Juan Sanguineti

Cognitive science, and especially neuroscience, currently addresses the philosophical problem of human free choice. This article proposes addressing the problem with the methodology of a confrontation between a phenomenological analysis of human decisions and some main points of philosophy of mind and of neuroscience. The author offers a proposal for the meaning of a 'free' decision, within the context of intentional actions. While avoiding dualism, which is linked to a pure opposition between a disincarnate act of will and a merely physiological account of what is going on in the brain, the author proposes a unitary conception of intentional cognitive/emotional circuits both in animals and in human beings. Neural activations are just a dimension of those circuits and need to be analyzed at the intentional level. Truth and good as a permanent background in human intentional powers provide the root of free choices, as essentially different from animal choices.

This paper aims to explain how the human Self can be said a cause of his/her free actions, especially when they are voluntary and physical. First it is analyzed the natural causation in the physical world, particularly in self-organized living beings and afterwards in animal intentional behaviour, which is guided by cognition and emotions. An important distinction between downward causation and bottom-up causation is useful to explain the complex causality in self-organized intentional beings. Downward causation, coming from a higher level, has in influence over lower ontological levels. Bottom-up causation operates inversely. It is also drawn a distinction between the “natural Self” (nature enhanced by habits) and the “intentional Self” (a subject endowed with consciousness and the power of controlling operations). This framework is applied to man, whose higher downward causality comes from the person (intellect and free will) and, guiding the sensitive lower layer of his/her nature, reaches in a quite natural way the voluntary control of the body.

This paper studies the notion of self-knowledge in Aristotle and principally in Aquinas. According to Aristotle, sensitive operations like seeing or hearing can be perceived by the knower (sensitive consciousness), while there can be also an understanding of the understanding, mainly attributed to God, but not exclusively. In his ethical writings, Aristotle acknowledges the human capacity of understanding and perceiving one’s life and existence, extended also to other persons in the case of friendship. Aquinas receives this heritage and includes also the habitual self-awareness of the mind which was held by Augustine. A more ontological view is taken from the Neoplatonic notion of complete reflexivity of the intellectual soul upon its own essence as a manifestation of total immateriality and self-possession, which is a higher way of existing and living. Thus, the modern idea of self-consciousness is not absent in the Thomistic account of self-understanding, though the term “conscience” was reserved to the moral judgment upon one’s actions as right or wrong. The Thomistic distinction between habitual existential self-knowledge, which is an intellectual experience including perception and judgment, and scientific and abstract human self-knowledge, is useful and provides insight to the ontological value of existential self-knowledge. The last part of the paper argues that according to Aquinas there is a deep connection between self-knowledge and self-love, provided they are rooted on truth and virtue. This point has many consequence in the notion of shared self-awareness and mutual joy in friendship. The author concludes as well that a genuine self-understanding is possible only in friendship based upon virtue.

Una comparación entre la filosofía de Tomás de Aquino y la ciencia moderna es posible y puede ser fructífera. Algunos aspectos de su visión del mundo natural son incompatibles con nuestros conocimientos científicos, pero otros son del todo compatibles y relevantes para una correcta interpretación de los logros de las ciencias, teniendo en cuenta la distinción entre ciencia y filosofía, desconocida antes de la época moderna. El artículo explora brevemente esta temática en la cosmología, la teoría evolutiva (especialmente el problema de la contingencia y el indeterminismo) y la neurociencia.

El artículo examina el pensamiento de Wittgenstein sobre el lenguaje del dolor en la primera y tercera persona. Se subrayan ciertas diferencias gramaticales importantes, según el típico método lingüístico de este filósofo, no sólo respecto a esas dos perspectivas, sino también con relación al uso de verbos cognitivos como “sentir” y “saber”. El examen de muchos textos sugiere ciertos puntos acerca de las relaciones entre las vivencias personales, la captación empática de las vivencias ajenas y su traducción conceptual. Una breve comparación con algunos textos de Tomás de Aquino completa la propuesta de la existencia de un conocimiento no intencional.

Abstract: Being-in-the-world defines in Heidegger an ontological and practical existential situation that in a first approach characterizes intellectual knowledge, an approach related to the Husserlian notion of intentionality. In his Curso de teoría del conocimiento, Polo rectifies this characterization, stressing the primacy of theory regarding action, and interpreting the practical (technical) relationship with the world as a lower level of “having”. Making some comparisons between Husserl, Scheler and Jonas, in connection with Polo’s thought, the article presents different accounts of the notion of the world (phenomenological, metaphysical, moral) that allow to clarify the problem of the relationship between contemplation and action in the world.

The Importance of Neuroscience in the Study of Religiosity The article aims to determine whether neuroscience is relevant for a better comprehension of religious activities. The answer to this problem emphasizes the distinction between mental operations and their intentional content. Neurobiological studies, I argue, can be important to evaluate the psychological and neural dimension of religious acts, with caution due to their great complexity, but not to evaluate the truth and genuineness of their content, neither to solve objective religious problems. Neuroscience may be helpful for the discernment of some extraordinary religious experiences and to study pseudo-religious pathologies as well.