The Causational and Free Will Theories of Volition PDF Download

Author: Malcolm Guthrie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 130

View

Book Description

Author: W. J. Mander
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192693239
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301

View

Book Description
This book presents a history of the volitional theory of causation—the philosophical proposal that volition, or will, of the same or broadly the same stamp as that which we experience in our own deliberate and voluntary doings, should be taken as the basis for all causality. Few today know much about the volitional theory of causation, and even fewer have given it any serious attention. But if current opinion regards this suggestion as an unusual one, of minor importance, the historical record shows otherwise, revealing that it is a theory which has been proposed and developed again and again throughout the modern era. Its obscurity is only a recent phenomenon. Starting at the beginning of the Early Modern period and progressing right up the modern times, the historical discussion takes in both supporters and critics, as well as both famous and less well-known figures, to tell the story of a long-running debate which contemporary history of philosophy has forgotten. The principal figures discussed are Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer, Mansel, Mill, Martineau, Alexander Campbell Fraser, Borden Parker Bowne, and G.F.Stout, although many other philosophers are also considered. The book ends with a consider of the philosophical merits of the theory.

Author: Bernard Feltz
Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 9789004372917
Category : Causation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
This book aims to show that recent developments in neuroscience permit a defense of free will. Through language, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.

Author: Meghan Griffith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415562198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 162

View

Book Description
The question of whether humans are free to make their own decisions has long been debated and it continues to be a controversial topic today. In Free Will: The Basics readers are provided with a clear and accessible introduction to this central but challenging philosophical problem. The questions which are discussed include: Does free will exist? Or is it illusory? Can we be free even if everything is determined by a chain of causes? If our actions are not determined, does this mean they are just random or a matter of luck? In order to have the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility, must we have alternatives? What can recent developments in science tell us about the existence of free will? Because these questions are discussed without prejudicing one view over others and all technical terminology is clearly explained, this book is an ideal introduction to free will for the uninitiated.

Author: Peter Tse
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262019108
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 473

View

Book Description
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.

Author: Can Laurens Löwe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108988660
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

View

Book Description
This book offers a novel account of Aquinas's theory of the human act. It argues that Aquinas takes a human act to be a composite of two power-exercises, where one relates to the other as form to matter. The formal component is an act of the will, and the material component is a power-exercise caused by the will, which Aquinas refers to as the 'commanded act.' The book also argues that Aquinas conceptualizes the act of free choice as a hylomorphic composite: it is, materially, an act of the will, but it inherits a form from reason. As the book aims to show, the core idea of Aquinas's hylomorphic action theory is that the exercise of one power can structure the exercise of another power, and this provides a helpful way to think of the presence of cognition in conation and of intention in bodily movement.

Author: John Stuart Mill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 278

View

Book Description

Author: Mill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

View

Book Description

Author: John Stuart Mill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

View

Book Description

Author: John Stuart Mill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282

View

Book Description