Free Will and Mental Quausation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARA BERNSTEIN ◽  
JESSICA WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Nonreductive Physicalism ◽  
Hard Determinism ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Mental Events

ABSTRACT:The questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are clearly connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-à-vis other events. Nonetheless, the free will and mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining the mutual bearing of these debates. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem of mental ‘quausation’, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type can be efficacious qua the types they are—qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative—given reasons to think such events are causally irrelevant. We go on to identify parallels between hard determinism and eliminativist physicalism and between soft determinism and nonreductive physicalism, and we use these parallels to identify a new argument against hard determinism and to reveal and motivate a common strategy underlying apparently diverse soft determinist accounts.

Two Types of Libertarian Free Will Are Realized in the Human Brain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter U. Tse
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Neural Code ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Neural Spiking ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
New View

In Chapter 10, Peter U. Tse describes various developments in neuroscience that reveal how volitional mental events can be causal within a physicalist paradigm and argues that two types of libertarian free will are realized in the human brain. He takes as his foundation a new understanding of the neural code that emphasizes rapid synaptic resetting over the traditional emphasis of neural spiking. Such a neural code is an instance of “criterial causation,” which requires modifying standard interventionist conceptions of causation. This new view of the neural code, Tse argues, also provides a way out of self-causation arguments against the possibility of mental causation. Finally, Tse maintains that only if there is a second-order free will or meta-free will—do brains have the capacity to both have chosen otherwise and to have meta-chosen otherwise.

Criticism of D.B Volkov’s Teleofunctional Solution to the Problem of Mental Causation

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Anton V. Kuznetsov
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Factors ◽  
Multiple Realizability ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Relational Properties ◽  
Local Properties ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
First Editions

The articles examines the teleofunctional solution to the problem of mental causation, presented by Dmitry Volkov in his recently published book Free Will. An Illusion or an Opportunity. D.B. Volkov proposes solutions to three big metaphysical problems – mental causation, personal identity, and free will. Solving the first problem, Volkov creatively combines the advantages of Dennett’s teleofunctional model and Vasilyev’s local interactionism. Volkov’s teleofunctional model of mental causation seeks to prove the causal relevance of mental properties as non-local higher order properties. In my view, its substantiation is based on three points: (a) critics of the exclusion problem and Kim’s model of mental causation, (b) “Library of first editions” argument, (c) reduction of the causal trajectories argument (CTA 1) by Vasilyev to the counterpart argument (CTA 2) by Volkov. Each of these points faces objections. Kim’s criticism is based on an implicit confusion of two types of reduction – reduction from supervenience and from multiple realizability. The latter type does not threaten Kim’s ideas, but Volkov uses this very type in his criticism. The “Library of first editions” argument does not achieve its goal due to compositional features and because non-local relational properties are a type of external properties that cannot be causally relevant. The reduction of CTA 1 to CTA 2 is unsuccessful since, in the case of this reduction, important features of CTA 1 are lost – these are local mental properties, due to which the influence of non-local physical factors occurs. My main objection is that the concept of causally relevant non-local properties is incompatible with the very concept of cause. The set of causally relevant properties of cause can only be local.

Mental causation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Loewer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Completeness Of Physics

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of mental phenomena to physical phenomena have challenged these assumptions. In the case of mental events (such as someone’s thinking about Vienna), one proposal has been simply to identify not ‘types’ (or classes) of mental events with types of physical events, but merely individual ‘token’ mental events with token physical ones, one by one (your and my thinking about Vienna may be ‘realized’ by different type physical states). The role of mental properties (such as ‘being about Vienna’) in causation is more problematic. Properties are widely thought to have three features that seem to render them causally irrelevant: (1) they are ‘multiply-realizable’ (they can be realized in an indefinite variety of substances); (2) many of them seem not to supervene on neurophysiological properties (differences in mental properties do not always depend merely on differences in neurophysiological ones, but upon relations people bear to things outside their skin); and (3) many of them (for example, ‘being painful’) seem inherently ‘subjective’ in a way that no objective physical properties seem to be. All of these issues are complicated by the fact that there is no consensus concerning the nature of causal relevance for properties in general.

A sufficient condition for instability of BGK type waves in both unmagnetized and magnetized plasmas

1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Infeld ◽  
G. Rowlands
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Linear Theory ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Uniform Magnetic Field ◽  
Magnetized Plasmas ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
General Sufficient Condition ◽  
Special Cases

This paper investigates the general problem of stability of Bernstein—Greene— Kruskal type waves. By investigating perturbations perpendicular to the wave, we obtain a general sufficient condition for instability. This is then extended to the case of magnetized plasmas with a uniform magnetic field in the direction of the BGK wave. New perturbed modes, having no counterpart in linear theory, are also found. Various special cases are considered and previous, more particular results confirmed.

GENERAL MODEL OF DYNAMICS OF HUMAN AND HUMANOID MOTION: FEASIBILITY, POTENTIALS AND VERIFICATION

2006 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 21-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
VELJKO POTKONJAK ◽  
MIOMIR VUKOBRATOVIĆ ◽  
KALMAN BABKOVIĆ ◽  
BRANISLAV BOROVAC
Keyword(s):  
General Problem ◽  
General Model ◽  
Real Motion ◽  
Inductive Approach ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Bipedal Gait ◽  
Simulated Motion ◽  
Single Support Phase ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Support Phase

This paper elaborates a generalized approach to the modeling of human and humanoid motion. Instead of the usual inductive approach that starts from the analysis of different situations of real motion (like bipedal gait and running; playing tennis, soccer, or volleyball; gymnastics on the floor or using some gymnastic apparatus) and tries to make a generalization, the deductive approach considered begins by formulating a completely general problem and deriving different real situations as special cases. The paper first explains the general methodology. The concept and the software realization are verified by comparing the results with the ones obtained by using "classical" software for one particular well-known problem: biped walk. The applicability and potentials of the proposed method are demonstrated by simulation using a selected example. The simulated motion includes a landing on one foot (after a jump), the impact, a dynamically balanced single-support phase, and overturning (falling down) when the balance is lost. It is shown that the same methodology and the same software can cover all these phases.

Determinables, Determinates, and Causal Relevance

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Walter
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Manifest Image

Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical events unless mental causation is a genuine case of overdetermination or mental properties are straightforwardly reducible to physical properties.

Nonreductive Materialism and Mental Causation

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ausonio Marras
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical Theory ◽  
Nonreductive Materialism ◽  
Token Physicalism ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Bridge Principles

I take nonreductive materialism to be the conjunction of two theses, the first ontological, the second epistemological. The ontological thesis - token physicalism- is that mental events (processes, states, etc.) are tokenidentical to physical events; the epistemological thesis is that psychology is not reducible to physical theory in the classic sense of 'reduction,' according to which we reduce a theory to a another theory by deriving the laws of the former from the laws of the latter via 'bridge principles' linking the predicates of the reducing theory with the predicates of the reduced theory.

scholarly journals Double Prevention and Mental Causation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sean Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Exclusion Problem ◽  
Mental Events

<p>Double prevention is often mentioned in the causation literature but is not often discussed in depth. In this thesis my primary goal is to take a deep look at double prevention and evaluate one place it has been put to work. Briefly, a case of double prevention is a case where one event prevents another from preventing a third. While we have strong intuitions that such cases should be causally relevant at least, there is debate over whether they should be counted as fully causal. Sophie Gibb (2013) puts this concept to work by arguing that mental events act as double preventers to physical events. She frames this as an argument against the causal exclusion problem. I propose my own adaption of Gibb’s proposal which does not rest on the controversial premises the original does and as such has a wider appeal.</p>

scholarly journals The oscillations of the dynamical systems with hysteresis characteristics excited stochastic parameter and forces. II

1980 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-22
Author(s):  
Nguyen Cao Menh
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Internal Friction ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Stochastic Parameter ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
Stochastic Forces ◽  
Hysteresis Characteristics

In this paper, the problem in [1] is continued studying. The some special cases of the general problem are considered. The beam with internal friction under stochastic forces is analyzed. In this example the influence of the hysteresis character in material and the parameter in the system on the oscillations of the beam are shown.

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