On this basis, and taking into consideration that human frontiers are

freely evolving in a Darwinian way, we will have to make some significant adjustments to our approach to FW and moral responsibility. So, if we go back into the mind of individuals we discover that “yes, we have a soul, but it is made of lots of tiny robots”. There is no immaterial “soul” but CP-690550 purchase the complex wiring and the teamwork of these robots that act as they are trained to; as they are governed, inspired, adjusted and modulated by the cultural stuff entering our brain. This is a wonderful machine that manipulates ‘memes’ of information in an analogy with genes (Dennett, 2003). Dennett claims that in folk thinking if determinism is true then FW does not exist; therefore responsibility becomes a myth. This raises the question whether in folk psychology, the complex system of robots in our brain can be deemed responsible for its actions in the way that a soul would be? If the answer is yes, then the robots in our mind could be held accountable by law. There are some pioneering experiments in which the participants in a task cheated a lot if they were previously convinced by reading a passage in a book that their Selleckchem Androgen Receptor Antagonist brains are only a pack of neurons, that FW is only an illusion

and that their choices are predetermined (Vohs & Schooler, 2008). In our opinion, those experiments seem to indicate that the agent’s behaviour can be modified at any time, only if the idea of FW in memory contents is modified by external inputs. To this regard, TBM stands basically on the assumption that the meta-representation of self in a conscious agent (what we call self-awareness) stands on memory content, thus a transient modification of memory content may cause a very different representation

of the self and of the inherent behaviour. A further assumption is that the conscious feeling of exercising FW in voluntary Paclitaxel solubility dmso actions is fundamental to the self-attribution of agency and responsibility. Self-attribution of agency and responsibility poses Self (at least the meta-representation of it) at the centre of awareness waiting for the pronouncement of a blame or a prize, depending on the action outcome. This transient condition of the Self is a necessary prerequisite of human cognition. In order to address the FW issue and its related questions, TBM must necessarily concern itself with conscious will and intentional actions. Intentionality can be defined as: “the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs” (Jacob, 2010). Therefore, we must consider TBM’s agent to be of sound mind and dealing with reality, although we cannot claim with any certainty that either the motivations leading to the action or the critical evaluations of the outcome on the part of the agent might not cross over into conscious awareness. We usually consider the purpose of acting as premeditated, i.e. as the mental causes of our actions only if we over-intellectualise.