We feel things differently accordingly as we are sleepy or awake, hungry or full, fresh or tired

, it will at once be seen what I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human mind feels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact.

If I recite a, b, c, then, at the moment of uttering b, neither a nor c is out of my consciousness altogether, but both, after their respective fashions, 'mix their dim lights' with the stronger b, because their processes are both awake in some degree.

ew powers after SARS,

orgetting seems to provide benefits, and brain implant technology will need to be studied for its effects on our ability to deal with a painful past

hus, concerns about risks of infection and brain damage are more pressing when the individual is healthy.

Recommending and estab-lishing standards to regulate the enhancement possibilities of cybernetic technology to ensure safety, efficacy, privacy, consent, and justice should not prove as difficult as attempts to regulate reproductive technologies, which entail more deeply held value conflicts.

Scientific progress promises to fulfill our desire for improvement;

hegemony

What would it be like to be an already aware individual with an ongoinghistory imprisoned in a child's body?

eate a comprehensive database of an individual human life

the resulting child would be a complete replication of the woman.

constantly logged onto the Internet

NASA

(in order to circumvent Institutional Review Board and Food and Drug Administration approval)

may not be the most desirable utopia, andits pursuit brings clear dangers.

resembling the Hippocratic oath,

hat the last step in proving atechnology is large and hard

But the technology involved would produce, asa by-product, weapons so terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive asballistic missiles.

this, what you might call technical arrogance, thatovercomes people when they see what they can do with their minds

This is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species, by its own voluntaryactions, has become a danger to itself—as well as to vast numbers of others.

They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this neednot make them valuable.

Mypersonal experience suggests we tend to overestimate our design abilities

The Industrial Revolution has immeasurably improvedeveryone's life over the last couple hundred years

Moravec's view is that the robots will eventually succeed us—that humans clearly faceextinction

Luddite,

hese engineered human beings may be happy in such asociety, but they will most certainly not be free.

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to driftinto a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choicebut to accept all of the machines' decisions.

one in which humans gained nearimmortality by becoming one with robotic technology.

They know what things motivate them, and they can decide whether they want to be motivated by those things.

Libertarianism also helps explain why there is so much individual and cul-tural diversity, why social engineering such as that attempted in the former Soviet Union has failed, and why those raised in the same family often dis-agree with one another. Given its coherence and explanatory power, libertari-anism remains a viable solution to the problem of free will

What’s more, no libertarian would ever endorse the principle of prepun-ishment.

“I just did.”

If all the events lead-ing up to your decision were repeated, it would be possible for you to choose otherwise. Your decision is up to you.

Like self-consciousness, these properties can be conceived as emergent properties that come into being when certain things (like neurons) interact in certain ways.

Since Libet’s experiment records the time at which the subjects become consciously aware of their con-scious actions and not the time of the conscious actions themselves, it does not refute the existence of free will

Again, the point is that we can consciously and freely do something without being consciously aware that we are consciously doing it. Roskies gives the example of driving a car.

There’s a difference between making a conscious decision and becoming con-sciously aware of the fact that a conscious decision was made.

An interval of 150 msec would allow enough time in which the conscious function might affect the final outcome of the volitional process

If so, then consciousness would seem to be an epiphenomenon—an ineffectual by-product of brain activity—rather than the initiator of it

But in the absence of any convincing evidence that free will is an illusion, we are justified in believing that it isn’t.

It could turn out that our experience of free will is an illusion, just as it could turn out that our experience of the exter-nal world is an illusion—we could be living in a computer simulation like the

o act freely, libertarians believe, your desires must be your own. In other words, you must be self-programming.

None of the evidence marshaled by neuroscientists andpsychologists suggests that those neural processes involved in theconscious aspects of such complex, temporally extended decision-making are in fact causal dead ends.

Often we initially attendconsciously to what we are doing precisely to reach the point wherewe act without consciously attending to the component decisionsand actions in our complex endeavors.

If we had to consciously considerour every move, we’d be bumbling fools

It wouldbe miraculous if the brain did nothing at all until the moment whenpeople became aware of a decision to move

will and responsibility are compatible with determinism,

It is like inferring fromdiscoveries in organic chemistry that life is an illusion just becauseliving organisms are made up of non-living stuff.

he reveals how this conclusion depends on a particulardefinition of free will.

ndeed, free will matters in part because it is a precondition fordeserving blame for bad acts and deserving credit forachievements

Indeed, it is quite possible that progress in someof the more vexing sociological problems may be better achievedonce we clarify our thinking concerning the concepts of free willand fault.

heredity, poverty, family environment, and cultural deprivation

the party accused was laboringunder such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not toknow the nature and the quality of the act he was doing; or, if he didknow it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong

I believe it does, and from this I assume that it mustgive rise to an evolutionary selective advantage.

Although, likeany biosynthetic process, the product may be quite distinct from theinput material, it is still a direct consequence of these materials.

theremust be a mechanism by which consciousness does influencebehavior.

don’t acknowledge this are—by legal definition—insane.

what is the evolutionary selective advantage of con-sciousness?

Other behavioral phenomena that indicate a non-essential role for the conscious mind are sleepwalking and someforms of concussion.

I suspect that we inherit a belief that free will is perfectlylogical, and therefore not worthy of questionin

This view will not doharm, because no one can be reallyfullyconvinced of its truth,except man who has thought very much, and he will know hishappiness lays in doing good and being perfect, and therefore willnot be tempted, from knowing every thing he does is independentof himself to do harm.

“Thisview should teach one profound humility, one deserves no creditfor anything. Nor ought one to blame others

I believe that free will is better defined as a belief that there is acomponent to biological behavior that is something more than theunavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental his-tory of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.

stochasticism

with no two indi-viduals, even those that are genetically identical and under con-stant environment, displaying the identical neuronal network

as“free”as it may appear, simply reflects thegenetics of the organism and the environmental history, right up tosome fraction of a microsecond before any action

The causal component of theserandom swerves could have been the Greek gods,

properties of theremaining neurons and their connections reflect a combination ofboththegeneticsandtheexperiencesoftheindividualfromthetimeof conception

Does the state have the right to invade the last privacy of a person, the privacy of his or her own mind?

Why should the state patiently wait for a prisoner to agree to treatment when the means to rehabilitate and restore him as a productive member of society is at hand?

the fictional treatment

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing

Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.

Because our best scientific theories imply that some events are uncaused, indeterminism is a more conservative theory than hard determinism, for it fits better with our existing knowledge. But even though indeterminism does

He claimed that we could not understand the world unless we assumed that every event has a cause.

In Gardner’s sce-nario, the click of a Geiger counter triggers the dropping of a hydrogen bomb. Because the clicking of the Geiger counter is indeterminate, the dropping of the hydrogen bomb is also indeterminate.

In America, it currently adds about $3,000 to the approximately $8,000 cost of in vitro fertilization

All of those technologies exist now, and the United States has adopted similar laws in the past.

One way to lessen the incidence of the criminal behavior associated with these genes would be to lessen the incidence of those genes.

It appears that our genetic makeup affects not only our physical character-istics, like height, weight, and hair color, but our mental characteristics as well

Everyone simply does what they’ve been programmed to do by their environment.

Consequently we can’t be held responsible for our actions.

According to van Inwagen, events have consequences, and those conse-quences are determined by the laws of nature

ree will is an illu-sion caused by our ignorance of the true causes of our action.

He is born with-out his own consent

When a collection of atoms breaks apart, something ceases to exist.

that repeated incarceration is the single practical solution for deterring crime.

After training at the prefrontal gym, a person might still crave a cigarette, but he’ll know how to beat the craving instead of letting it win

We still need to keep him off the streets, irrespective of his past misfortunes. The child abuse cannot serve as an excuse to let him go; the judge must keep society safe.

we will still remove from the streets lawbreakers who prove overaggressive, underempathetic, and poor at controlling their impulses.

His defense attorneys argued that this was a case of killing while sleepwalking, known as homicidal somnambulism.

A typical Touretter may stick out his tongue, scrunch up his face, or call someone a name—all without choosing to do so.

By the way, as regards that dangerous set of genes, you’ve probably heard of them. They are summarized as the Y chromosome. If you’re a carrier, we call you a male.

98.1 percent of death-row inmates do

Was it his fault, or his biology’s fault?

The lesson from all these stories is the same: human behavior cannot be separated from human biology.

hypersexuality.

“I’m attracted to children/adults

He underwent a brain scan, which revealed a massive tumor in his orbitofrontal cortex. Neurosurgeons removed the tumor. Alex’s sexual appetite returned to normal.

He discovered that Whitman’s brain harbored a tumor the diameter of a nickel.

After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.

I cannot rationa[l]ly pinpoint any specific reason for doing this

consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing."

Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

pushed a button with their left or right hand

By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done,"

How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

The technology is also expected to lead to improvements in thought-controlled wheelchairs and artificial limbs that respond when a person imagines moving.

Being able to read thoughts as they arise in a person's mind could lead to computers that allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone, and write with word processors that can predict which word or sentence you want to type

Do we want to become a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen?,

medial prefrontal cortex

"We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."

it? My suggestion is that there is no deeper moral objecti

proof beyond reasonable dou

y, it would not be possible both to know that he would commit this murder and to impose the death penalty by way of prepunishment, since his execution would prevent the commission of the offence for which he was to be exe

Algy is such a person. All we know is that he will not in fact be deterred or di

. And in pre- as much as in postpunishment the penalty imposed may deter potential offenders, as also the actual offender, from committing other offences in the fut

re. The same is true of postpunishmen

t) - particularly if we also knew we couldn't demote him afterwar

Algy intends, will continue to intend, and will eventually carry out his intention to commit the speeding offence, we should have no reason to prefer

which all involved know he intends to and will commit after his punish

hat it is wrong to punish someone for an offence he never com

ence. But there is nothing in this view, thus stated, which prescribes that he should suffer after rather than before the offen

ally exceeding it. But there is no question that what Algy is punished for in my example is exceeding the speed limit tomorrow, not p

er that offence is committed. But that is not so; my example specifies that Algy's offence is that of speeding at 10.31 tomorrow, not of p

ustified in punishing the innocent? Nevertheles

a history of majordepression and cocaine abuse can leave telltale signs on the brain, forexample, and future studies might find parts of the brain that correspond tonurturing and caring

If you put everyone whoreacts badly to an American flag in a concentration camp or Guantánamo,that would be bad, but in an occupation situation, to mark someone downfor further surveillance, that might be appropriate.”

A light bulb going offin your brain means nothing unless it’s correlated with a particular output,and the brain-scan stuff, heaven help us, we have barely linked that withanything,”

In otherwords, just because you have a biased reaction to a photograph doesn’tmean you’ll act on those biases in the workplace

“One reason thought has been free in the harshestdictatorships is that dictators haven’t been able to detect it.” He adds, “Nowthey may be able to, putting greater pressure on legal constraints againstgovernment interference with freedom of thought.”

According to Greely, this may challenge the principle that we should be heldaccountable for what we do, not what we think. “It opens up for the first

“One could even, just barely, imagine a technology that mightbe able to ‘read out’ the witness’s memories, intercepted as neuronal firings,and translate it directly into voice, text or the equivalent of a movie,” HankGreely writes.

“You could give people a prison sentence and anopportunity to get fixed.”

If adolescent brains caused all adolescent behavior, “we would expectthe rates of homicide to be the same for 16- and 17-year-olds everywhere inthe world — their brains are alike — but in fact, the homicide rates of Danishand Finnish youths are very different than American youths.” Morse agrees

You have a car with the brakes notworking, and it shouldn’t be allowed to be near anyone it can hurt.

“You canhave a horrendously damaged brain where someone knows the differencebetween right and wrong but nonetheless can’t control their behavior,”

Greene insists that this insight means that the criminal-justicesystem should abandon the idea of retribution — the idea that bad peopleshould be punished because they have freely chosen to act immorally —which has been the focus of American criminal law since the 1970s, whenrehabilitation went out of fashion.

that the law shouldn’t divergetoo far from deeply shared beliefs.

since thetechnology allows us to tell what people are thinking about even if they denyit.

In a complex insider-trading case, for example, perhapsthe defense would “like to have a juror making decisions on maximumdeliberation and minimum emotion”; in a government entrapment case,emotional reactions might be more appropriate.

I was told to press buttons indicating theappropriate level of punishment, from 0 to 9, as the magnet recorded mybrain activity

prediction of future criminal behavior.

And since all behavior is caused by our brains,wouldn’t this mean all behavior could potentially be excused?

forensic neuro-logical evidence need not violate constitutional guaranteesafforded by the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments withinthe Bill of Rights

Even a reliable180showing of dishonesty or familiarity would not necessarilybe sufficient to verify fact or guilt.

“a [lie-detection] expertcan supply the jury only with another opinion, in addi-tion to its own, about whether the witness was telling thetruth”

There is no reason tothink that similar circumstances would not likewise satisfythe Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement forneurological tests that aim to reveal the content of a subject’s90mental states.

Evidence derived from memorydetection tests implicate the Fourth Amendment guaranteeagainst unreasonable searches and seizures by encroachingupon the confines of a suspect’s or a witness’s mind. Neuro-logical evidence implicates the Fifth Amendment privilege70against self-incrimination by forcing the accused to drawsuspicion on themselves if they refuse to undergo memorydetection tests. Finally, neuroimaging techniques implicatethe Sixth Amendment guarantee to a trial by jury by threat-ening to displace the jury’s protected role in evaluatin

EEG andfMRI techniques need not raise special privacy concernsthat make them any more objectionable than accepted tech-niques such as polygraphs or tissue samples

Butwe'llallfeelabitsaferifthiskindoftechnologyisusedinplaceslikeairports

resonancespectroscopytostudylivingtissue.Thefirstfunctionallyimagedbrainwasthatofahedgehoginoneofhisexperiments.Now92,Chancestillrideshisbiketotheuniversitysixdaysaweektoteachandworkinhislab.Hismindisasacuteasever.Afterglancingthroughabooktoconfirmadatapoint,heresumestheconversationbysaying,"I'mbackonline."Heexplainsthathisgoalistocreateawearabledevice"thatletsmeknowwhatyou'rethinkingwithoutyoutellingme.IfIaskyouaquestion,I'dliketoknowbeforeyouanswerwhetheryou'regoingtobetruthful.

Thehumandimensionofbeingsubjectedtotheassessmentofyourpeershasprofoundsocialandcivicsignificance.

Peoplewhocanafforditandbelievetheyaretellingthetrutharegoingtolovethistest."

"Butthisisacompany–we'r

atextbookexampleofhowsomethingcanbepushedforwardbytheconvergenceofbasicscience,thegovernmentdirectingresearchthroughfunding,andspecialinterestswhodesireaparticulartechnolog

HehadreadapapertheorizingthatkidswithADHDhavedifficultylying

Idon'tspeakaloud,becauseevenlittlemovementsofmyheadwoulddisruptthescan.Ifocusinsteadonformingthewordsclearlyandcalmlyinmymind,asiftoatelepathicinquisito

standardlie-detectiontoolemployedbylawenforcementandintelligenceagenciesfornearlyacentury

cognitivedifferencesbetweentruthandlies

ecollections are among our most precious assets. Maybe false memories can be just as precious

But for many people, the most unsettling idea was that planting false memories would rob us of our free will and authenticity

So, just putting false thoughts into someone's thoughts(sic)does not seem nearly as invasive or potentially harmful.

ne worry is that memory implants would rob us of our free will and sense of identity

memory dampening

if doing so could benefit the patient

Would this fictional therapy be acceptable?

have tackled their clients’ psychological troubles by manipulating their memories.

next big thing for tacklingobesity,

The avoidance of peach yoghurt was most pronounced among those people who now said they could ‘remember’ the fictional sickly inciden

believing that the memory would change you in ways that would benefit your life

Now ask yourself: are you sure this event truly happened?

It affects only the emotional aspect of memory, while the cognitive aspect remains intact.

In order to maintain numerical personal identity it is important to keep memory continu-ities and psychological continuities

his is the capacity to deal with psychological difficulties in the future, which is obtained in the process of overcoming a traumatic event [10]

Happiness ought to be pursued in terms of well-being

Propranolol is effective not only when it is used during or shortly after a traumatic event,

PTSD has come to be recognized as a social prob-lem.

More importantly, itrequires that we understand what is a good life for ahuman being, and the role of memory in that life. There isno obvious answer to that question

Neil Armstrong’s memory of landing on the moon, or aHolocaust victim’s memory, may not just be evidence forhim, but also for the rest of the world

Certain past memorieshelp us infer how we might act when confronted withsimilar situations in the future.

A failure to feel such emotions maypreclude genuine forgiveness.

The soldier might also holderroneous beliefs about his courage or cruelty, traits thatmight be relevant in a crisis situation.

psychological stability

Depressed people in fact have a more accurate picture ofreality

in which painful memories become intrusiveand damage an individual’s ability to live an ordinarylife.

Or would a mind void of bad memories onlypresage a future of monotony, of a tendency to lose track of who we were, andin so doing, lose track of who we want to be?

whether we nolonger want our past to inform our present.

why shouldn’t he be able to do away with that sad memory, if it isa safe process, and could lead to a significant increase in happiness

“There isn’t a moment in time that wearen’t building memories.”

But not everyone is so sure that getting rid of our bad memories would lead tothe loss of our true selves

one never realizes an emotionat the time.

If it is true that our actions, our personalities,our very notions of self are based on the experiences we have had and on thememories we have collected, then to delete our memories would be to destroy apart of ourselves.

Burgess’ A ClockworkOrange, associated with cinematic images of a mental patient writhing in astraight jacket as menacing doctors and nurses flood the patient’s body withelectricity.

Having diagnosed her with hysteria

It is almost never possible to save 32 lives in the same period oftime.

This certainly indicates that the human sense of fairness has some geneticbasis

egocentric