The neural basis of free will : criterial causation /
Tse, Peter.
Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press,
2013.
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. In this book, Peter Tse examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-409) and indexes.
1. Introduction: The Mind-Body Problem Will Be Solved by Neuroscience -- 2. Overview of the Arguments -- 3. A Criterial Neuronal Code Underlies Downward Mental Causation and Free Will -- What Is Will? -- What Is Criterial Causation? -- 4. Neurons Impose Physical and Informational Criteria for Firing on Their Inputs -- How Can Neurons Realize Informational Criteria? -- The Bottom-Up Information-Processing Hierarchy for Visual Recognition -- Decision Making and Action -- Attention and Top-Down Modulation of Bottom-Up Processing -- Basic Issues in Neuronal Information Processing: Balancing Excitation and Inhibition -- Tonic versus Phasic Firing -- The Sweet Spot of Neural Criticality -- Synchrony among inhibitory Interneurons -- Attentional Binding and Gamma Oscillations -- Attentional Binding by Neuronal Bursting -- Neural Epiconnectivity and Rapid Synaptic Resetting -- Amplifying Microscopic Randomness to Spike Timing Variability -- 5. NMDA Receptors and a Neuronal Code Based on Bursting -- Spiny and Nonspiny Neurons -- The NMDA Receptor -- Long-Term Potentiation Is Not the Mechanism of Rapid Synaptic Plasticity -- Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity -- The Role of Back-Propagating Action Potentials in Rapid Synaptic Plasticity and Bursting -- A Neuronal Burst Code -- Attentional Binding by Bursting: The Role of Cholinergic Feedback -- Attentional Binding by Bursting: The Role of Noncholinergic Feedback -- Conclusion -- 6. Mental Causation as an Instance of Criterial Causation -- Criterial Causation and the Detection of Patterns in Input -- Criterial Causation: Multiple Realizability Is Not Enough -- Addressing Kim's Challenge -- There Is No Backward Causation in Criterial Causation -- Criterial Causation Is a Causation of Pattern-Released Activity -- 7. Criterial Causation Offers a Neural Basis for Free Will -- Strong Free Will -- Criterial Causation Escapes the Basic Argument against Free Will -- James and Incompatibilist Physicalist Libertarianism -- Decision Making and Choice -- Conclusion -- 8. Implications of Criterial Causality for Mental Representation -- The Neural Code Is Not Algorithmic -- Criterialism, Descriptivism, and Reference -- Countering Kripke's Attack -- Wittgenstein and Criteria -- Propositions and Vectorial Encodings -- Mental Operations versus Mental Representations -- Beyond Functionalism -- 9. Barking Up the Wrong Free: Readiness Potentials and the Role of Conscious Willing -- Libet's Experiments Do Not Disprove the Possibility of Free Will -- Is Conscious Willing Causal? -- Illusions of Volitional Efficacy -- 10. The Roles of Attention and Consciousness in Criterial Causation -- Why Are There Qualia? -- Iconic versus Working Memory -- Stage 1 Qualia as Precompiled Informational Outputs of Preconscious Operations -- Qualia as a Shared Format for Endogenous Attentional Operations -- Experience Is for Endogenously Attending, Doing, and Planning -- Volitional Attentional Tracking Requires Consciousness -- If an Animal Can Attentionally Track, Is it Conscious? -- Volitional Attention Can Alter Qualia -- Qualia and Chunking: Types of Qualia -- Qualia and the Frontoparietal Network -- The Superpositionality of Qualia -- Zombies Are Impossible -- Tying It All Together.
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. In this book, Peter Tse examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective.
OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
Cognitive neuroscience.
Neuropsychology.
Science
Free will and determinism.
NEUROSCIENCE/General
PHILOSOPHY/Philosophy of Mind/General