Peter Ulric Tse (born Oct. 28, 1962) is an American cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College. He directs the NSF EPSCoR Attention Consortium. [1] He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. [2]
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Tse, who has German and Chinese heritage, grew up in New York City. [3] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1984, studying physics and mathematics. After graduating from Dartmouth, he worked for the Peace Corps as a schoolteacher in Nepal but E.T.’d (left before his service was through), then studied philosophy of mind at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and worked for Kobe Steel Corporation in Japan. He began his studies at Harvard University in 1992, receiving his PhD in cognitive psychology under Patrick Cavanagh and Ken Nakayama in 1998. Tse served as a postdoctoral researcher with Nikos Logothetis at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. He joined Dartmouth's faculty in 2001. [4]
The focus of Tse's work in cognitive neuroscience is mid- and high-level human vision. In the domain of mid-level vision his group has worked on deciphering the rapid form-motion computations that go into the construction of subsequent conscious visual experience. His group focuses on visual illusions because they are mistakes made by the visual system that can inform us about the nature of processing that goes into the construction of conscious experience.
In the field of high-level vision and attention, Tse's group has focused on two main directions: the influence of top-down volitional operations on visual experience, and the nature of volitional mental operations that go into the construction of internal virtual experience or imagination.
In his work on the neural basis of the human imagination, he has emphasized the importance of volitional and non-volitional verb-like mental operations over noun-like representations, such as imagined visual objects. Using fMRI, his group has argued that representations and operations can be decoded by creating classifiers in one part of the brain, and applying them to different parts of the brain. [5] This supports the idea that the brain might not be as modular as previously thought, and that certain types of brain processing may happen in a fundamentally distributed manner. In particular, the model of working memory operations that emerges suggests that traditional models of working memory, such as Baddeley's, are too modular and hierarchical.
In his 2013 book The Neural Basis of Free Will, [6] Tse focused on the question of mental causation, in particular the proposition that mental events (and information in general, as in genetics) can be downwardly causal even though realized in, or supervenient upon, physical events.
Exclusion argument: He challenged the Exclusion Argument (EA) of Jaegwon Kim, according to which causal efficacy resides solely in the physical domain of the rootmost level of energy, by arguing that the EA does not hold if indeterminism is the case. This, he argues, provides an opening for information to be downwardly causal in the universe, whether high-level supervenient events such as conscious percepts or a concept, such as that of a 'home-run' in a baseball game, or 'voting' in a democracy. Information is downwardly causal, not as a force, he argues, but by filtering out possible paths that are open at the particle level which are not consistent with informational criteria. Under 'criterial causation' (see below) only physically causal paths which are also informational causal paths are permitted to occur in the nervous system and other information processing systems, such as underlie genetic inheritance, protein formation, membrane channel formation, or social interactions such as speaking or institutional interactions. Possible physical particle-level paths which do not meet high-level informational criteria are effectively filtered out by a criterial assessment. Thus information is causal, not as a force, or via attributes such as impact or force, but is causal as a filter on what possibilities can become real.
Criterial causation: Tse gets around the impossibility of self-causation (i.e. of informational events altering their own physical basis) by positing what he has variously called 'parameter-,' 'pattern-,' 'phase-' or 'criterial causation'. According to Tse, Science and Philosophy have overly focused on 'active' modes of causation, such as Newtonian energy transfer among billiard balls. He points out that manipulationist and interventionist conceptions of causation, such as those of Woodward, [7] have largely neglected the 'passive' causal efficacy of manipulations of parameters for responses to subsequent inputs. For example, a neuron tuned to 'dog' at one moment can be reparameterized to respond optimally to 'cat' in subsequent input by altering the chains of synaptic weights that feed driving input into that neuron.
The neural code: Tse argues that thinking of the neural code as one where neural spikes trigger neural spikes, much like billiard balls triggering motion in other billiard balls, is misleading and incomplete. He argues that the neural code is in fact as much a synaptic reweighting (i.e. informational reparameterization) code as it is a code based on neural spikes or action potentials.
Tse argues that criterial causation offers a middle path between the extremes of determinism, where one's decisions and their consequences were 'set in stone' ages before one was even born, and informationally unconstrained indeterminism, where decisions happen randomly, for no reason at all. He argues that David Hume was wrong when he wrote "tis impossible to admit of any medium betwixt chance and an absolute necessity." The middle path between the two is afforded by criterial causation. For example, if commanded to think of a woman politician, people will name whichever one comes to mind first. But if the universe could be rewound to the moment of the command, they might have generated a different name, say 'Margaret Thatcher' this time instead of 'Angela Merkel'. This was not utterly random, since it had to meet the criteria of being a woman and a politician, but it was also not determined, and might have turned out otherwise.
Free will: Tse argues that discussants often argue past each other because they have different underlying definitions of the term 'free will'. If one has (1) a 'low-octane' definition according to which one's decisions and intentions can influence one's subsequent actions uncoerced by external forces or intentions, one can believe that free will is compatible with determinism, because nowhere in this definition is it required that events have the possibility of turning out otherwise. However, if one has a (2) 'mid-octane' definition, where this requirement must be met, then, by definition, one must hold that free will is incompatible with determinism, where there is only one possible unfolding of events. One must also be an incompatibilist under (3) a 'high-octane' definition of free will, which Tse also terms 'metafree will', according to which one must have the capacity not only to choose among possible courses of action as in (2), but to choose among possibilities that entail becoming a different kind of chooser in the future. Tse argues that the human brain realizes both types (3) and (2) free will, whereas other animals, such as a tiger, realize type (2) only. As such, Tse is an incompatibilist regarding definitions (2) and (3), and a compatibilist regarding definition (1). He believes indeterminism is the case, so falls in the camp of Free Will Libertarianism along with philosophers such as Robert Kane. For example, a tiger seeing a tapir in the Sumatran jungle can internally weigh various possible paths toward capturing the tapir given criteria such as path and effort minimization and stealth maximization. But no tiger thinks to itself, "next year I want to become a different kind of tiger, one that eats fewer tapirs and more pangolins." A human, in contrast, can envision future possible selves, weigh their merits, and then choose to become a desired self, and with effort realize such a self. For example, a person may desire to learn a foreign language, envision learning numerous possible foreign languages, deliberate among them, weighing various pros and cons, and then select, say, 'Swahili'. After a year of hard work, a person can have transformed their nervous system into a new type of nervous system and mind, namely, one that can now process Swahili inputs and produce Swahili outputs. As such, Tse views the human imagination to be the central engine of free will, when combined with the physical and motivational wherewithal to realize imagined futures.
In contrast, he has argued that the Libet experiments (where preceding brain activity can be used to decode picking this versus that option, such as turning left versus right, or the timing of an event, such as a finger motion, before a person becomes conscious of willing) are largely irrelevant to free will, because free will is rooted in imaginative deliberation and choosing, not picking among arbitrary and meaningless alternatives. Libet's picking paradigm also misses the fundamental importance of willpower in realizing envisioned future paths or future selves, where, for example, a person can envision numerous possible flying machines, but then must also have the determination and perseverance to build that machine, and thereby transform the world, as the Wright brothers did. Similarly, he has dismissed Wegner's claims that there is no free will with the statement, "Just as the existence of visual illusions does not prove that all vision is illusory, the existence of illusions of conscious agency does not prove that conscious operations cannot be causal of action in certain cases."
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of internal and external existence. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debate by philosophers, theologians, and scientists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of mind. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked.
Epiphenomenalism is a position of philosophy of mind on the mind–body problem which holds that subjective mental events are completely dependent for their existence on corresponding physical and biochemical events within the human body, yet themselves have no influence over physical events. According to epiphenomenalism, the appearance that subjective mental states influence physical events is an illusion, consciousness being a by-product of physical states of the world. For instance, fear seems to make the heart beat faster, but according to epiphenomenalism the biochemical secretions of the brain and nervous system —not the experience of fear—is what raises the heartbeat. Because mental events are a kind of overflow that cannot cause anything physical, yet have non-physical properties, epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism.
Free will is the capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action.
Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.
Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC), synthetic consciousness or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness.
Incompatibilism is the view that the thesis of determinism is logically incompatible with the classical thesis of free will. The term was coined in the 1960s, most likely by philosopher Keith Lehrer. The term compatibilism was coined to name the view that the classical free will thesis is logically compatible with determinism, i.e. it is possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will, even in a universe where determinism is true. These terms were originally coined for use within a research paradigm that was dominant among academics during the so-called "classical period" from the 1960s to 1980s, or what has been called the "classical analytic paradigm". Within the classical analytic paradigm, the problem of free will and determinism was understood as a compatibility question: "Is it possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will when determinism is true?" Those working in the classical analytic paradigm who answered "no" were incompatibilists in the original, classical-analytic sense of the term, now commonly called classical incompatibilists; they proposed that determinism precludes free will because it precludes the ability to do otherwise. Those who answered "yes" were compatibilists in the original sense of the term, now commonly called classical compatibilists. Given that classical free will theorists agreed that it is at least metaphysically possible for an ordinary human to exercise free will, all classical compatibilists accepted a compossibilist account of free will and all classical incompatibilists accepted a libertarian account of free will.
In philosophy, an action is an event that an agent performs for a purpose, that is, guided by the person's intention. The first question in the philosophy of action is to determine how actions differ from other forms of behavior, like involuntary reflexes. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, it involves discovering "[w]hat is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm". There is broad agreement that the answer to this question has to do with the agent's intentions. So driving a car is an action since the agent intends to do so, but sneezing is a mere behavior since it happens independent of the agent's intention. The dominant theory of the relation between the intention and the behavior is causalism: driving the car is an action because it is caused by the agent's intention to do so. On this view, actions are distinguished from other events by their causal history. Causalist theories include Donald Davidson's account, which defines actions as bodily movements caused by intentions in the right way, and volitionalist theories, according to which volitions form a core aspect of actions. Non-causalist theories, on the other hand, often see intentions not as the action's cause but as a constituent of it.
Eliminative materialism is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. It is the idea that the majority of mental states in folk psychology do not exist. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. The argument is that psychological concepts of behavior and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the nonexistence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.
Indeterminism is the idea that events are not caused, or are not caused deterministically.
Libertarianism is one of the main philosophical positions related to the problems of free will and determinism which are part of the larger domain of metaphysics. In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false and vice versa.
Hard determinism is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will, and therefore that free will does not exist. Although hard determinism generally refers to nomological determinism, it can also be a position taken with respect to other forms of determinism that necessitate the future in its entirety.
Charlie Dunbar Broad, usually cited as C. D. Broad, was an English epistemologist, historian of philosophy, philosopher of science, moral philosopher, and writer on the philosophical aspects of psychical research. He was known for his thorough and dispassionate examinations of arguments in such works as Scientific Thought (1923), The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), and Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy.
Predeterminism is the philosophy that all events of history, past, present and future, have been already decided or are already known, including human actions.
Benjamin Libet was an American neuroscientist who was a pioneer in the field of human consciousness. Libet was a researcher in the physiology department of the University of California, San Francisco. In 2003, he was the first recipient of the Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology from the University of Klagenfurt, "for his pioneering achievements in the experimental investigation of consciousness, initiation of action, and free will".
Physical causal closure is a metaphysical theory about the nature of causation in the physical realm with significant ramifications in the study of metaphysics and the mind. In a strongly stated version, physical causal closure says that "all physical states have pure physical causes" — Jaegwon Kim, or that "physical effects have only physical causes" — Agustin Vincente, p. 150.
The Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world.
The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the body.
Primary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form of consciousness is also sometimes called "sensory consciousness". Put another way, primary consciousness is the presence of various subjective sensory contents of consciousness such as sensations, perceptions, and mental images. For example, primary consciousness includes a person's experience of the blueness of the ocean, a bird's song, and the feeling of pain. Thus, primary consciousness refers to being mentally aware of things in the world in the present without any sense of past and future; it is composed of mental images bound to a time around the measurable present.
Interactionism or interactionist dualism is the theory in the philosophy of mind which holds that matter and mind are two distinct and independent substances that exert causal effects on one another. An example of your mind influencing your body would be if you are depressed, you can observe the effects on your body, such as a slouched posture, a lackluster smile, etc. Another example, this time of your body affecting your mind would be: If you struck your toe very forcefully on a door, you would experience terrible pain. Interactionism is one type of dualism, traditionally a type of substance dualism though more recently also sometimes a form of property dualism. Many philosophers and scientists have responded to this theory with arguments both supporting and opposing its relevance to life and whether the theory corresponds to reality.
The neuroscience of free will, a part of neurophilosophy, is the study of topics related to free will using neuroscience and the analysis of how findings from such studies may impact the free will debate.
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