I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

We often consciously will our own actions. This experience is so profound that it tempts us to believe that our actions are caused by consciousness. It could also be a trick, however – the mind’s way of estimating its own apparent authorship by drawing causal inferences about relationships between thoughts and actions. Cognitive, social, and neuropsychological studies of apparent mental causation suggest that experiences of conscious will frequently depart from actual causal processes and so might not reflect direct perceptions of (...) conscious thought causing action. (shrink)

& Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to genervs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience inate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific..

Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behaviour generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. Thus, terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g. ‘feeling’, ‘knowing’ and ‘effort’) are not included as primary causal factors. This (...) theoretical restriction is motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three-quarters of a century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classic physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act. This key development in basic physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, owing to certain structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analysing human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its classic-physics-based predecessor, is erected directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics. It is able to represent more adequately than classic concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.. (shrink)

The likelihood of a statement is often derived by generating an explanation for it and evaluating the plausibility of the explanation. The explanation discounting principle states that people tend to focus on a single explanation; alternative explanations compete with the effect of reducing one another’s credibility. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that this principle applies to inductive inferences concerning the properties of everyday categories. In both experiments, subjects estimated the probability of a series of statements and the conditional probabilities of (...) those conclusions given other related facts. For example, given that most lawyers make good sales people, what is the probability that most psychologists make good sales people? The results showed that when the fact and the conclusion had the same explanation the fact increased people’s willingness to believe the conclusion, but when they had different explanations the fact decreased the conclusion’s credibility. This decrease is attributed to explanation discounting; the explanation for the fact had the effect of reducing the plausibility of the explanation for the conclusion. (shrink)

The Phaedo is acknowledged to be one of Plato's greatest masterpieces, showing him both as a philosopher and as a dramatist at the height of his powers. For its moving account of the execution of Socrates, the Phaedo ranks among the supreme literary achievements of antiquity. It is also a seminal document for many ideas deeply ingrained in western culture, and provides one of the best introductions to Plato's thought. This new edition is a revised version of the Clarendon Press (...) translation, and is eminently suitable for readers new to Plato, and ideal for classroom use, thanks to the provision of Stephanus page and letter numbering. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

A large, diverse sample of adults was interviewed about their conception of the ontological and functional properties of the mind as compared to the soul. The existence of the mind was generally tied to the human lifecycle of conception, birth, growth and death, and was primarily associated with cognitive as opposed to spiritual functions. In contrast, the existence of the soul was less systematically tied to the lifecycle and frequently associated with spiritual as opposed to cognitive functions. Participants were also (...) asked about three ethical issues: stem cell research, life support for patients in a persistent vegetative state and cloning. As expected, participants' beliefs about the ontology and function of the soul were linked to their judgments about these ethical issues whereas their beliefs about the mind were unrelated. Overall, the findings show that many adults do not espouse a simple body-mind dualism, and any tendency toward such dualism is unlikely to explain their beliefs in an afterlife. Instead, afterlife beliefs appear to be associated with the idea of an immaterial essence, potentially dissociable from the biology of life and death. (shrink)

The commentaries are a promising sign that a research programme on the cognitive science of souls will continue to move toward empirical and theoretical rigor. Most of the commentators agree that beliefs in personal immortality, in the intelligent design of souls, and in the symbolic meaning of natural events can provide new insight into human social evolution. In this response I clarify and extend the evolutionary model, further emphasizing the adaptiveness of the cognitive system that underlies these beliefs.

The religion-science debate has heated up in recent years, with polemical arguments on both side decrying the other. Given that the dominant view is of religiousness as a relatively fixed personality trait, all of this furor seems excessive. Interested in just how malleable religiousness is, we exposed half of our participants to an argument against the existence of God by Richard Dawkins. Those exposed to Dawkins' arguments showed lower self-reported religiousness, as well as less implicit association between religion and truth. (...) These results demonstrate the flexibility of trait religiousness. (shrink)