Free Imagination
The deep roots of creativity, freedom and meaning in the human brain and mind

By (author) Peter Tse,Peter Ulric Tse

ISBN13: 9780198901181

Imprint: Oxford University Press

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Format: Hardback

Published: 22/08/2024

Availability: Available

Description
Free Imagination argues that the brain's capacity to imagine is the fundamental basis of human Free Will. Laws of physics need not apply in our internal simulations, so virtually anything is possible there. And since some of our actions can follow from that which we imagine, especially from processes of deliberation that involve imagining possible scenarios and outcomes, our actions inherit the freedom of our imaginings. The creative power of the human imagination may have evolved as a consequence of the demodularization of neural circuitry associated with volitional attentional operations over operands downloadable into a mental workspace where, virtually, anything could be combined with anything else. This new cognitive architecture gave rise to the danger of psychosis. Our schizotypal form of imagination, arising from the promiscuous, generative and iterative combination of disencapsulated operators and operands in a mental workspace, may have evolved only in humans by exapting from existing motoric and other operations involved in volitional hand dexterity to a domain of premotoric simulation. What we imagine into existence can be used for good or evil. Imagination is therefore our greatest tool and weapon. When applied to ourselves, it allows us the possibility of reimagining and then transforming ourselves in light of second-order desires. This gives us the ability to choose to become a new kind of chooser in the future. Other animals lack this second-order Free Will; although they can do otherwise, they cannot want to become otherwise than they are, making them amoral. This book explores the idea that because humans, in contrast, have second-order Free Will, they can be moral or immoral.
Section 1. The Birth of our Free Imagination 1: What is imagination? 2: Human imagination is like sexual selection 3: A primer on human evolution 5: Evidence of imagination from artifacts 5: Learning from skulls 6: Mental modularity 7: What is volitional attention? 8: Symbolic thought and a premotor theory of imagination 9: Human imagination from brain demodularization 10: Analogy, Music, Abstraction and Madness from Demodularization 11: First-order and second-order desires and Free Will 12: Automatizing Good Character Section 2. The Birth of Good and Evil in our Free Imagination 13: How should we freely choose? 14: What makes us moral beings? 15: Where does Morality come from? 16: Where does human evil come from? 17: Where does human goodness come from? 18: The Vacuum of Meaning caused by Science 19: Attempts to Fill The Vacuum of Meaning 20: The Future of Science and Religion
  • Cognition & cognitive psychology
  • Conscious & unconscious
  • Professional & Vocational
Height:240
Width:160
Spine:17
Weight:550.00
List Price: £50.00