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Freedom Evolves

Author	: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher	: Penguin
Release Date	: 2004-01-27
ISBN 10	: 9781101572665
Pages	: 368 pages
Rating	: 4.0/5 (726 users)

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Download or read book Freedom Evolves written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-01-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers “yes!” Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments—drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy—that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.

Distributed Cognition and the Will

Author	: Don Ross
Publisher	: MIT Press
Release Date	: 2007
ISBN 10	: 9780262681698
Pages	: 381 pages
Rating	: 4.6/5 (816 users)

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Download or read book Distributed Cognition and the Will written by Don Ross and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent scientific findings about human decision making would seem to threaten thetraditional concept of the individual conscious will. The will is threatened from "below"by the discovery that our apparently spontaneous actions are actually controlled and initiated frombelow the level of our conscious awareness, and from "above" by the recognition that weadapt our actions according to social dynamics of which we are seldom aware. In DistributedCognition and the Will, leading philosophers and behavioral scientists consider how much,if anything, of the traditional concept of the individual conscious will survives these discoveries,and they assess the implications for our sense of freedom and responsibility. The contributors alltake science seriously, and they are inspired by the idea that apparent threats to the cogency ofthe idea of will might instead become the basis of its reemergence as a scientific subject. Theyconsider macro-scale issues of society and culture, the micro-scale dynamics of the mind/brain, andconnections between macro-scale and micro-scale phenomena in the self-guidance and self-regulationof personal behavior. Contributors: George Ainslie, Wayne Christensen, Andy Clark,Paul Sheldon Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, Lawrence A. Lengbeyer, Dan Lloyd, Philip Pettit, Don Ross,Tamler Sommers, Betsy Sparrow, Mariam Thalos, Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Daniel M. Wegner, Tadeusz W.ZawidzkiDon Ross is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Finance, Economics, and QuantitativeMethods at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Professor of Economics at the University ofCape Town, South Africa. David Spurrett is Professor of Philosophy at the Howard College Campus ofthe University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Harold Kincaid is Professor and Chair of theDepartment of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Ethics and Values in the Sciences at theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham. G. Lynn Stephens is Professor of Philosophy at the Universityof Alabama at Birmingham.

What’s with Free Will?

Author	: Philip Clayton
Publisher	: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Release Date	: 2020-03-10
ISBN 10	: 9781532681646
Pages	: 222 pages
Rating	: 4.3/5 (816 users)

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Download or read book What’s with Free Will? written by Philip Clayton and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy's greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It's particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn't exist, does it make sense to act as though it does? These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy--grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today's brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience.

Zwei verschiedene Kompatibilismen

Author	: Igor Wroblewski
Publisher	: LIT Verlag Münster
Release Date	: 2014
ISBN 10	: 9783643126566
Pages	: 239 pages
Rating	: 4.4/5 (265 users)

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Download or read book Zwei verschiedene Kompatibilismen written by Igor Wroblewski and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2014 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Missing Link

Author	: Jeffery Donaldson
Publisher	: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Release Date	: 2015-04-01
ISBN 10	: 9780773582118
Pages	: pages
Rating	: 4.7/5 (821 users)

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Download or read book Missing Link written by Jeffery Donaldson and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We look for missing links in the sciences and humanities, but the essential missing link - metaphor - is always in front of us. In Missing Link, Jeffery Donaldson unites literary criticism and evolutionary and cognitive science to show how metaphor has been with us since the beginning of time as a seed in the nature of things. With examples from centuries of poets, critics, philosophers, and scientists, he details how metaphor is a chemistry, an exchange of energies forming and dissolving, and an openness in the spaces between things. He considers the ways in which DNA learns how to liken things that have been, how mutation makes errors and then tries them on, and how evolution is hypothesis - nature's way of "thinking more." The mind is a matrix of relations: neural synapses cascade into ever-changing pathways and patterns. Metaphor is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the unbroken thread between matter and spirit. Whether offering analysis of a turn of phrase or chemical reaction, Missing Link presents a vision of literature that is also a vision of the cosmos, and vice versa. It enters the debate between evolution and religion, and challenges scientists, literary theorists, and religious advocates to rethink the relations between their disciplines.

Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?

Author	: Susan Pockett
Publisher	: MIT Press
Release Date	: 2009
ISBN 10	: 9780262512572
Pages	: 373 pages
Rating	: 4.6/5 (125 users)

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Download or read book Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? written by Susan Pockett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading scholars continue the debate over whether consciousness causes behavior or plays no functional role in it, discussing the question in terms of neuroscience, philosophy, law, and public policy. Our intuition tells us that we, our conscious selves, cause our own voluntary acts. Yet scientists have long questioned this; Thomas Huxley, for example, in 1874 compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive. New experimental evidence (most notable, work by Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner) has brought the causal status of human behavior back to the forefront of intellectual discussion. This multidisciplinary collection advances the debate, approaching the question from a variety of perspectives. The contributors begin by examining recent research in neuroscience that suggests that consciousness does not cause behavior, offering the outline of an empirically based model that shows how the brain causes behavior and where consciousness might fit in. Other contributors address the philosophical presuppositions that may have informed the empirical studies, raising questions about what can be legitimately concluded about the existence of free will from Libet's and Wegner's experimental results. Others examine the effect recent psychological and neuroscientific research could have on legal, social, and moral judgments of responsibility and blame -- in situations including A Clockwork Orange-like scenario of behavior correction. Contributors William P. Banks, Timothy Bayne, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Suparna Choudhury, Walter J. Freeman, Shaun Gallagher, Susan Hurley, Marc Jeannerod, Leonard V. Kaplan, Hakwan Lau, Sabine Maasen, Bertram F. Malle, Alfred R. Mele, Elisabeth Pacherie, Richard Passingham, Susan Pockett, Wolfgang Prinz, Peter W. Ross

The Human Instinct

Author	: Kenneth R. Miller
Publisher	: Simon & Schuster
Release Date	: 2019-04-23
ISBN 10	: 9781476790275
Pages	: 304 pages
Rating	: 4.7/5 (92 users)

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Download or read book The Human Instinct written by Kenneth R. Miller and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America’s best-known biologists, a revolutionary new way of thinking about evolution that shows “why, in light of our origins, humans are still special” (Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evolution). Once we had a special place in the hierarchy of life on Earth—a place confirmed by the literature and traditions of every human tribe. But then the theory of evolution arrived to shake the tree of human understanding to its roots. To many of the most passionate advocates for Darwin’s theory, we are just one species among multitudes, no more significant than any other. Even our minds are not our own, they tell us, but living machines programmed for nothing but survival and reproduction. In The Human Instinct, Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller “confronts both lay and professional misconceptions about evolution” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), showing that while evolution explains how our bodies and brains were shaped, that heritage does not limit or predetermine human behavior. In fact, Miller argues in this “highly recommended” (Forbes) work that it is only thanks to evolution that we have the power to shape our destiny. Equal parts natural science and philosophy, The Human Instinct makes an “absorbing, lucid, and engaging…case that it was evolution that gave us our humanity” (Ursula Goodenough, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis).

Uncommon Dissent

Author	: William Dembski
Publisher	: Open Road Media
Release Date	: 2014-05-13
ISBN 10	: 9781497648951
Pages	: 350 pages
Rating	: 4.9/5 (489 users)

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Download or read book Uncommon Dissent written by William Dembski and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen the rise to prominence of ever more sophisticated philosophical and scientific critiques of the ideas marketed under the name of Darwinism. In Uncommon Dissent, mathematician and philosopher William A. Dembski brings together essays by leading intellectuals who find one or more aspects of Darwinism unpersuasive. As Dembski explains, Darwinism has gathered around itself an aura of invincibility that is inhospitable to rational discussion—to say the least: “Darwinism, its proponents assure us, has been overwhelmingly vindicated. Any resistance to it is futile and indicates bad faith or worse.” Indeed, those who question the Darwinian synthesis are supposed, in the famous formulation of Richard Dawkins, to be ignorant, stupid, insane, or wicked. The hostility of dogmatic Darwinians like Dawkins has not, however, prevented the advent of a growing cadre of scholarly critics of metaphysical Darwinism. The measured, thought-provoking essays in Uncommon Dissent make it increasingly obvious that these critics are not the brainwashed fundamentalist buffoons that Darwinism’s defenders suggest they are, but rather serious, skeptical, open-minded inquirers whose challenges pose serious questions about the viability of Darwinist ideology. The intellectual power of their contributions to Uncommon Dissent is bracing.

Brainwashing

Author	: Kathleen Taylor
Publisher	: Oxford University Press
Release Date	: 2017-06-02
ISBN 10	: 9780192529756
Pages	: 528 pages
Rating	: 4.9/5 (297 users)

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Download or read book Brainwashing written by Kathleen Taylor and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-02 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, humans have attempted to influence and control the thoughts of others. Since the word 'brainwashing' was coined in the aftermath of the Korean War, it has become part of the popular culture and been exploited to create sensational headlines. It has also been the subject of learned discussion from many disciplines: including history, sociology, psychology, and psychotherapy. But until now, a crucial part of the debate has been missing: that of any serious reference to the science of the human brain. Descriptions of how opinions can be changed, whether by persuasion, deceit, or force, have been almost entirely psychological. In Brainwashing, Kathleen Taylor brought the worlds of neuroscience and social psychology together for the first time. In elegant and accessible prose, and with abundant use of anecdotes and case-studies, she examines the ethical problems involved in carrying out the required experiments on humans, the limitations of animal models, and the frightening implications of such research. She also explores the history of thought-control and shows how it persists all around us, from marketing and television, to politics and education. This edition includes a new preface from the author reflecting on the uses of brainwashing today, including by the Islamic State. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

World History and the Eonic Effect

Author	: John C. Landon
Publisher	: Xlibris Corporation
Release Date	: 2010-04-27
ISBN 10	: 9781462807307
Pages	: 556 pages
Rating	: 4.6/5 (73 users)

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Download or read book World History and the Eonic Effect written by John C. Landon and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when theories of evolution are undergoing renewed controversy, the study of the Eonic Effect can break the deadlock, by looking at world history in the light of ‘evolution’. The assumption that evolution occurs at random is the crux of the dispute, and one confused with issues of religion and secularism. We can detect a non-random pattern in the record of civilization itself, to see ‘evolution in action’ on a stupendous scale. We live in the first generations with enough data to detect this phenomenon. In the confusion of evolutionary theories, the unexpected discovery of deep level structure can allow us to deconstruct ‘fl at history’, and assess claims of directionality in evolution. In the process the theory of natural selection applied to human evolution is seen to fail a photo finish test. The book provides a new model for the study of the overlap of history and evolution, and a critique of current views of the descent of man.

Selfish Genes and Christian Ethics

Author	: Neil Messer
Publisher	: SCM Press
Release Date	: 2007-03-30
ISBN 10	: 9780334029960
Pages	: 288 pages
Rating	: 4.3/5 (299 users)

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Download or read book Selfish Genes and Christian Ethics written by Neil Messer and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2007-03-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolutionary origins of human beings, and in particular the origins of human morality, have always attracted debate and speculation, not just in the academic community but in popular science and the wider general population as well. The arguments and explanations put forward over the years seem to thoroughly catch the popular imagination, but there is the danger that these explanations tend to step outside the bounds of scientific theory and become powerful popular myths instead. In Neil Messer's "Selfish Genes and Christian Ethics", the author is challenging this tendency. Instead, he provides a Christian theological anthropology, which, among other things, aims to give Christians and the churches the confidence to engage with assumptions that evolutionary theory and religious beliefs are untenable. This is a valuable resource for anyone engaged in the study of theology, providing the reader with the ability to consider both the theoretical and the practical questions raised by evolutionary discussions of ethics and morality.

Out of Chaos

Author	: Wayne M. Bundy
Publisher	: Universal-Publishers
Release Date	: 2007-12
ISBN 10	: 9781581129793
Pages	: 509 pages
Rating	: 4.8/5 (297 users)

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Download or read book Out of Chaos written by Wayne M. Bundy and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2007-12 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Foreword, written by Stuart Ross Taylor:"Are we really the pinnacle of 4500 million years of evolution? Closely related to the aggressive chimpanzees, have we evolved enough to cope? The nightly news on television, that mervelous technical invention of scientists, no turned into a field too barren to be termed a wastelad, provides little hope that Homo sapiens is more than another of nature's failed experiments... "Will a more evolved species evolve in time? Wayne notes the extraordinary achievements of the Ashkenazi Jews, separated in European ghettos for centuries, whose descendants, now three percent of the US population, have gernered 27% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to that country. In their enforced isolation, restricted to intellectually demanding occupations, did they evolve superior brains? Perhaps there are grounds for hope before the unrestricted growth in population; the elephant in the attic falls through the ceiling. Read this book. It tells us where we are, how we got there, and how we might escape disaster."

From Big Bang to Big Mystery

Author	: Brendan M. Purcell
Publisher	: New City Press
Release Date	: 2012
ISBN 10	: 9781565484337
Pages	: 366 pages
Rating	: 4.6/5 (843 users)

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Download or read book From Big Bang to Big Mystery written by Brendan M. Purcell and published by New City Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows about the 'mystery' of the Big Bang - what started it? This book is about the other 'creation mystery' - where did human beings, in particular, come from? It traces the material part of our origins from the Big Bang through evolution, including the almost 7 million year hominid sequence up to the first humans in Africa over 150,000 years ago. That data doesn't seem to explain what paleontologists and archaeologists call 'the Big Bang of Human Consciousness.' In his fascinating, accessible and thorough study, renowned priest and academic Brendan Purcell shows the complementarity that scientists, theologians, and philosophers bring to a deeper understanding of the mystery of human existence and human consciousness.

Brainwashing

Author	: Kathleen Eleanor Taylor
Publisher	: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date	: 2004
ISBN 10	: 0192804960
Pages	: 338 pages
Rating	: 4.0/5 (6 users)

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Download or read book Brainwashing written by Kathleen Eleanor Taylor and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brainwashing brings together the worlds of neuroscience and social psychology to examine the way humans have attempted throughout history to influence and control the thoughts of others. The book explores the history and the science of thought control and shows how it still exists all around, from marketing and television to politics and education.

How Physics Makes Us Free

Author	: J. T. Ismael
Publisher	: Oxford University Press
Release Date	: 2016-02-03
ISBN 10	: 9780190269463
Pages	: 256 pages
Rating	: 4.9/5 (694 users)

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Download or read book How Physics Makes Us Free written by J. T. Ismael and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of the universe. Can it really be that even while you toss and turn late at night in the throes of an important decision and it seems like the scales of fate hang in the balance, that your decision is a foregone conclusion? Can it really be that everything you have done and everything you ever will do is determined by facts that were in place long before you were born? This problem is one of the staples of philosophical discussion. It is discussed by everyone from freshman in their first philosophy class, to theoretical physicists in bars after conferences. And yet there is no topic that remains more unsettling, and less well understood. If you want to get behind the façade, past the bare statement of determinism, and really try to understand what physics is telling us in its own terms, read this book. The problem of free will raises all kinds of questions. What does it mean to make a decision, and what does it mean to say that our actions are determined? What are laws of nature? What are causes? What sorts of things are we, when viewed through the lenses of physics, and how do we fit into the natural order? Ismael provides a deeply informed account of what physics tells us about ourselves. The result is a vision that is abstract, alien, illuminating, and-Ismael argues-affirmative of most of what we all believe about our own freedom. Written in a jargon-free style, How Physics Makes Us Free provides an accessible and innovative take on a central question of human existence.

Reasonable Faith for a Post-Secular Age

Author	: William Greenway
Publisher	: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Release Date	: 2020-12-16
ISBN 10	: 9781725270466
Pages	: 228 pages
Rating	: 4.2/5 (74 users)

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Download or read book Reasonable Faith for a Post-Secular Age written by William Greenway and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2020-12-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our global community desperately needs overt awakening to an age of reason and faith. Reasonable Faith for a Post-Secular Age meets this need by interpreting faith not in terms of belief in propositions but in terms of living surrender to having been seized by agape for every Face, including one's own. Virtually all faith traditions, from Buddhism to Humanism to Wiccan, are rooted in agape and therefore share considerable spiritual and ethical common ground (a truth long veiled). In contrast to ethically feckless secular rationality--over which a devastating, global social Darwinism currently runs roughshod--faith qua living surrender to agape grounds moral realism, awakens us to love for all creatures, and inspires struggles for justice. Inspired by the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and Christian spirituality, Greenway engages, on the one hand, intellectuals like Stanley Hauerwas, Richard Rorty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jeffery Stout, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams, and, on the other, contemporary debates over consciousness, free will, evil, and metaethics. He details the character of secular rationality's devastating scission from moral reality and clarifies the promise of understanding faith and spirituality in terms of agape.

The Resounding Soul

Author	: Eric Austin Lee
Publisher	: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Release Date	: 2015-11-10
ISBN 10	: 9781498232081
Pages	: 424 pages
Rating	: 4.9/5 (32 users)

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Download or read book The Resounding Soul written by Eric Austin Lee and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is surely not coincidental that the term "soul" should mean not only the center of a creature's life and consciousness, but also a thing or action characterized by intense vivacity ("that bike's got soul!"). It also seems far from coincidental that the same contemporary academic discussions that have largely cast aside the language of "soul" in their quest to define the character of human mental life should themselves be so--how to say it?--bloodless, so lacking in soul. This volume arises from the opposite premise, namely that the task of understanding human nature is bound up with and in important respects dependent upon the more critical task of learning to be fully human, of learning to have soul. The papers collected here are derived from a conference in Oxford sponsored by the Centre of Theology and Philosophy and together explore the often surprising landscape that emerges when human consciousness is approached from this angle. Drawing upon literary, philosophical, theological, historical, and musical modes of analysis, the essays of this volume vividly remind the reader of the power of the ancient language of soul over against contemporary impulses to reduce, fragment, and overly determine human selfhood.