Psychology Commons^™

The Structure Of Consciousness, Lowell Keith Friesen

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the nature and structure of consciousness. Conscious experience is often said to be phenomenally unified, and subjects of consciousness are often self-conscious. I ask whether these features necessarily accompany conscious experience. Is it necessarily the case, for instance, that all of a conscious subject's experiences at a time are phenomenally unified? And is it necessarily the case that subjects of consciousness are self-conscious whenever they are conscious? I argue that the answer to the former is affirmative and the latter negative.

In the first chapter, I set the stage by distinguishing phenomenal unity from other …

Free Will From The Neuroscience Point Of View, Armando F. Rocha, Fábio T. Rocha

Armando F Rocha

There is still a controversy if human volitions and actions are governed by causal laws or obeys free will. Neurosciences start to study the neural correlates of free will by investigating how brains make decisions. Here, some of questions about free will are discussed from the neurosciences point of view taking into consideration a neuroeconomic model of decision making. This model is used here with the purpose of providing very formal definitions of key concepts raised in any free will discussion such as goals, necessity, motivation, etc., and to provide a formal background for discussing decision making. One of the …