Free Imagination argues that the brain's capacity to imagine is the fundamental basis of human Free Will. Laws of physics need not apply in our internal simulations, so virtually anything is possible there. And since some of our actions can follow from that which we imagine, especially from processes of deliberation that involve imagining possible scenarios and outcomes, our actions inherit the freedom of our imaginings. The creative power of the human imagination may have evolved as a consequence of the demodularization of neural circuitry associated with volitional attentional operations over operands downloadable into a mental workspace where, virtually, anything could be combined with anything else. This new cognitive architecture gave rise to the danger of psychosis. Our schizotypal form of imagination, arising from the promiscuous, generative and iterative combination of disencapsulated operators and operands in a mental workspace, may have evolved only in humans by exapting from existing motoric and other operations involved in volitional hand dexterity to a domain of premotoric simulation. What we imagine into existence can be used for good or evil. Imagination is therefore our greatest tool and weapon. When applied to ourselves, it allows us the possibility of reimagining and then transforming ourselves in light of second-order desires. This gives us the ability to choose to become a new kind of chooser in the future. Other animals lack this second-order Free Will; although they can do otherwise, they cannot want to become otherwise than they are, making them amoral. This book explores the idea that because humans, in contrast, have second-order Free Will, they can be moral or immoral.
Read more
Free Imagination argues that the brain's capacity to imagine is the fundamental basis of human Free Will. Laws of physics need not apply in our internal simulations, so virtually anything is possible there.
Read more
Section 1. The Birth of our Free Imagination 1: What is imagination? 2: Human imagination is like sexual selection 3: A primer on human evolution 5: Evidence of imagination from artifacts 5: Learning from skulls 6: Mental modularity 7: What is volitional attention? 8: Symbolic thought and a premotor theory of imagination 9: Human imagination from brain demodularization 10: Analogy, Music, Abstraction and Madness from Demodularization 11: First-order and second-order desires and Free Will 12: Automatizing Good Character Section 2. The Birth of Good and Evil in our Free Imagination 13: How should we freely choose? 14: What makes us moral beings? 15: Where does Morality come from? 16: Where does human evil come from? 17: Where does human goodness come from? 18: The Vacuum of Meaning caused by Science 19: Attempts to Fill The Vacuum of Meaning 20: The Future of Science and Religion
Read more
Peter Ulric Tse is currently chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, USA. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1984 with a degree in physics/mathematics. Until 1992 he lived abroad, teaching schoolchildren in Nepal, then studying philosophy at the University of Konstanz. In 1992 he began his studies in cognitive psychology at Harvard University where he received a PhD under the guidance of Patrick Cavanagh and Ken Nakayama. From 1999 until 2001 he was a post-doc in the monkey fMRI lab of Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen. He has been a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth since 2001.
Read more
Presents the argument that Free Will is rooted in the capacity of the human imagination to imagine virtually anything Explores the idea that brain demodularization afforded a new type of imagination in humans not present in other animals, which afforded the possibility of a "second-order Free Will" that allows humans and human alone to choose to become a new kind of chooser in the future Explores philosophical issues in light of the latest data and theories of neuroscience
Read more

Product details

ISBN
9780198901181
Published
2024
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Weight
550 gr
Height
240 mm
Width
160 mm
Thickness
17 mm
Age
P, 06
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Number of pages
240

Biographical note

Peter Ulric Tse is currently chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, USA. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1984 with a degree in physics/mathematics. Until 1992 he lived abroad, teaching schoolchildren in Nepal, then studying philosophy at the University of Konstanz. In 1992 he began his studies in cognitive psychology at Harvard University where he received a PhD under the guidance of Patrick Cavanagh and Ken Nakayama. From 1999 until 2001 he was a post-doc in the monkey fMRI lab of Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen. He has been a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth since 2001.