Essay about Consciousness and Intentionality of Action

BibliographyBooks1.Burt, C. (1962). The concept of consciousness. British Journal of Psychology, 53, 229-2422.Carlson, N., & Buskist, W. (1997). Psychology: The science of behavior (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

A choice issues from, and can be sufficiently explained by, an agent’s character and motives, then to be ultimately responsible for the choice, the agent must be at least in part responsible by virtue of choices or actions voluntarily performed in the past for having the character and motives he now has (295).

People believe that genuine freedom of choice is not always possible because our decisions and actions are determined by factors beyond our control. This view is known as Determinism. There is also an extreme form of determinism known as ‘hard determinism,’ in which they believe that every demeanor can be traced to a cause, although they may disagree about what those causes are. The idea of determinism poses a difficult issue to the concept of ‘free will’. Are we able to make free choices if all our thoughts and actions are predetermined by our own past and the physical laws of nature? Majority of us would like to believe that we have the freedom of will and are able to make decisions based on our own discretion but, I personally believe that the deterministic view holds true to a certain extent and that most of our actions are a result of a force that is beyond our comprehension. My purpose in this essay is to explain and critically analyze Baron d’Holbach’s view on determinism.

The arguments presented by D’Holbach and Hobart contain many of the same premises and opinions regarding the human mind, but nonetheless differ in their conclusion on whether we have free will. In this paper, I will explain how their individual interpretations of the meaning of free will resulted in having contrary arguments.

Branden 's facility in explaining these subjects is inspirational; he has many visions into the subject matter, and it is often enlightening to see how he introduces these ideas to the inexperienced. Chapter two explains the free will as a function of mental focus, the fact that context determines what level of focus is appropriate, how one learns to run some activities on automatic and the motives for fleeing focus. Branden 's technique of sentence completion, familiar from his previous works, is also explained here. Chapters one and two are the basis for Branden 's theory by exploring the nature of human consciousness and its suitable association to reality.

Free Will: “For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.” (2)

The focus of this essay will be an argument by Peter Van Inwagen known as the “Consequence Argument.” The argument’s main goal is to refute compatibilism, or the idea that free will and determinism are reconcilable. Van Inwagen’s argument can be expressed as follows:

Harris begins the book by stating that “free will is an illusion” (5). He explains that this is because we do not create our own wills. In this idea, our thoughts and intentions derive from our background experiences to which we have no control over, therefor we have no control of our will and cannot be held responsible.

Whether we have free will is widely controversial. The absence of a universal definition poses a primary problem to this question. In this essay, I shall base my argument on a set of three conditions for free will: 1) that the actor is unconstraint in his action, 2) the actor could have acted otherwise and 3) the actor must be ‘ultimately responsible’ (Kane, 2005: 121) for his action. After I have explained them, I shall apply these conditions to three scenarios that cover most, if not any, circumstances that occur when taking choices. The purpose of this essay is to show that if my conditions are true, none of the scenarios is based on free will and thus we do not have free will.

In immediate self-consciousness the simple ‘I’ is the absolute object which, however, for us or in itself is absolute mediation and has its essential moment lasting independence” (95). Those that relinquish the struggle, however, end up being the slave of external circumstances.

Many are disconcerted by the idea that humans and Minds can be described as systems which operate based on interpretations of symbols, much like machines, computers, and robots: things that we have created yet do not think of as being “thinking,” themselves. We, as human beings, are comforted in the notion that we are born into this world with a fully capable Mind, a soul or spirit, and are, thereafter, free to choose our fate as we will. Although it seems plausible that we are born with Mind, I cannot subscribe to such a simplistic version of thinking about our true capacity for affecting outcome.

Although the simplistic approach is simple and easy to understand, it can appear absurd to base a theory’s truth on its level of simplicity. The intentionality argument is one that elaborates on Leibniz’s view that the mind and the brain are not identical. The theory states that mental states (hopes, desires, fears etc), possess property known as “intentionality”. Intentionality is known to be the property of about, such as a mental state has intentionality if it is about something. Intentionality is not a scientific theory. It gives rise to the argument that mental states, including hopes, wishes, dreams etc are intrinsically intentional, however a thing cannot be intentional if it is physical. As the brain is physical in nature, it cannot,

For ages, Philosophers have struggled with the dispute of whether human actions are performed “at liberty” or not. “It is “the most contentious question, of metaphysics, the most contentious science” (Hume 528). In Section VIII of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume turns his attention in regards to necessary connection towards the topics “Of Liberty and Necessity.” Although the two subjects may be one of the most arguable questions in philosophy, Hume suggests that the difficulties and controversies surrounding liberty (i.e. free will) and necessity (i.e. causal determinism) are simply a matter of the disputants not having properly defined their terms. He asserts that all people, “both learned and

In this essay, I will talk about Jean-Paul Sartre’s work about the Nature of Consciousness. Firstly, I will discuss his theories of Consciousness and secondly, I will talk about how they developed in response to the work of other philosophers. Lastly, I will state why his work is still interesting today.

Act and potency and their distinction are an important and fundamental theory in philosophy. It helps approach questions in metaphysics concerning substance, essence, and causation. In this essay, I will be using this theory of act and potency to show how the four causes and the theory relate to each other. Thus, the four causes: formal cause, material cause, efficient cause, and final cause are related to each other and can be explained through the theory and concepts of act and potency.