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

— —

Peter Tse

Free Imagination

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

Peter Tse

$115.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Oxford University Press
14 November 2024

Philosophy of mind; Cognition & cognitive psychology; Conscious & unconscious; Neurosciences

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.

By: Peter Tse
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 550g
ISBN: 9780198901181
ISBN 10: 0198901186
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 14 November 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Ulric Tse is currently chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, USA. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1984 with a degree in physics/mathematics. Until 1992 he lived abroad, teaching schoolchildren in Nepal, then studying philosophy at the University of Konstanz. In 1992 he began his studies in cognitive psychology at Harvard University where he received a PhD under the guidance of Patrick Cavanagh and Ken Nakayama. From 1999 until 2001 he was a post-doc in the monkey fMRI lab of Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen. He has been a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth since 2001.