Thought, language, and inner speech : a reply to Ulrike Pompe-Alama

Pompe-Alama’s commentary raises interesting issues regarding the nature of thought and its relation to language. She underlines the evolutionary relationship we have to other animals and results from cognitive science to argue that human thought is probably not fundamentally linguistic, and notes that the pull of the phenomenal experience of inner speech may mislead us into thinking it is. While I agree with these claims, I disagree that Davidson’s own arguments are predicated on an inner speech view, and raise problems for the idea that functional imaging will easily resolve the debate about the relation of thought and language

Brain‐Mind and Structure‐Function Relationships: A Methodological Response to Coltheart

In some recent papers, Max Coltheart has questioned the ability of neuroimaging techniques to tell us anything interesting about the mind and has thrown down the gauntlet before neuroimagers, challenging them to prove he is mistaken. Here I analyze Coltheart’s challenge, show that as posed its terms are unfair, and reconstruct it so that it is addressable. I argue that, so modified, Coltheart’s challenge is able to be met and indeed has been met. In an effort to delineate the extent of neuroimaging’s ability to address Coltheart’s concerns, I explore how different brain structure‐function relationships would constrain the ability of neuroimaging to provide insight about psychological questions

Patients With Ventromedial Frontal Damage Have Moral Beliefs.

Michael Cholbi thinks that the claim that motive internalism (MI), the thesis that moral beliefs or judgments are intrinsically motivating, is the best explanation for why moral beliefs are usually accompanied by moral motivation. He contests arguments that patients with ventromedial (VM) frontal brain damage are counterexamples to MI by denying that they have moral beliefs. I argue that none of the arguments he offers to support this contention are viable. First, I argue that given Cholbi's own commitments, he cannot account for VM patients' behavior without attributing moral beliefs to them. Secondly, I show that his arguments that we should not believe their self-reports are unconvincing. In particular, his argument that they cannot self-attribute moral beliefs because they have a defective theory of mind is flawed, for it relies upon a misreading of both the empirical and theoretical literatures. The avenues remaining to Cholbi to support motive internalism are circular, for they rely upon an internalist premise. I provide an alternative picture consistent with neuroscientific and psychological data from both normals and those with VM damage, in which connections between moral belief and motivation are contingent. The best explanation for all the data is thus one in which MI is false

The Neurobiology of Decision-Making and Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism and Mindedness

This essay reviews recent developments in neurobiology which are beginning to expose the mechanisms that underlie some elements of decision-making that bear on attributions of responsibility. These “elements” have been mainly studied in simple perceptual decision tasks, which are performed similarly by humans and non-human primates. Here we consider the role of neural noise, and suggest that thinking about the role of noise can shift the focus of discussions of randomness in decision-making away from its role in enabling alternate possibilities and toward a potential grounding role for responsibility

“Local determination”, even if we could find it, does not challenge free will: Commentary on Marcelo Fischborn

Marcelo Fischborn discusses the significance of neuroscience for debates about free will. Although he concedes that, to date, Libet-style experiments have failed to threaten “libertarian free will” (free will that requires indeterminism), he argues that, in principle, neuroscience and psychology could do so by supporting local determinism. We argue that, in principle, Libet-style experiments cannot succeed in disproving or even establishing serious doubt about libertarian free will. First, we contend that “local determination”, as Fischborn outlines it, is not a coherent concept. Moreover, determinism is unlikely to be established by neuroscience in any form that should trouble compatibilists or libertarians—that is, anyone who thinks we might have free will. We conclude that, in principle, neuroscience will not be able undermine libertarian free will and explain why these conclusions support a coherent compatibilist notion of causal sourcehood

Enzo and Me : essay concerning the mental lives of humans and other animals

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2004.Includes bibliographical references.(cont.) Dennett's and Fodor's positions on propositional attitudes, and offer alternative criteria to theirs for what features a system must have to have propositional attitudes.This dissertation explores the relation between the mental lives of humans and animals, and argues that many of the differences that have been proposed by philosophers to set humans apart from animals are erroneous. Chapters 1 and 2 contest the hypothesis that the mental lives of humans and animals differ in kind because the content of human experience is conceptual--it necessarily involves the possession and exercise of concepts that characterize that content--whereas the content of animal experience is nonconceptual. In Chapter 1 I present an argument to expose the serious costs of such a view: if the content of our experience is entirely conceptual, then we cannot account for concept learning. The cost of denying nonconceptual content of experience is a radical nativism about concepts, a position which is both biologically and psychologically implausible. Chapter 2 further explores the implications of the learning argument put forth in Chapter 1. I consider the most effective defense conceptualists have wielded against arguments for nonconceptual content of experience: that our ability to form demonstrative concepts (concepts such as "that shade") obviates the need for nonconceptual content in experience. I show that nonconceptual content of experience is crucial in enabling us to form novel demonstrative concepts. Thus, far from being a strategy that allows the conceptualist to circumvent the need for nonconceptual content, appeal to demonstrative concepts further commits him to nonconceptual content of experience. Chapter 3 considers what cognitive resources are required to have propositional attitudes. I argue against Davidson's claim that animals can't think, because having propositional attitudes requires language. I considerby Adina L. Roskies.Ph.D

Brainwaves and Intentions: The Readiness Potential and Its Relation to Free Will

First discovered in 1965 by Kornhuber and Deecke, the readiness potential (RP) is a distinctive buildup of neural activity in motor areas of the brain that begins ~500 ms before voluntary movements. In 1983, Libet used the RP as the foundation for his argument against the existence of conscious free will. This argument became known as the classic model of the RP, which interprets the RP as a precursor to the conscious experience of volition and a quantifiable representation of unconscious brain activity preceding spontaneous movements. Although the classic model connected the RP to free will, the significance of the RP remains uncertain. In this presentation, we will discuss two interpretations of the RP as it relates to free will: the aforementioned classic model and the stochastic accumulator model. Since its introduction into the discussion on free will, the classic model has received numerous criticisms that can be encapsulated in “Libet’s paradox”. The paradox states that the conscious experience of volition comes after the brain has already begun preparing to execute the movement. This is paradoxical because it seems impossible to move voluntarily without consciously deciding to move beforehand. In contrast, the stochastic model believes the RP to be an artifact of EEG time locking and averaging of individual trials. Thus, the RP cannot counter the existence of free will since it does not reflect the process of volition. The stochastic model states that movement occurs when random fluctuations in brain activity, combined with a desire to move, overcome a threshold. The RP may be apparent before the conscious decision to move, but the actual neural commitment to initiate movement may happen much closer in time to the onset of the movement itself. In future studies, a holistic approach to EEG analysis may yield greater insights into the RP’s true nature rather than using time-locked data epochs in which movement occurs

What Is the Readiness Potential?

The readiness potential (RP) has been widely interpreted to indicate preparation for movement and is used to argue that our brains decide before we do. It thus has been a fulcrum for discussion about the neuroscience of free will. Recent computational models provide an alternative framework for thinking about the significance of the RP, suggesting instead that the RP is a natural result of the operation of a stochastic accumulator process of decision-making, analyzed by time-locking to threshold-crossing events. These models call for a reevaluation of: (i) the ontological standing of the RP as reflecting a real, causally efficacious signal in the brain; (ii) the meaningfulness of temporal comparisons between the ‘onset’ of the RP and the timing of other phenomena; (iii) the moment at which we, as experimenters, identify that a decision to act has been made; and (iv) the relevance of the RP for discussions of free will