Andrea Lavazza

Free will is usually defined by three conditions: the ability to do otherwise; control of one’s own choices; responsiveness to reasons. The compatibility of free will with determinism lies at the heart of the philosophical debate at the metaphysical level. This debate, while being increasingly refined, has not yet reached a conclusion. Recently, neuroscience and empirical psychology have tried to settle the problem of free will with a series of experiments that go in the direction of so-called illusionism: free will as the conscious control of our behavior cannot exist, being a mere illusion. But even in this case, the experimental results are challenged at various levels. Considering that in most moral and legal systems, the subject’s liability derives from their freedom, the usefulness of preserving the concept of freedom – which incidentally responds to a very strong commonsensical intuition – suggests the need for an operational solution. This could be done by resorting to the concepts of capacity and cognitive control, which are measured by a set of well-established neuropsychological tests. Our preliminary proposal is to create an index, the first step towards a specific quantification and measurement of free will, to be used especially in ethical and legal contexts. Theoretical premises, practical difficulties and objections to this approach are also discussed and addressed.

: The long dispute between incompatibilists and compatibilists is further exemplified in the discussion between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. In this article I try to add to the discussion by outlining a concept of free will linked to five operating conditions and proposing its operationalization and quantification. The idea is to empirically and pragmatically define free will as we need it for moral blame and legal liability, while separating it from the debate on global determinism, local determinism, automatisms and priming phenomena on a psychological level. This is made possible by weakening the claims of determinisms and psychological automatisms, based on the latest research, and by giving a well-outlined definition of free will as I want to defend it. Keywords: Compatibilism; Daniel Dennett; Free Will Quantification; Global Determinism; Local Determinism Un approccio pragmatico ed empirico al libero arbitrio Riassunto: La lunga disputa tra incompatibilisti e compatibilisti trova un’esemplificazione nel dibattito tra Sam Harris e Daniel Dennett. In questo articolo cerco di contribuire alla discussione delineando un concetto di libero arbitrio legato a cinque condizioni operative e proponendo la sua operazionalizzazione e quantificazione. L’idea è di definire empiricamente e pragmaticamente il libero arbitrio di cui abbiamo bisogno per trattare di colpa morale e di responsabilità legale, separandolo dal dibattito su determinismo globale, determinismo locale, automatismi e fenomeni di innesco a livello psicologico. Ciò è reso possibile indebolendo le pretese di determinismi e automatismi psicologici, che si basano su recenti ricerche empiriche, e dando una precisa definizione di libero arbitrio per come voglio difenderlo. Parole chiave: Compatibilismo; Daniel Dennett; Quantificazione del libero arbitrio; Determinismo globale; Determinismo locale

This article aims to provide a brief overview of mental causation problem and its current proposed solutions. Indeed, mental causation turns out as one of the most difficult philosophical conundrums in contemporary philosophy of mind. In the first two sections, we offer an outline of the problem and the philosophical debate about it, and show that mental causation problem is pivotal within the contemporary philosophy of mind. In the third section, we focus on the most popular models of mental causation, namely Kim's and Davidson's accounts, also discussing the objections raised against them. In the final section, we take into consideration some recent proposals poised to solve the mental causation problem, including powerism. Given the logical and metaphysical plausibility of almost all these different options, our conclusion is that mental causation is still an open problem and it is far from being resolved.

This paper focuses on the emergent neo-Jamesian perspective concerning the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Starting from the distinction between nucleus and fringe in the stream of thought described by William James, it can be argued that our appreciation of a work of art is guided by a vague and blurred perception of a much more powerful content, of which we are not fully aware. Accordingly, a work of art is seen as a kind of metaphor of our mental life, objectified to be able to reach out to a much larger audience. However, it is a “realistic” theory rooted in evolutionary psychology, which claims that our mind developed within a framework shaped by environmental pressures. The aesthetics illustrated by several novelists develops a paradigm for this theory. The search for the neuronal correlates of stream of consciousness allows to make a comparison with the recent findings of neuroaesthetics and to reject its claim that it is unnecessary to take phenomenology and psychology into account.

Memory, as is well known, makes up a large part of our identity (even though the criterion of this “identity” is controversial). Documents – understood as inscriptions – make up our external memory in a peculiar way: they constitute both a stable anchor and a reference-point for our personal transformations over time. There is, however, also an internal memory, residing in our brain. This is based in part on external documentation; but it is of course not exclusively tied thereto. Rather it evolves dynamically over time, in part reflecting ethical debates which we carry on within ourselves and which is influenced also by emotional factors, for example as we try to erase memories that are unpleasant. If, for example, the internal memory of some offense against our person is erased, then the motivation to testify against those who offended against us no longer exists or is greatly reduced, and this is so even though the documents that record the offense remain. Our motivations here depend on the emotional factor in our memories; once this has been lost, even though the autobiographical, episodic memory still remains, then the value-significance of the event fades from our view, and with it the impulse to act. Emotions are in large part responsible for creating a bond with documents; they make it possible for our internal and external memories to have significance. There must be some degree of emotional resonance in inscriptions relating to events in the past, which arises out of our own experience of these events and from our memory of these experiences, for these inscriptions to have significance in our lives. Documents are thus fundamental. But for ourselves and for our social lives, they must be supplemented by internal memories.

According to a widespread view, a complete explanatory reduction of all aspects of the human mind to the electro-chemical functioning of the brain is at hand and will certainly produce vast and positive cultural, political and social consequences. However, notwithstanding the astonishing advances generated by the neurosciences in recent years for our understanding of the mechanisms and functions of the brain, the application of these findings to the specific but crucial issue of human agency can be considered a “pre-paradigmatic science” (in Thomas Kuhn’s sense). This implies that the situation is, at the same time, intellectually stimulating and methodologically confused. More specifically—because of the lack of a solid, unitary and coherent methodological framework as to how to connect neurophysiology and agency—it frequently happens that tentative approaches, bold but very preliminary claims and even clearly flawed interpretations of experimental data are taken for granted. In this article some examples of such conceptual confusions and intellectual hubris will be presented, which derive from the most recent literature at the intersection between neurosciences, on the one hand, and philosophy, politics and social sciences, on the other hand. It will also be argued that, in some of these cases, hasty and over-ambitious conclusions may produce negative social and political consequences. The general upshot will be that very much has still to be clarified as to what and how neurosciences can tell us about human agency and that, in the meantime, intellectual and methodological caution is to be recommended.

Neuroscientific research on the removal of unpleasant and traumatic memories is still at a very early stage, but is making rapid progress and has stirred a significant philosophical and neuroethical debate. Even if memory is considered to be a fundamental element of personal identity, in the context of memory-erasing the autonomy of decision-making seems prevailing. However, there seem to be situations where the overall context in which people might choose to intervene on their memories would lead to view those actions as counterproductive. In this article, I outline situations where the so-called composition effects can produce negative results for everyone involved, even if the individual decisions are not as such negative. In such situations medical treatments that usually everyone should be free to take, following the principle of autonomy, can make it so that the personal autonomy of the individuals in the group considered is damaged or even destroyed. In these specific cases, in which what is called the “conformity to context” prevails, the moral admissibility of procedures of memory-erasing is called into question and the principle of personal autonomy turns out to be subordinate to social interests benefitting every member of the group

BackgroundAlthough some of the most radical hypothesis related to the practical implementations of human enhancement have yet to become even close to reality, the use of cognitive enhancers is a very tangible phenomenon occurring with increasing popularity in university campuses as well as in other contexts. It is now well documented that the use of cognitive enhancers is not only increasingly common in Western countries, but also gradually accepted as a normal procedure by the media as well. In fact, its implementation is not unusual in various professional contexts and it has its peak in colleges. Even when certain restrictions in the legislation of a country are indeed in place, they are without doubts easy to overcome. The legitimacy and appropriateness of such restrictions will not be the focus of our investigation.DiscussionOur concern is instead related to the moral and social reasons to publicly acknowledge the use of cognitive enhancers in competitive-selective contexts. These reasons are linked to a more neutral analysis of contemporary Western society: it is a fact that an increasing number of competitive-selective contexts have a substantial number of contenders using cognitive enhancers.SummaryThrough the use of five explicative examples, in this paper we want to analyse the problems related to its use. In particular, it will be our aim to show the tension between one of the main argument used by bio-liberals and the actual implementation of the drugs in competitive, or semi-competitive contexts.

Moral bioenhancement is the attempt to improve human behavioral dispositions, especially in relation to the great ethical challenges of our age. To this end, scientists have hypothesised new molecules or even permanent changes in the genetic makeup to achieve such moral bioenhancement. The philosophical debate has focused on the permissibility and desirability of that enhancement and the possibility of making it mandatory, given the positive result that would follow. However, there might be another way to enhance the overall moral behavior of us humans, namely that of targeting people with lower propensity to trust and altruism. Based on the theory of attachment, people who have a pattern of insecure attachment are less inclined to prosocial behavior. We know that these people are influenced by negative childhood memories: this negative emotional component may be erased or reduced by the administration of propranolol when the bad memory is reactivated, thereby improving prosocial skills. It could be objected that memory-editing might be a threat for the person’s identity and authenticity. However, if the notion of rigid identity is replaced by that of extended identity, this objection loses validity. If identity is understood as something that changes over time, moral bioenhancement through memory-editing seems indeed legitimate and even desirable.

A proper and rigorous analysis of the implications of a physicalist and reductionist concept of the mental (that is, that the mind is merely the activity of the human brain, and that the human brain is the contingent, provisional result of biological evolution) leads to several consequences that seem to have been overlooked so far. First of all, there emerges a case in favour of the existence of incommensurable conceptual schemes; secondly, the necessary nature of thought experiments on mind is put into question. The further exploration of the consequences of physicalism on the necessity of logical laws does not embrace the radical critics of the naturalistic approach by A. Plantinga, whose “evolutionary argument against naturalism” has only some analogies with the one exposed here.

Gracias a los rápidos progresos de las neurociencias cognitivas, algunos investigadores, sobre todo de áreas anglosajonas, comienzan a utilizar criterios basados sobre la neurobiología para redimensionar o disolver el concepto de persona -fundamentalmente en ámbito bioético- en cuanto definido ilusorio.En particular, se sostiene que exista un network cerebral innato, que comprende cuatro áreas especificas del encéfalo, que produciría en modo automático la percepción de una categoría especial de cosas, definidas personas. Tal hipÓtesis se basa sobre una creciente cantidad de datos experimentales, tomados de modo individual y corroborados en las pruebas acumuladas.Frente a la dificultad de definir con precisión a la "persona" en los casos bioéticamente más dificiles y controvertidos, se sugiere por tanto que la idea misma sea abandonada en cuanto fruto de un mecanismo evolutivo-adaptativo actualmente inadecuado fi-ente a los dilemas creados por la medicina contemporánea. Se realiza así una naturalización total del concepto para luego sugerir el regreso a una perspectiva utilitarista respecto a los casos bioéticos en los cuales falle un acuerdo común.Después de haber presentado en detalle la propuesta presentada por MJ Farah y A.S Heberlein, en el presente articulo se ofrecen algunos argumentos para rejÚtar el monismo metodológico en el cual tal propuesta se basa, en particular subrayando la dimensión histórica del concepto de persona, surgido gradualmente y no en modo homogéneo, en contraste con la perspectiva neurobiológica innatista. Se pone en evidencia, por tanto el necesario pluralismo epistemológico que acompaña la definición de persona. No es posible excfuir a priori la dimensión filosófica, que es siempre jitndamental, mientras los descubrimientos de las neurociencias se proponen como elementos empiricos complementarios, actualmente no prescindibles por su crecienle relevancia