Pub Date : 2018-09-20DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/3650.001.0001
D. Wegner
Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. The first edition of this book proposed an innovative and provocative answer: the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain; it helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, the book says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion (“the most compelling illusion”), it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. This new edition includes a foreword and an introduction. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, the book examines cases both when people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing and when they are not willing an act that they in fact are doing in such phenomena as hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, and dissociative identity disorder. The author's argument was immediately controversial (called “unwarranted impertinence” by one scholar) but also compelling, and the book has been called the author's magnum opus.
{"title":"The Illusion of Conscious Will","authors":"D. Wegner","doi":"10.7551/mitpress/3650.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3650.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. The first edition of this book proposed an innovative and provocative answer: the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain; it helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, the book says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion (“the most compelling illusion”), it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. This new edition includes a foreword and an introduction. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, the book examines cases both when people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing and when they are not willing an act that they in fact are doing in such phenomena as hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, and dissociative identity disorder. The author's argument was immediately controversial (called “unwarranted impertinence” by one scholar) but also compelling, and the book has been called the author's magnum opus.","PeriodicalId":252042,"journal":{"name":"The MIT Press","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130868700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-20DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/10747.001.0001
In a post-truth, fake news world, we are particularly susceptible to the claims of pseudoscience. When emotions and opinions are more widely disseminated than scientific findings, and self-proclaimed experts get their expertise from Google, how can the average person distinguish real science from fake? This book examines pseudoscience from a variety of perspectives, through case studies, analysis, and personal accounts that show how to recognize pseudoscience, why it is so widely accepted, and how to advocate for real science. Contributors examine the basics of pseudoscience, including issues of cognitive bias; the costs of pseudoscience, with accounts of naturopathy and logical fallacies in the anti-vaccination movement; perceptions of scientific soundness; the mainstream presence of “integrative medicine,” hypnosis, and parapsychology; and the use of case studies and new media in science advocacy.
{"title":"Pseudoscience","authors":"","doi":"10.7551/mitpress/10747.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10747.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"In a post-truth, fake news world, we are particularly susceptible to the claims of pseudoscience. When emotions and opinions are more widely disseminated than scientific findings, and self-proclaimed experts get their expertise from Google, how can the average person distinguish real science from fake? This book examines pseudoscience from a variety of perspectives, through case studies, analysis, and personal accounts that show how to recognize pseudoscience, why it is so widely accepted, and how to advocate for real science. Contributors examine the basics of pseudoscience, including issues of cognitive bias; the costs of pseudoscience, with accounts of naturopathy and logical fallacies in the anti-vaccination movement; perceptions of scientific soundness; the mainstream presence of “integrative medicine,” hypnosis, and parapsychology; and the use of case studies and new media in science advocacy.","PeriodicalId":252042,"journal":{"name":"The MIT Press","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127113670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-20DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037600.001.0001
Armin W. Schulz
It is now widely accepted that many organisms (including humans) don’t just react to the world using behavioral reflexes, but also, at times, decide what to do by relying on mental representations. More specifically, the behavior of many organisms is not simply triggered by a perception of the state of their environment, but inferred using higher-level mental states downstream from their perceptual states. What is far less clear is why this is the case: what benefits does representational decision making bring to an organism, and what implications do these benefits have for the exact role that mental representations play in an organism’s decision making machinery? In my book, I provide answers to these questions. Specifically, I defend a cognitive-efficiency-based account of the evolution of mental representations, according to which a key driver of the evolution of representational decision making is the fact that mental representations can enable an organism to save a number of cognitive resources and to adjust more easily to changed environments. I then apply this account to a number of open questions in different sciences, including: when should we expect cognition to essentially involve parts of the environment? When should we expect decision making to rely on simple, satisficing heuristics? When should we expect organisms to be altruistically motivated to help others? Along the way, I also respond to concerns about the plausibility of evolutionary psychological projects more generally.
{"title":"Efficient Cognition","authors":"Armin W. Schulz","doi":"10.7551/mitpress/9780262037600.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262037600.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"It is now widely accepted that many organisms (including humans) don’t just react to the world using behavioral reflexes, but also, at times, decide what to do by relying on mental representations. More specifically, the behavior of many organisms is not simply triggered by a perception of the state of their environment, but inferred using higher-level mental states downstream from their perceptual states. What is far less clear is why this is the case: what benefits does representational decision making bring to an organism, and what implications do these benefits have for the exact role that mental representations play in an organism’s decision making machinery? In my book, I provide answers to these questions. Specifically, I defend a cognitive-efficiency-based account of the evolution of mental representations, according to which a key driver of the evolution of representational decision making is the fact that mental representations can enable an organism to save a number of cognitive resources and to adjust more easily to changed environments. I then apply this account to a number of open questions in different sciences, including: when should we expect cognition to essentially involve parts of the environment? When should we expect decision making to rely on simple, satisficing heuristics? When should we expect organisms to be altruistically motivated to help others? Along the way, I also respond to concerns about the plausibility of evolutionary psychological projects more generally.","PeriodicalId":252042,"journal":{"name":"The MIT Press","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123708558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-02-16DOI: 10.7551/MITPRESS/9780262037501.001.0001
J. Bermúdez
How can we be aware of ourselves both as physical objects and as thinking, experiencing subjects? What role does the experience of the body play in generating our sense of self? What is the role of action and agency in the construction of the bodily self? These questions have been a rich subject of interdisciplinary debate among philosophers, neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and cognitive scientists for several decades. José Luis Bermúdez been a significant contributor to these debates since the 1990’s, when he authored The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998) and co-edited The Body and the Self (MIT Press, 1995) with Anthony Marcel and Naomi Eilan. The Bodily Self is a selection of essays all focused on different aspects of the role of the body in self-consciousness, prefaced by a substantial introduction outlining common themes across the essays. The essays have been published in a wide range of journals and edited volumes. Putting them together brings out a wide-ranging, thematically consistent perspective on a set of topics and problems that remain firmly of interest across the cognitive and behavioral sciences.
{"title":"The Bodily Self","authors":"J. Bermúdez","doi":"10.7551/MITPRESS/9780262037501.001.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7551/MITPRESS/9780262037501.001.0001","url":null,"abstract":"How can we be aware of ourselves both as physical objects and as thinking, experiencing subjects? What role does the experience of the body play in generating our sense of self? What is the role of action and agency in the construction of the bodily self?\u0000These questions have been a rich subject of interdisciplinary debate among philosophers, neuroscientists, experimental psychologists, and cognitive scientists for several decades. José Luis Bermúdez been a significant contributor to these debates since the 1990’s, when he authored The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998) and co-edited The Body and the Self (MIT Press, 1995) with Anthony Marcel and Naomi Eilan.\u0000The Bodily Self is a selection of essays all focused on different aspects of the role of the body in self-consciousness, prefaced by a substantial introduction outlining common themes across the essays. The essays have been published in a wide range of journals and edited volumes. Putting them together brings out a wide-ranging, thematically consistent perspective on a set of topics and problems that remain firmly of interest across the cognitive and behavioral sciences.","PeriodicalId":252042,"journal":{"name":"The MIT Press","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129499550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：