality Consciousness Free Will Book PDF

Author : David Hodgson
Publisher : OUP USA
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-04
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780199845309

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Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will by David Hodgson Pdf

The author examines the idea of free will, arguing that consideration of human rationality and consciousness together gives us free will.

Is Science Compatible with Free Will?

Antoine Suarez,Peter Adams
Is Science Compatible with Free Will Book PDF

Author : Antoine Suarez,Peter Adams
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 477 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-22
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781461452126

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Is Science Compatible with Free Will? by Antoine Suarez,Peter Adams Pdf

Anyone who claims the right ‘to choose how to live their life’ excludes any purely deterministic description of their brain in terms of genes, chemicals or environmental influences. For example, when an author of a text expresses his thoughts, he assumes that, in typing the text, he governs the firing of the neurons in his brain and the movement of his fingers through the exercise of his own free will: what he writes is not completely pre-determined at the beginning of the universe. Yet in the field of neuroscience today, determinism dominates. There is a conflict between the daily life conviction that a human being has free will, and deterministic neuroscience. When faced with this conflict two alternative positions are possible: Either human freedom is an illusion, or deterministic neuroscience is not the last word on the brain and will eventually be superseded by a neuroscience that admits processes not completely determined by the past. This book investigates whether it is possible to have a science in which there is room for human freedom. The book generally concludes that the world and the brain are governed to some extent by non-material agencies, and limited consciousness does not abolish free will and responsibility. The authors present perspectives coming from different disciplines (Neuroscience, Quantumphysics and Philosophy) and range from those focusing on the scientific background, to those highlighting rather more a philosophical analysis. However, all chapters share a common characteristic: they take current scientific observations and data as a basis from which to draw philosophical implications. It is these features that make this volume unique, an exceptional interdisciplinary approach combining scientific strength and philosophical profundity. We are convinced that it will strongly stimulate the debate and contribute to new insights in the mind-brain relationship. ​

Consciousness

Susan Blackmore
Consciousness Book PDF

Author : Susan Blackmore
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198794738

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Consciousness by Susan Blackmore Pdf

Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Why Free Will Is Real

Christian List
Why Free Will Is Real Book PDF

Author : Christian List
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2019-05-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674239814

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Why Free Will Is Real by Christian List Pdf

A crystal-clear, scientifically rigorous argument for the existence of free will, challenging what many scientists and scientifically minded philosophers believe. Philosophers have argued about the nature and the very existence of free will for centuries. Today, many scientists and scientifically minded commentators are skeptical that it exists, especially when it is understood to require the ability to choose between alternative possibilities. If the laws of physics govern everything that happens, they argue, then how can our choices be free? Believers in free will must be misled by habit, sentiment, or religious doctrine. Why Free Will Is Real defies scientific orthodoxy and presents a bold new defense of free will in the same naturalistic terms that are usually deployed against it. Unlike those who defend free will by giving up the idea that it requires alternative possibilities to choose from, Christian List retains this idea as central, resisting the tendency to defend free will by watering it down. He concedes that free will and its prerequisites—intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control over our actions—cannot be found among the fundamental physical features of the natural world. But, he argues, that’s not where we should be looking. Free will is a “higher-level” phenomenon found at the level of psychology. It is like other phenomena that emerge from physical processes but are autonomous from them and not best understood in fundamental physical terms—like an ecosystem or the economy. When we discover it in its proper context, acknowledging that free will is real is not just scientifically respectable; it is indispensable for explaining our world.

Free Will

Mark Balaguer
Free Will Book PDF

Author : Mark Balaguer
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2014-02-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780262525794

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Free Will by Mark Balaguer Pdf

A philosopher considers whether the scientific and philosophical arguments against free will are reason enough to give up our belief in it. In our daily life, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are, then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will. In this engaging and accessible volume in the Essential Knowledge series, the philosopher Mark Balaguer examines the various arguments and experiments that have been cited to support the claim that human beings don't have free will. He finds them to be overstated and misguided. Balaguer discusses determinism, the view that every physical event is predetermined, or completely caused by prior events. He describes several philosophical and scientific arguments against free will, including one based on Benjamin Libet's famous neuroscientific experiments, which allegedly show that our conscious decisions are caused by neural events that occur before we choose. He considers various religious and philosophical views, including the philosophical pro-free-will view known as compatibilism. Balaguer concludes that the anti-free-will arguments put forward by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists simply don't work. They don't provide any good reason to doubt the existence of free will. But, he cautions, this doesn't necessarily mean that we have free will. The question of whether we have free will remains an open one; we simply don't know enough about the brain to answer it definitively.

Conversations on Consciousness

Susan J. Blackmore
Conversations on Consciousness Book PDF

Author : Susan J. Blackmore
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 283 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780195179590

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Conversations on Consciousness by Susan J. Blackmore Pdf

In Conversations on Consciousness, Susan Blackmore interviews some of the great minds of our time, a who's who of eminent thinkers, all of whom have devoted much of their lives to understanding the concept of consciousness. The interviewees, ranging from major philosophers to renowned scientists, talk candidly with Blackmore about some of the key philosophical issues confronting us in a series of conversations that are revealing, insightful, and stimulating. They ruminate on the nature of consciousness (is it something apart from the brain?) and discuss if it is even possible to understand the human mind. Some of these thinkers say no, but most believe that we will pierce the mystery surrounding consciousness, and that neuroscience will provide the key. Blackmore goes beyond the issue of consciousness to ask other intriguing questions: Is there free will? (A question which yields many conflicted replies, with most saying yes and no.) If not, how does this effect the way you live your life; and more broadly, how has your work changed the way you live? Paired with an introduction and extensive glossary that provide helpful background information, these provocative conversations illuminate how some of the greatest minds tackle some of the most difficult questions about human nature.

Consciousness

Susan Blackmore,Emily T. Troscianko
Consciousness Book PDF

Author : Susan Blackmore,Emily T. Troscianko
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 838 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2018-04-27
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781317625865

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Consciousness by Susan Blackmore,Emily T. Troscianko Pdf

Is there a theory that explains the essence of consciousness? Or is consciousness itself an illusion? Am I conscious now? Now considered the 'last great mystery of science', consciousness was once viewed with extreme scepticism and rejected by mainstream scientists. It is now a significant area of research, albeit a contentious one, as well as a rapidly expanding area of study for students of psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. This edition of Consciousness, revised by author team Susan Blackmore and Emily Troscianko, explores the key theories and evidence in consciousness studies ranging from neuroscience and psychology to quantum theories and philosophy. It examines why the term ‘consciousness’ has no recognised definition and provides an opportunity to delve into personal intuitions about the self, mind, and consciousness. Featuring comprehensive coverage of all core topics in the field, this edition includes: Why the problem of consciousness is so hard Neuroscience and the neural correlates of consciousness Why we might be mistaken about our own minds The apparent difference between conscious and unconscious Theories of attention, free will, and self and other The evolution of consciousness in animals and machines Altered states from meditation to drugs and dreaming Complete with key concept boxes, profiles of well-known thinkers, and questions and activities suitable for both independent study and group work, Consciousness provides a complete introduction to this fascinating field. Additional resources are available on the accompanying companion website: www.routledge.com/cw/blackmore

The Human World in the Physical Universe

Nicholas Maxwell
The Human World in the Physical Universe Book PDF

Author : Nicholas Maxwell
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0742512266

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The Human World in the Physical Universe by Nicholas Maxwell Pdf

How is it possible for the world as we experience it to exist embedded in the physical universe? How can there be sensory qualities, consciousness, freedom, science and art, friendship, love, justice--all that which gives meaning and value to life--if the world really is more or less as modern science tells us it is? This is the problem that is tackled by this book. The solution proposed is that physics describes only a selected aspect of all that exists--that aspect which determines the way events unfold. Sensory qualities, inner experiences, consciousness, meaning and value, all these exist but lie beyond the scope of physics, and of that part of science that can be reduced to physics. Furthermore, these human features of the world are to be explained and understood, not scientifically, but "personalistically," a kind of understanding distinct from, and not reducible to, science. This view that the world is riddled with what may be called "double comprehensibility" leads to a proposed solution to the philosophical mind/body problem, and to the problem of free will; it leads to a reinterpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution, and to an account of the evolution of consciousness and free will. After a discussion of the location of consciousness in the brain, the book concludes with a proposal as to how academic inquiry might be changed so that it becomes a kind of inquiry rationally designed to help humanity create a more civilized human world in the physical universe.

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility

Gregg D. Caruso
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility Book PDF

Author : Gregg D. Caruso
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2013-07-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780739177327

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Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility by Gregg D. Caruso Pdf

Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility is an edited collection of new essays by an internationally recognized line-up of contributors. It is aimed at readers who wish to explore the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications.