1,720,956 research outputs found
A Rigorous Critique of ”Probing Freewill”: Conceptual Deficits and Metaphysical Inertia
Get PDFWaleed Mahmud’s Probing Freewill: A Story of Autonomy & Inevitability presents itself as a comprehensive exploration of the free will question, synthesizing perspectives from neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy. While commendable for its breadth and accessibility in summarizing standard skeptical arguments and the empirical challenges often marshaled against traditional notions of conscious, autonomous agency, the work ultimately fails to transcend the very conceptual limitations that have historically rendered the free will debate intractable. Its analysis remains firmly anchored within an outdated metaphysical framework, interpreting scientific findings through a lens that systematically obscures the possibility of robust, naturalistic agency. Instead of genuinely probing the deep structure of agency, the book largely operates within the confines of classical assumptions, leading it almost inevitably towards a skeptical conclusion that feels more like a reaffirmation of outdated premises than a novel insight derived from contemporary science. A rigorous analysis, informed by perspectives emphasizing emergence, organizational complexity, embodiment, and dynamic time, exposes significant conceptual deficits that undermine the book’s core arguments and conclusions. This critique argues that the book’s skepticism is not a necessary outcome of scientific progress but rather a symptom of its own metaphysical inertia and conceptual impoverishment
Naturalizing Free Will: Emergent Autonomy as Life's Tapestry
Get PDFThis paper naturalizes free will as emergent autonomy arising from biological organization and inherent indeterminacy. Critiquing classical determinism based on physical/informational limits (finite information vs. real numbers) and the distinction between creative and geometric time, we propose libertarian free will grounded in potentiality realism. Autonomy emerges from the interplay of organizational closure (self-maintenance), non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and the harnessing of ontic indeterminacy (objective potentialities) within the flow of creative time (duration). This framework synthesizes insights from systems biology, physics, and process philosophy. We outline the philosophical basis (emergence, potentiality realism), scientific principles (thermodynamics, dynamics in creative time), biological realization (minimal agency, materiality), and a model of choice involving downward constraint and emergent sourcehood. The paper addresses neural implementation, reinterprets Libet-style findings, and defends against standard objections (luck, manipulation, exclusion). It offers a coherent, empirically-grounded research program for understanding freedom as a natural phenomenon rooted in life's unique organization unfolding in creative time. (200 words
A Rigorous Critique of ”Probing Freewill”: Conceptual Deficits and Metaphysical Inertia
No full textWaleed Mahmud’s Probing Freewill: A Story of Autonomy & Inevitability presents itself as a comprehensive exploration of the free will question, synthesizing perspectives from neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy. While commendable for its breadth and accessibility in summarizing standard skeptical arguments and the empirical challenges often marshaled against traditional notions of conscious, autonomous agency, the work ultimately fails to transcend the very conceptual limitations that have historically rendered the free will debate intractable. Its analysis remains firmly anchored within an outdated metaphysical framework, interpreting scientific findings through a lens that systematically obscures the possibility of robust, naturalistic agency. Instead of genuinely probing the deep structure of agency, the book largely operates within the confines of classical assumptions, leading it almost inevitably towards a skeptical conclusion that feels more like a reaffirmation of outdated premises than a novel insight derived from contemporary science. A rigorous analysis, informed by perspectives emphasizing emergence, organizational complexity, embodiment, and dynamic time, exposes significant conceptual deficits that undermine the book’s core arguments and conclusions. This critique argues that the book’s skepticism is not a necessary outcome of scientific progress but rather a symptom of its own metaphysical inertia and conceptual impoverishment
Naturalizing Free Will: Emergent Autonomy as Life's Tapestry
Get PDFThis paper proposes a naturalistic, emergentist libertarian account of free will, conceptualized as emergent autonomy arising from biological organization and inherent physical indeterminacy. Critiquing classical deterministic assumptions about static time and infinite precision, we introduce "creative time" (objective, dynamic becoming) and "potentiality realism" (objective possibilities) as foundations. Autonomy emerges from the interplay of organizational closure (self-maintenance), non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and the system's capacity to harness ontic indeterminacy (objective openness utilized functionally). Drawing on systems biology, physics, and process philosophy, we outline the philosophical basis (emergence, potentiality realism), scientific principles (thermodynamics, dynamics), biological realization (minimal agency, materiality), and a model of choice involving downward constraint (organizational influence) and emergent sourcehood (agent as origin). We address neural implementation, reinterpret empirical challenges (e.g., Libet), and defend against objections (luck, manipulation). This framework offers a research program for understanding freedom as a graded, natural phenomenon rooted in life's organization unfolding through creative time
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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