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Category: conscious control

Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency

Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency

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Article by Michael Mascolo and Eeva Kallio in Philosophical Psychology (2019). The abstract: “Is it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological processes…

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Arendt on behaviorism, cognition, work, automation, and passivity

Arendt on behaviorism, cognition, work, automation, and passivity

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“Arendt anticipated the destructive potential of behaviorism decades ago when she lamented the devolution of our conception of ‘thought’ to something that is accomplished by a ‘brain’ and is therefore transferable to ‘electronic instruments’: The last stage of the laboring society, the society of jobholders, demands of its members a sheer automatic functioning, as though individual life had actually been submerged in the over-all life process of the species and the only active decision still required of the individual were…

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Freedom, choice, and future

Freedom, choice, and future

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“Our freedom flourishes only as we steadily will ourselves to close the gap between making promises and keeping them. Implicit in this action is an assertion that through my will I can influence the future. It does not imply total authority over the future, of course, only over my piece of it. In this way, the assertion of freedom of will also asserts the right to the future tense as a condition of a fully human life.” — The Age…

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Dual-System theory and the role of consciousness in intentional action

Dual-System theory and the role of consciousness in intentional action

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Book chapter by Marcus Schlosser in Free Will, Causality and Neuroscience (2020). From the Introduction: “I will propose a revised version of the standard view according to which automatic action (or so-called automatic goal pursuit) can qualify as derivatively intentional if it has appropriate history of habit formation” (36).

The Neural Basis of Human prosocial behavior

The Neural Basis of Human prosocial behavior

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A new Frontiers in Science ebook here. The blurb: With the rise of laboratory and field experimental economics, the famous prisoner’s dilemma, public good, dictator, ultimatum, and trust games have become the classical paradigms of studying prosocial behavior. Due to the increasing use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with human subjects playing economic games, the neural basis of prosocial behavior has been uncovered by a large amount of neural…

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Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency

Beyond free will: The embodied emergence of conscious agency

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Article by Mascolo, M. F., & Kallio, E. (2019). Philosophical Psychology, 1-26. Abstract follows: “Is it possible to reconcile the concept of conscious agency with the view that humans are biological creatures subject to material causality? The problem of conscious agency is complicated by the tendency to attribute autonomous powers of control to conscious processes. In this paper, we offer an embodied process model of conscious agency. We begin with the concept of embodied emergence – the idea that psychological…

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The origins and evolutionary effects of consciousness

The origins and evolutionary effects of consciousness

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From the Evolution Institute. “How consciousness evolved and how consciousness has come to affect evolutionary processes are related issues. This is because biological consciousness–the only form of consciousness of which we are aware–is entailed by a particular, fairly sophisticated form of animal cognition, an open-ended ability to learn by association or, as we call it, ‘unlimited associative learning’ (UAL). Animals with UAL can assign value to novel, composite stimuli and action-sequences, remember them, and use what has been learned for…

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Neuroscience: Deep breathing changes your brain

Neuroscience: Deep breathing changes your brain

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Humans have some intentional control over our brains (and minds and bodies) and focused breathing is one of those control mechanisms. “This recent study finally answers these questions by showing that volitionally controlling our respirational, even merely focusing on one’s breathing, yield additional access and synchrony between brain areas. This understanding may lead to greater control, focus, calmness, and emotional control.”

Neuroscience on intentional breathing

Neuroscience on intentional breathing

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From this piece: “This recent study finally answers these questions by showing that volitionally controlling our respiration, even merely focusing on one’s breathing, yield additional access and synchrony between brain areas. This understanding may lead to greater control, focus, calmness, and emotional control.”