Do We Have Free Will Parmenides Foundation我们有自由意志巴门尼德的基础.pptVIP

The Format of Thought: a Dynamical Systems Approach to Intentional Action Susan Schneider Department of Philosophy, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and Institute for Cognitive Science University of Pennsylvania Aim DST purports to be a theory of the nature of thought. View of DST in mainstream philosophy of mind: Unclear on how low-level explanations in DST can inform traditional philosophical problems such as the mind-body problem, mental causation, the nature of mental states/events, and the free will-determinism debate. Today: quick discussion of novel DST view of mental causation. Use this view of mental causation to develop a position on the free will debate for DST (“Neurocompatibilism).” Approaches to the Nature of Thought Naturalism: explain how mental phenomena fit into the world that scientific investigates. Naturalistic approaches to conceptual thought: Connectionism: conceptual thought is a species of pattern recognition in which activation patterns spread though a connectionist network (Paul and Patricia Churchland, Paul Smolensky). Symbol processing approach. Conceptual thought is the manipulation of symbols according to algorithms (Fodor, Pinker). DST – cognitive systems are kinds of dynamic systems, and as such, they are best understood from the perspective of DST. DST Approach to Mental Causation Normal model of causation is “linear causation” (“efficient causation”, “billiard ball causation”) in which event E1 brings about E2. DST: different approach. Freeman: “Linear causality fails most dramatically in studies of the relations between microscopic neurons and the mesoscopic populations in which they are embedded...Such interactions are not particular to neurons in neuropil, being common in familiar systems such as hurricanes, lasers, fires, herds…In each of these cases, particles making up the ensemble simultaneuously create a mesoscopic state and are constrained by the very state they have created.” (p. 129) DST and Mental Causati