Cognitive Philosophy is excited to host the January 9th edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival! The Philosophers’ Carnival is a roaming showcase for the best philosophy blog posts of each month. The entries in this edition span topics in mind, agency, ethics, language and more. Enjoy the show!

Is it possible to behave in such way that you’re not being yourself? What is your true self? Your ingrained desires or your explicit values and commitments? And in a world where behavior and personality arise from neurophysiology, do we even still have room for the notion of a self?

What does it mean to be a victim of circumstances? What is the difference between people who take personal responsibility for their lives, and those who seemingly choose not to? Is it possible for us to live in a world where people consistently actualize their potentialities? And most importantly, what ways of thinking about human behavior will allow the last question to come to fruition?

I’ve written about free will a few times on this blog, and anyone who’s familiar with these writings will know I’m very critical of most conceptions of free will (Link 1, Link 2). And yet I also feel like we often are missing something really important when engaging in this debate. Let’s not forget what…

The BBC recently published a story about some research about free will, and I am yet again struck by the naive conceptions of free will so many of us have. The article discusses research that as far as I can tell claims that animals, even simple ones, have a range of options available to them,…

I was driving my car the other day and I decided to run some experiments on my consciousness (yes I know, brilliant time to decide to play with consciousness). I was thinking about how automatic so much of our behavior is. How amazing it was that such incredibely complicated behavior can be done all under…