Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T01:28:43.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Free Will and Necker's Cube: Reason, Language and Top-Down Control in cognitive neuroscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2012

Grant Gillett  and
Sam C. Liu
Grant Gillett*
Affiliation:
Bioethics Centre, University of Otago
Sam C. Liu*
Affiliation:
Neuroscience Department, University of Otago
*
grant.gillett@otaho.ac.nz; liuch471@student.otago.ac.nz
grant.gillett@otaho.ac.nz; liuch471@student.otago.ac.nz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The debates about human free will are traditionally the concern of metaphysics but neuroscientists have recently entered the field arguing that acts of the will are determined by brain events themselves causal products of other events. We examine that claim through the example of free or voluntary switch of perception in relation to the Necker cube. When I am asked to see the cube in one way, I decide whether I will follow the command (or do as I am asked) using skills that reason and language give to me and change my brain states accordingly. The voluntary shift of perspective in seeing the Necker cube this way or that exemplifies the top-down control exercised by a human being on the basis of the role of language and meaning in their activity. It also indicates the lived story that is at the centre of each human consciousness. In the third part of this essay, three arguments are used to undermine metaphysical objections to the very idea of top-down self control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 87 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 29 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jackson, J. Hughlings, ‘The Croonian lectures on evolution and dissolution of the nervous system’, The British Medical Journal (1884), 705CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., 704–705.

3 Franz, E., and Gillett, G., Hughlings Jackson's evolutionary neurology: a unifying frameworkfor cognitive neuroscience Brain, 2011, 134(10):3114–3120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Harré, Rom and Gillett, Grant, The Discursive Mind (SAGE Publications, 1994)Google Scholar.

5 Wegner, Daniel M., The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

6 Claxton, Guy, ‘Whodunnit? Unpicking the “Seems” of Free Will’, Journal of Cousciousness Studies 6 (1999), 8–9, 99–113Google Scholar.

7 Wegner, D. & Wheatley, T.Apparent mental causation American Psychologist 1999, 480–492CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

8 Libet, Benjamin, ‘Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action’, The Behavioral and Brain Science 8 (1985), 529–566CrossRefGoogle Scholar, note 5.

9 Kim, Jaegwon, Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind (Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Gillett, G. 2011 review of Kim's metaphysics of mind, Philosophy 87, no. 339 (this issue)Google Scholar.

11 Kant, I.: (1789 [1929]) The Critique of pure reason (tr. Smith, N. Kemp) London: Macmillan (references will be given by pagination in this edition, here: B574)Google Scholar.

12 (B585).

13 (B581). In fact Locke and Strawson both argue that this is our basic ‘model’ for causation (Locke, J. (1689, [1975]) An Essay concerning Human Understanding (ed. Nidditch, P.) Oxford: ClarendonGoogle Scholar. Strawson, P. (1985) Causation and explanation in Vermazen, B. & Hintikka, M.Essays on Davidson: actions and events. Oxford; Clarendon, 115–136Google Scholar.

14 (B575).

15 (B569).

16 Jackson, J. Hughlings, ‘On Affection of Speech from Disease of the Brain’, Brain 1 (1878), 3, 323, 312Google Scholar.

17 Luria, A.R. (1973). The Working Brain. (Harmondsworth: Penguin), 93Google Scholar.

25 Lavie, Nilli, ‘Distracted and Confused?: Selective Attention Under Load’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005), 2, 75–82CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

26 Gleitman, Henry, Psychology (3rd ed.New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994), 224Google Scholar.

27 Karmiloff-Smith, Annette, Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science (Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

28 Simons, Daniel J. and Chabris, Christopher F., ‘Gorillas in our midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events’, Perception 28 (1999), 1059–1074CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

29 Wittgenstein op cit. note 20, 612–627.

30 Gillett, G. (1992) Representation meaning and thought (Oxford: Clarendon)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Winch, P. (1958) The Idea of a Social Science and its philosophy (London: Routledge)Google Scholar.

32 Strawson, P.F., Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1974)Google Scholar.

33 Dennett, Daniel C., Freedom Evolves (New York: Penguin Books, 2003)Google Scholar.

34 Op. cit. note 17, John McCrone.

35 Op. cit. note 1, 705, Hughlings Jackson.

36 Nietzsche, Friedrich W., 1886 Beyond good and evil (Trans. London: Penguin, 1886)Google Scholar.

37 Gillett, Grant, 2008 Subjectivity and being somebody (Exeter: Imprint Academic)Google Scholar.

38 Op. cit. note 19, 5. Wittgenstein, L. (1972b). The blue and brown books. (Oxford: Blackwell). 5Google Scholar.

39 Luria, A.R., The Working Brain: An Introduction to Neuropsychology (Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar.

40 Op. cit. note 17, John McCron.

41 Op. cit. note 32.

42 Gibson, James J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986)Google Scholar.

43 Gallese, Vittorio, ‘Intentional attunement: A Neurophysiological perpective on Social Cognition and Its Disruption in Autism’, Brain Research 1079 (2006), 15–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Weick, Karl E., ‘Enacted Sensemaking in Crisis Situation’, Journal of Management Studies 25 (1988), 4, 305–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Prinz, Jesse, ‘Putting the Brakes on Enactive Perception’, Psyche 12 (2006), 1, 1–19Google Scholar.

46 In Luria's terms.

47 Sartre, Jean Paul, Being and Nothingness (Trans. Barnes, H.London: Methuen & Co., 1958)Google Scholar.

48 As portrayed by McDowell, John (Mind and world Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1994)Google Scholar or Sellars, Wilfred (1997, Empiricism and the philosophy of Mind, (Cambridge (Mass.)Harvard University Press)Google Scholar.

49 As Aristotle, (1925) Nichomachean Ethics (tr. Ross, D.) (Oxford: University Press)Google Scholar and Davidson, Donald (1980) Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon), both argueGoogle Scholar.

50 1953, Op. cit. note 20, part 2, section 11.

51 (Unless one accepts the contentious metaphysical theses we undermine in part 3.)

52 Op. cit. note 1, 704.

53 Gillett, Grand, ‘Freedom of the will and mental content’, Ratio 6 (1993), 89–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Treisman, Anne, ‘The Binding Problem’ Current opinion in neurobiology 6 (1996), 2, 171–178CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

55 Op. cit. note 23. Gleitman.

56 As in 1.1 above.

57 Hanna, Robert, ‘Freedom, Teleology, and Rational Causation’, Kant Yearbook 1 (2009), 99–143Google Scholar.

58 As in De Anima (tr D.W. Hamlyn) Bk III.3 [427b12] Oxford: University Press. Wittgenstein also remarks ‘thought can also be of what is not the case’(PI 950).

18 Luria, 1973, 79, 84, 94.

19 McCrone, John, ‘A Bifold Model of Freewill’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (1999), 8–9, 241–259Google Scholar.

20 Knierim, James J., ‘Hippocampus and Memory: Can We Have Our Place and Fear It Too?’, Neuron 37 (2003), 3, 372–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigation (Trans. 4th ed.Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009), part 2Google Scholar.

22 Wittgenstein, op. cit. note 20, part 2:xi.

23 Allport, Alan, ‘Attention and Control: Have We Been Asking the Wrong Questions? A Critical Review of Twenty-Five Years’, Meyer, David E. and Kornblum, Sylvan (eds), Attention and Performance XIV: Synergies in Experimental Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Neuroscience (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1993), 183–218Google Scholar.

24 O'Regan, J. Kevin, Rensink, Ronald A. and Clark, James J., ‘Change-blindness as a result of “mudsplashes”’, Nature 398 (1999), 34CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

59 Op. cit. note 35, G. Gillett 2008.

60 Gillett, Grant, ‘Free Will and Events in the Brain’, Journal of Mind and Behaviour 22 (2001), 3, 287–310Google Scholar.

61 Gillett, Grant, ‘Intention, autonomy and brain events’, Bioethics 23 (2009), 6, 330–339CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

62 Morris, Michael, ‘Causes of Behaviour’, The Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1986), 143, 123–144CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Op. cit. note 28, Dennett 2003.

64 Op. cit. note 9, Gillett 2011 review of Kim's metaphysics of mind, Philosophy 87, no. 339 (this issue).

65 Op. cit. note 8, Kim 2010 The metaphysics of mind (Oxford University Press).

66 Evans, Gareth, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

67 Op. cit. note 6. LIbet.

68 Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown and Co., 1991)Google Scholar.

69 Op. cit. note 28, Dennett 2003.

70 Op. cit. note 35, Gillett 2008.

71 Op. cit. note 34, Luria 1973.

72 Op. cit. note 28, Dennett 2003.

73 Gillett, G. (2001) Intention and agency in Naffine, Ngaire, Owens, Rosemary J., and Williams, John Matthew, Intention in law and Philosophy (Burlington: Ashgate), 57–69Google Scholar.

74 Op. cit. note 4. just check the note numbers to see they still apply.

75 Op. cit. note 28, Dennett 2003.