Brain as agent and conscious mind as action guide: from Libet-style experiments to necessary conditions for free will

Many neuroscientific experiments, based on monitoring brain activity, suggest that it is possible to predict the conscious intention/choice/decision of an agent before he himself knows that. Some neuroscientists and philosophers interpret the results of these experiments as showing that free will is an illusion, since it is the brain and not the conscious mind that intends/chooses/decides. Assuming that the methods and results of these experiments are reliable the question is if they really show that free will is an illusion. To address this problem, I argue that first it is needed to answer three questions related to the relationship between conscious mind and brain: 1. Do brain events cause conscious events? 2. Do conscious events cause brain events? 3. Who is the agent, that is, who consciously intends/chooses/ decides, the conscious mind, the brain, or both? I answer these questions by arguing that the conscious mind is a property of the brain due to which the brain has the causal capacity to interact adaptively with its body, and trough the body, with the physical and sociocultural environment. In other words, the brain is the agent and the conscious mind, in its various forms - cognitive, volitional and emotional - and contents, is its guide of action. Based on this general view I argue that the experiments aforementioned do not show that free will is an illusion, and as a starting point for examining this problem I point out, from some exemplary situations, what I believe to be some of the necessary conditions for free will.Key-words: Agent brain, conscious mind, free will, Libet-style experiments.

Knowing your choice before you choose

In 1980s, neuroscientists joined philosophers and psychologists in the investigation of volitional actions and freedom of will. In a series of experiments pioneered by Benjamin Libet (1985), it was observed that some neural activities correlated with volitional action regularly precedes the conscious will to perform it, which suggests that what appears to be a free action may actually be predetermined by some neural activities, even before the conscious intention to act arises. Shortly after publication of that study, Libet’s findings and interpretations were started to be criticized on philosophical and methodological grounds. In this study, the legitimacy of the criticisms directed to Libet’s and his successors’ experiments is discussed by taking recent neuroscience studies on volition into account and it is argued that these criticisms are not sufficient to eliminate the doubt that these experiments casted on the freedom of the will.Keywords: Free will, Benjamin Libet, neuroscience, unconscious intentions.

Philosophy and genesis of the judicial oath and the oath of office

The main features of the philosophy and genesis of the judicial and the oath of office are considered in the article. An oath is a conventional conditional-symbolic act based on an appeal to a person’s conscience in his conscious intention to identify and adhere to certain accepted values, as well as to a certain institution, a defined community or a specific representative of power. Judicial oath and oaths of office have both religious and legal origins, as they belong to the universal foundations of the formation of social institutions. The deep-rooted perception of the need to take and keep the oath in the performance of functional duties and the rule of law is traced in the article on selected examples from the history of Europe. There is a common feature of religious and modern judicial oaths and oaths of office. All of them are based on the inner moral imperative of man, on the awareness of one’s own responsibility and human dignity. The modern acceptance of some oaths with respect to a certain subject (Bible, crucifix, constitution, code, flag) has prehistoric roots, which indicates the precedence of symbolic gestures and movements of verbal texts in primitive rituals. In the Middle Ages, judicial oaths and oaths of office already used references to elements inherent in modern European tradition, in particular, justice and impartiality. The obligation to strictly reproduce the formula when taking a certain judicial oath or oath of office has an ancient Roman basis. In Rome to swear (iurare) meant to proclaim the formula “ius iurandum” (“oath”, literally – “the formula that must be formulated”). The oath of judicial lawyers (judges, prosecutors, lawyers) is a mandatory element of the beginning of the professional activity in the area of Justice. It appears as a ceremonial act, which publicly certifies a person’s readiness to perform the important duties assigned to him. In modern Ukraine, the oath is taken by judges and other officials at the beginning of their professional activity.

The canonical genre of confession in christian communication

The article is devoted to the canonical genre of confession in Christian communication. It is noted that in the complex global linguistic picture of the world, scientists identify many private pictures, each of which is characterized by linguistic uniqueness, which is manifested at all levels. The notion of the genre of confession is seen as intersecting with the interests of different branches of science, although the keen interest of linguists in this object of study is a relatively new phenomenon. The article gives definitions of the concept of confession, which are recorded in religious and secular literature; the forms of realization of the confessional genre are analyzed and the situations of confession available. In the scientific literature, the study of confession as a genre of communication has a fragmentary character: it is considered as a genre and as an intention, as an intended and an act of communication. Confession as a genre is characterized by communicative freedom, relative stylistic and compositional independence. The conditions of sincerity and conscious intention to tell the truth, which are embedded in the genre characteristics of confession, make it possible to distinguish it from other genre forms.

Consciousness reduced: The role of the ‘idiot’ in early evolutionary psychology

A conception of the idiotic mind was used to substantiate late 19th-century theories of mental evolution. A new school of animal/comparative psychologists attempted from the 1870s to demonstrate that evolution was a mental as well as a physical process. This intellectual enterprise necessitated the closure, or narrowing, of the ‘consciousness gap’ between human and animal species. A concept of a quasi-non-conscious human mind, set against conscious intention and ability in higher animals, provided an explanatory framework for the human–animal continuum and the evolution of consciousness. The article addresses a significant lacuna in the historiographies of intellectual disability, animal science, and evolutionary psychology, where the application of a conception of human idiocy to advance theories of consciousness evolution has not hitherto been explored. These ideas retain contemporary resonance in ethology and cognitive psychology, and in the theory of ‘speciesism’, outlined by Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (1975), which claims that equal consideration of interests is not arbitrarily restricted to members of the human species, and advocates euthanasia of intellectually disabled human infants. Speciesism remains at the core of animal rights activism today. The article also explores the influence of the idea of the semi-evolved idiot mind in late-Victorian anthropology and neuroscience. These ideas operated in a separate intellectual sphere to eugenic thought. They were (and remain) deeply influential, and were at the heart of the idea of the moral idiot or imbecile, targeted in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act, as well as in 20th-century animal and human consciousness theory.

Preparation and execution of voluntary action both contribute to awareness of intention

How and when motor intentions form has long been controversial. In particular, the extent to which motor preparation and action-related processes produce a conscious experience of intention remains unknown. Here, we used a brain–computer interface (BCI) while participants performed a self-paced movement task to trigger cues upon the detection of a readiness potential (a well-characterized brain signal that precedes movement) or in its absence. The BCI-triggered cues instructed participants either to move or not to move. Following this instruction, participants reported whether they felt they were about to move at the time the cue was presented. Participants were more likely to report an intention (i) when the cue was triggered by the presence of a readiness potential than when the same cue was triggered by its absence, and (ii) when they had just made an action than when they had not. We further describe a time-dependent integration of these two factors: the probability of reporting an intention was maximal when cues were triggered in the presence of a readiness potential, and when participants also executed an action shortly afterwards. Our results provide a first systematic investigation of how prospective and retrospective components are integrated in forming a conscious intention to move.

FOTONARRATIVAS DE PRÁTICAS PEDAGÓGICAS:UMA ANÁLISE SOBRE AS PERCEPÇÕES DE GÊNERO NA EDUCAÇÃO INFANTIL

This article presents partial results from the master’s degree research developed in the Post-Graduation in Education program in Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) -Sorocaba Campus. Having as object of study the pedagogical practice of the researcher and three teachers of early childhood education, the research seeked the answer for the following questioning: what perceptions of gender reveal themselves in the pedagogical practices of the early childhood education teachers? To answer such question, the study structured itself in the qualitative perspective and used as data production the construction of narratives (oral and written) starting from photographies of the pedagogical practices of the teachers that participated in theresearch. The results evidence that the perceptions about genders of the researched teachers in some moments demonstrate to prioritize biological aspects, in others, social ones, however, there is, on their part, the conscious intention to break up with some hegemonic models and to promote practices promoters of gender equity.

The Communicative Norm in Russian Informal Verbal Communication: the Specificity of Child Speech

The article is devoted to the analysis of the communicative norm and disorders in informal Russian verbal communication on the basis of children’s speech in conversations between children, children and parents, teenagers. Such parameters of communication as rules of speech behaviour for the convenience of the recipient and etiquette genres are considered based on a material of authentic children’s statements published on the Krasnoyarsk Internet forum “Krasmama” and in the modern Russian literature for children. The article also considers a mechanism of communicative errors. Communicative scenarios of compliance and violation of the rules of speech behaviour are reconstructed. Particular attention is paid to statements having the purpose to manipulate the recipient. As a result, it was found that unconscious violations of communicative norms and, in particular, the rules of speech behaviour in the interests of a listener are characteristic of children’s speech. The cause of errors may be the imitation of adult informal, reduced speech. On the other hand, following the communicative norm, namely observance of the rules of speech behaviour and the use of etiquette speech genres in child-parent communication leads to ambiguous results and may indicate a conscious intention of a child to influence or manipulate an adult. Etiquette statements coming out of a child’s mouth are markers of adult speech. In communication between children, and especially between adolescents, as shown by the analysis of texts of modern literature for children, inappropriate compliance with etiquette standards may signalize the author’s hidden goals that are still unknown to the addressee (influence, manipulation), or a communicative error

A Longitudinal Study of Habit and Its Antecedents in Coffee Chain Patronage

We developed a theoretical model to examine the effects of repurchase intention and habit on consumers' repurchase behavior in the context of coffee chain patronage. We used partial least squares to analyze 2-wave longitudinal data collected from 195 undergraduate students who had experience with various coffee chains. Results showed that repurchase behavior was influenced by habit rather than by conscious intention, and that both customer satisfaction and perceived value had a positive influence on habitual visits to coffee chains. Further, perceived coffee quality and service quality significantly influenced customer satisfaction and perceived value. However, atmosphere was not significantly associated with either customer satisfaction or perceived value. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.