Abstract Accepted

Meditation And The Brain: Attention, Control And Emotion

I intend to cope with the relationship between will, self-control, emotion, inhibition and reasoning. I will analyze neuroscientific experiments in both technical and philosophical ways. I will defend the thesis that self-control mechanisms can modulate more basic stimuli and I interpret that fact as an example of how higher-level properties can be related to lower-level properties. Assuming the over-cited standpoints, I aim to show the physiological mechanisms underlying some practical and ethical issues. While philosophers in general neglect the physiological features that constitute the main aspects of thought and behavior, I intend to advocate that cutting-edge neuroscientific experiments would offer us a guideline to explain human behavior in its relationship to will, self-control, inhibition, emotion and reasoning. I intend to establish a difference between veridical and adaptive decision-making that helps us to understand how it is possible to create experimental designs that can better mimic the complexity of costs and values present in our day-by-day decisions in more ecologically relevant laboratorial research. I analyze some experiments moved by the intention to develop an epistemological reflection about the necessary neural mechanisms to social assessment and decision-making.

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*Professor of Philosophy of Science, Mind and Epistemology.
Federal University Of Mato Grosso  
Mailing Adress: Rua Florença n. 8, Jardim Tropical, Cuiabá, MT – Brazil - CEP: 78065-175.
Email: gabriel.mograbi@gmail.com

Int Seminar MBC, Jan 2010. Accepted