Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals,

and Purpose in the Age of

Neuroscience Gregg Caruso
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/neuroexistentialism-meaning-morals-and-purpose-in-t
he-age-of-neuroscience-gregg-caruso/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

CISSP Exam Cram, 5th Edition Michael Gregg [Michael

Gregg]

https://ebookmass.com/product/cissp-exam-cram-5th-edition-
michael-gregg-michael-gregg/

Systems Performance Enterprise and the Cloud Brendan

Gregg

https://ebookmass.com/product/systems-performance-enterprise-and-
the-cloud-brendan-gregg/

The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life Iddo Landau

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-meaning-in-
life-iddo-landau/

The Meaning of If Justin Khoo

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-meaning-of-if-justin-khoo/
Purpose and Procedure in Philosophy of Perception
Heather Logue And Louise Richardson

https://ebookmass.com/product/purpose-and-procedure-in-
philosophy-of-perception-heather-logue-and-louise-richardson/

Why? The Purpose of the Universe Philip Goff

https://ebookmass.com/product/why-the-purpose-of-the-universe-
philip-goff/

Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons Lisa

Siraganian

https://ebookmass.com/product/modernism-and-the-meaning-of-
corporate-persons-lisa-siraganian/

The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka

1st ed. Edition Mihirini Sirisena

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-making-and-meaning-of-
relationships-in-sri-lanka-1st-ed-edition-mihirini-sirisena/

The Craft of Songwriting: Music, Meaning, & Emotion

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-craft-of-songwriting-music-
meaning-emotion/
Neuroexistentialism
ii
Neuroexistentialism
Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in
the Age of Neuroscience

Edited by
Gregg D. Caruso and Owen Flanagan

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​046072–​3 (hbk.)
ISBN 978–0–19–046073–0 (pbk.)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
In memory of
Louis J. Caruso
vi
CONTENTS

Preface  ix
List of Contributors   xi

1. Neuroexistentialism: Third-​Wave Existentialism   1

Owen Flanagan and Gregg D. Caruso

PART I: Morality, Love, and Emotion   23

2. The Impact of Social Neuroscience on Moral Philosophy   25
Patricia Smith Churchland
3. All You Need Is Love(s): Exploring the Biological
Platform of Morality   38
Maureen Sie
4. Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality?   54
Paul Henne and Walter Sinnott-​Armstrong
5. The Neuroscience of Purpose, Meaning, and Morals   68
Edmund T. Rolls
6. Moral Sedimentation   87
Jesse Prinz

PART II: Autonomy, Consciousness, and the Self   109

7. Choices Without Choosers: Toward a Neuropsychologically
Plausible Existentialism   111
Neil Levy
8. Relational Authenticity   126
Shaun Gallagher, Ben Morgan, and Naomi Rokotnitz
9. Behavior Control, Meaning, and Neuroscience   146
Walter Glannon
10. Two Types of Libertarian Free Will Are Realized in
the Human Brain   162
Peter U. Tse
viii

PART III: Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Meaning in Life   191
11. Hard-​Incompatibilist Existentialism: Neuroscience, Punishment,
and Meaning in Life   193
Derk Pereboom and Gregg D. Caruso
12. On Determinism and Human Responsibility   223
Michael S. Gazzaniga
13. Free Will Skepticism, Freedom, and Criminal Behavior   235
Farah Focquaert, Andrea L. Glenn, and Adrian Raine
14. Your Brain as the Source of Free Will Worth Wanting:
Understanding Free Will in the Age of Neuroscience   251
Eddy Nahmias
15. Humility, Free Will Beliefs, and Existential Angst: How We Got
from a Preliminary Investigation to a Cautionary Tale   269
Thomas Nadelhoffer and Jennifer Cole Wright
16. Purpose, Freedom, and the Laws of Nature   298
Sean M. Carroll

PART IV: Neuroscience and the Law   309

17. The Neuroscience of Criminality and Our Sense of Justice:
An Analysis of Recent Appellate Decisions in Criminal Cases   311
Valerie Hardcastle
18. The Neuroscientific Non-​Challenge to Meaning, Morals,
and Purpose   333
Stephen J. Morse

Index  359

[ viii ] Contents
P R E FA C E

An aim of perennial philosophy is to locate deep, satisfying answers that

make sense of the human predicament, that explain what makes human life
meaningful, and what grounds and makes sense of the quest to live morally.
Existentialism is a philosophical expression of the anxiety that there are no
deep, satisfying answers to these questions, and thus that there are no secure
foundations for meaning and morality, no deep reasons that make sense of
the human predicament. Existentialism says that the quest of perennial phi-
losophy to locate firm foundations for meaning and morals is quixotic, largely
a matter of tilting at windmills.
There are three kinds of existentialism that respond to three differ-
ent kinds of grounding projects—​grounding in God’s nature, in a shared
vision of the collective good, or in science. The first-​wave existentialism of
Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche expressed anxiety about the idea that
meaning and morals are made secure because of God’s omniscience and good
will. The second-​wave existentialism of Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir was
a post-​Holocaust response to the idea that some uplifting secular vision of
the common good might serve as a foundation. Today, there is a third-​wave
existentialism, neuroexistentialism, which expresses the anxiety that, even as
science yields the truth about human nature, it also disenchants. The theory
of evolution together with advances in neuroscience remove the last vestiges
of an immaterial soul or self that can know the nature of what is really true,
good, and beautiful. We are gregarious social animals who evolved by descent
from other animals and who are possessed of all sort of utterly contingent
dispositions and features that result from having evolved as such an animal.
Our fate is the fate of other animals.
This collection explores the anxiety caused by this third-​wave existential-
ism and some responses to it. It brings together some of the world’s leading
philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars to tackle
our neuroexistentialist predicament and explore what the mind sciences can
tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free
x

will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in

life, and purpose.
The collection begins with an introduction to neuroexistentialism by
Owen Flanagan and Gregg D. Caruso. This chapter sets the stage for the chap-
ters to follow. It explains what neuroexistentialism is and how it is related
to, but differs from, the first two waves of existentialism. Eighteen original
chapters divided into four parts follow the introduction. There are contribu-
tions by Sean M. Carroll, Gregg D. Caruso, Patricia Smith Churchland, Farah
Focquaert, Shaun Gallagher, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Walter Glannon, Andrea
L. Glenn, Valerie Hardcastle, Paul Henne, Neil Levy, Ben Morgan, Stephen
J. Morse, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, Derk Pereboom, Jesse Prinz,
Adrian Raine, Naomi Rokotnitz, Edmund Rolls, Maureen Sie, Walter Sinnott-​
Armstrong, Peter U. Tse, and Jennifer Cole Wright.
Readers will find that each chapter explores a different component of neu-
roexistentialism, and many draw on different traditions and disciplines. There
are several chapters, for instance, that combine insights from the European
traditions of existentialism and phenomenology with recent empirical work
in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences. There are others that draw on
legal scholarship to explore the implications of neuroscience for criminal pun-
ishment and the law. Others still take an empirical approach and report here
for the first time their findings. The result is a diverse collection of essays that
sheds new light on the human predicament and suggests new and potentially
fruitful areas of research. We hope you enjoy.

[x] Preface
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Sean M. Carroll is a Research Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California

Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in 1993 from Harvard University.
His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology, quantum gravity
and spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. He is the author
of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself; The
Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to
the Edge of a New World; From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory
of Time; and the textbook Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General
Relativity.
Gregg D. Caruso is Associate Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning and
Co-​Director of the Justice Without Retribution Network (JWRN) housed at
the University of Aberdeen School of Law. His research focuses on free will
and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and crimi-
nal punishment. He is the author of Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist
Account of the Illusion of Free Will (2012) and the editor of Exploring the Illusion
of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2013) and Science and Religion: 5 Questions
(2014).
Patricia Smith Churchland is a Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the
University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct Professor at the Salk
Institute. Her research focuses on the interface between neuroscience and
philosophy. She is author of the pioneering book, Neurophilosophy (1986),
and co-​author with T. J. Sejnowski of The Computational Brain (1992). Her
current work focuses on morality and the social brain—​e.g., Braintrust: What
Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality (2011). Touching a Nerve (2013) portrays
how to get comfortable with this fact: I am what I am because my brain is as
it is. She has been president of the American Philosophical Association and
the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and she won a MacArthur Prize in
1991, the Rossi Prize for neuroscience in 2008, and the Prose Prize for science
for the book Braintrust. She was chair of the Philosophy Department at the
University of California San Diego from 2000 to 2007.
xii

Owen Flanagan is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy, Duke

University, Durham North Carolina. He is the author of several books, includ-
ing The Science of the Mind (1984/​1991), Varieties of Moral Personality (1991),
Consciousness Reconsidered (1992), Self Expressions: Minds, Morals and Meaning
of Life (1996), The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile
Them (2003), The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World (2007),
The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011), and most recently The
Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility (2017).
Farah Focquaert obtained her PhD in 2007 from Ghent University in Belgium.
She is a Research Fellow at the Bioethics Institute Ghent, Ghent University.
Her work is predominantly situated in the domain of neuroethics and the
philosophy of free will. Her current research focuses on the ethics of moral
enhancement, the ethics of neuromodulation for treatment and enhance-
ment, and the implications of the philosophy and neuroscience of free will for
the criminal justice system. In the United States, she was a Visiting Research
Fellow at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dartmouth College, a visiting
scholar at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health,
and a visiting scholar at the Department of Criminology and the Center for
Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Research
Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders, a member of the Belgian College
of Neurological and Biological Psychiatry, and a member of the ethics commit-
tee of the Forensic Psychiatric Center Ghent.
Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in
Philosophy at the University of Memphis. His areas of research include phe-
nomenology and the cognitive sciences, especially topics related to embodi-
ment, self, agency and intersubjectivity, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of
time. Dr. Gallagher has a secondary research appointment at the University
of Wollongong, Australia, and is Honorary Professor at Durham University
(UK), and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He has held visiting positions
at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University; the Center
for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen; the Centre de Recherche
en Epistémelogie Appliquée (CREA), Paris; the Ecole Normale Supériure,
Lyon; the Humboldt University in Berlin; and, most recently, at Keble College,
University of Oxford. Professor Gallagher holds the Humboldt Foundation’s
Anneliese Maier Research Award (2012–​2018). Gallagher is a founding editor
and a co-​editor-​in-​chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Michael S. Gazzaniga is the Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of
Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1964, he received a
PhD from the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under the
guidance of Roger Sperry, with primary responsibility for initiating human
split-​brain research. In his subsequent work, he has made important advances

[ xii ] List of Contributors

in our understanding of functional lateralization in the brain and how the
cerebral hemispheres communicate with one another. He has published many
books accessible to a lay audience, such as The Social Brain, Mind Matters,
Nature’s Mind, The Ethical Brain, and Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science
of the Brain. Dr. Gazzaniga’s teaching and mentoring career has included begin-
ning and developing Centers for Cognitive Neuroscience at Cornell University
Medical Center, University of California-​Davis, and Dartmouth College. He
founded the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute and the Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, of which he is the Editor-​in-​Chief Emeritus. Dr. Gazzaniga is
also prominent as an advisor to various institutes involved in brain research
and was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2009.
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the Institute of
Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. His new book is Tales from
Both Sides of the Brain.
Walter Glannon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. He is
the author of Bioethics and the Brain (2007), Brain, Body and Mind: Neuroethics
with a Human Face (2011), and editor of Free Will and the Brain: Neuroscientific,
Philosophical, and Legal Perspectives (2015).
Andrea L. Glenn, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Center for the Prevention
of Youth Behavior Problems and the Department of Psychology at the
University of Alabama. Her research focuses on understanding the biologi-
cal correlates of psychopathy and using biological information in the develop-
ment of interventions for youth with conduct problems. She is also interested
in the ethical implications of this research.
Valerie Gray Hardcastle is Professor of Philosophy, Psychology, and
Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati. She
co-​directs the Weaver Institute for Law and Psychiatry there, as well as directs
the Program in Medicine, Health, and Society. An internationally recognized
scholar, she is the author of five books and more than 150 essays. She studies
the nature and structure of interdisciplinary theories in the cognitive sciences
and has focused primarily on developing a philosophical framework for under-
standing conscious phenomena responsive to neuroscientific, psychiatric, and
psychological data. Currently, she is investigating the implications neurosci-
ence should have on the criminal justice system. Hardcastle received a bache-
lor’s degree with a double major in philosophy and political science from the
University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree in philosophy from the
University of Houston, and an interdisciplinary PhD in cognitive science and
philosophy from the University of California, San Diego.
Paul Henne is a PhD student at Duke University. He received his bachelor’s
degree from Lake Forest College in 2011 and his master’s degree from Arizona

List of Contributors [ xiii ]

xiv

State University in 2013. He primarily works on causation and causal cogni-

tion, but he also has interests in moral psychology and metaphilosophy.
Neil Levy is Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney, and
Director of Research at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He is the author,
most recently, of Consciousness and Moral Responsibility. .
Ben Morgan is Fellow and Tutor in German at Worcester College, Associate
Professor of German, and Co-​Convenor of the Oxford Comparative Criticism
and Translation Programme at the University of Oxford. He is author of On
Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self (2013)
and articles on modernist literature, film, and philosophy in the German-​
speaking world (Trakl, Kafka and Kierkegaard, Benjamin and Heidegger, Fritz
Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, the Frankfurt School). He is also editor with Carolin
Duttlinger and Anthony Phelan of Walter Benjamins anthropologisches Denken
(2012), and with Sowon Park and Ellen Spolsky of a Special Issue of Poetics
Today on “Situated Cognition and the Study of Culture” (2017).
Stephen J. Morse is Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law, Professor
of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Center
for Neuroscience and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. He was pre-
viously Co-​Director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience
Project and is a member of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience
Research Network. Trained in both law and psychology at Harvard, Professor
Morse’s work focuses on individual responsibility in criminal and civil law and
social control. Dr. Morse has published A Primer on Neuroscience and Criminal
Law (with Adina Roskies), and he has written widely about the relation of neu-
roscience to law and social policy. Professor Morse is a Diplomate in Forensic
Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, a recipient of
the American Academy of Forensic Psychology’s Distinguished Contribution
Award, and a recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s Isaac Ray
Award for distinguished contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychi-
atric aspects of jurisprudence.
Thomas Nadelhoffer is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, an Affiliate
Member of the Psychology Department, and a Roster Faculty in the
Neuroscience Program at the College of Charleston. Before teaching at the
College of Charleston, Professor Nadelhoffer spent two years as a postdoctoral
fellow with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project (2009–​
2011) under the direction of Michael Gazzaniga (UCSB) and Walter Sinnott-​
Armstrong (Duke University). Professor Nadelhoffer's main areas of research
include free will, moral psychology, neuroethics, and punishment theory. He is
particularly interested in research at the crossroads of moral and political phi-
losophy and the sciences of the mind. Professor Nadelhoffer co-​edited Moral

[ xiv ] List of Contributors

Psychology (2010) with Eddy Nahmias and Shaun Nichols. More recently, he
edited The Future of Punishment (2013). Professor Nadelhoffer has also pub-
lished nearly fifty articles and chapters in top philosophy and psychology jour-
nals and with top academic presses.
Eddy Nahmias is a Professor in the Philosophy Department and the
Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University. He specializes in philoso-
phy of mind and cognitive science, free will, moral psychology, and experimen-
tal philosophy, focusing on questions about human agency: what it is, how it
is possible, and how it accords with scientific accounts of human nature. He
has published numerous chapters and articles in these areas and is coeditor of
Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings (2010).
Derk Pereboom is Stanford H. Taylor ’50 Chair and Susan Linn Sage Professor
in the Philosophy Department at Cornell University. He is the author of Living
Without Free Will (2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (2011),
Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (2014), and of articles on free will, phi-
losophy of mind, and in the history of modern philosophy. In his work on free
will, he defends the position that we lack free will defined as the control in
action required for attributions of desert, and he explores the implications of
this view for rational deliberation, ethics, personal relationships, and treat-
ment of criminals.
Jesse Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of
Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate
Center. His research focuses on the perceptual, emotional, and cultural
foundations of human psychology. He is author of Furnishing the Mind, Gut
Reactions, The Emotional Construction of Morals, Beyond Human Nature, and The
Conscious Brain. Two other books are forthcoming: The Moral Self and Works
of Wonder.
Adrian Raine is the Richard Perry University Professor of Criminology,
Psychiatry, and Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He gained his
undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford
and his PhD in Psychology from the University of York. His interdisciplinary
research focuses on the etiology and prevention of antisocial, violent, and psy-
chopathic behavior in children and adults. He has published 375 journal arti-
cles and book chapters, 7 books, and given 335 invited presentations in 26
countries. His latest book, The Anatomy of Violence (2013), reviews the brain
basis to violence and draws future implications for the punishment, predic-
tion, and prevention of offending, as well as the neuroethical concerns sur-
rounding this work. He is past-​President of the Academy of Experimental
Criminology and received an honorary degree from the University of York
(UK) in 2015.

List of Contributors [ xv ]
xvi

Naomi Rokotnitz is the Massada Fellowships Programme Coordinator at

Worcester College, University of Oxford. Her work explores the intersections
of literature, philosophy, and science. She is author of Trusting Performance: A
Cognitive Approach to Embodiment in Drama (2011) and numerous journal arti-
cles that investigate how literature affects behavior and beliefs and influences
conceptions of subjectivity, agency, and authenticity. The most recent of these
are “ ‘Passionate Reciprocity’: Love, Existentialism and Bodily Knowledge in The
French Lieutenant's Woman” (Partial Answers: Journal of Literary History of Ideas
12.2), and “Goosebumps, Shivers, Visualization, and Embodied Resonance in
the Reading Experience: The God of Small Things” (Poetics Today 38.2).
Edmund T. Rolls is at the Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience,
Oxford, UK, and at the Department of Computer Science, University of
Warwick, UK, where he is a Professor in Computational Neuroscience and is
focusing on full-​time research. He has served as Professor of Experimental
Psychology at the University of Oxford and as Fellow and Tutor in Psychology
at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Rolls is a neuroscientist with research inter-
ests in computational neuroscience, including the operation of real neuronal
networks in the brain involved in vision, memory, attention, and decision-​
making; functional neuroimaging of vision, taste, olfaction, feeding, the con-
trol of appetite, memory, and emotion; neurological disorders of emotion;
psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia; and the brain processes under-
lying consciousness. These studies include investigations in patients and are
performed with the aim of contributing to understanding the human brain
in health and disease and of treating its disorders. He has published twelve
books on neuroscience, and more than 560 full-​length research papers on
these topics.
Maureen Sie is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University,
and Associate Professor of Meta-​ethics and Moral Psychology at the Erasmus
University, Rotterdam. From 2009 to 2014, she led a small research group
enabled by a prestigious personal grant from the Dutch Organization of
Scientific Research to explore the implications of findings in the behav-
ioral, cognitive, and neuroscience fields to our concept of moral agency.
Some publications include “Moral Hypocrisy and Moral Reasons,” in Ethical
Theory and Moral Practice (18(2), 2015); “Stereotypes and Prejudices, Whose
Responsibility? Personal Responsibility vis-​a-​vis Implicit Bias” co-​authored
with Voorst Vader Bours in Brownstein’s Implicit Bias and Philosophy (2016);
“The Real Neuroscientific Challenge to Free Will,” co-​authored with Arno
Wouters, in Trends in Cognitive Science (12(1), 2008); and “Self-​Knowledge
and the Minimal Conditions of Responsibility: A Traffic-​Participation View on
Human (Moral) Agency,” in Journal of Value Inquiry (48(2), 2014).

[ xvi ] List of Contributors

Walter Sinnott-​Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical
Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
at Duke University. He holds secondary appointments in Duke’s Law School,
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and Center for Interdisciplinary Decision
Sciences. He is a Partner Investigator at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics
and a Research Scientist with the Mind Research Network in New Mexico. He
has published widely on ethics, empirical moral psychology and neuroscience,
philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of reli-
gion, and informal logic. His current work focuses on moral psychology and
brain science, uses of neuroscience in legal systems, and moral artificial intel-
ligence. He is writing books on scrupulosity, on freedom and moral responsi-
bility, and on how arguments can overcome political polarization.
Peter Ulric Tse has been a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth
College since 2001, returning to his alma mater, where he graduated in 1984
with a degree in math and physics. He has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from
Harvard University and was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Biological
Cybernetics. He wrote The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation (2013)
and is at work on a second book on free will titled Imagining Brains: The Neural
Sources of Human Freedom and Creativity, from which his chapter here has been
adapted.
Jennifer Cole Wright is Associate Professor of Psychology at the College
of Charleston. Her area of research is moral development and moral psy-
chology more generally. Specifically, she studies meta-​ ethical pluralism,
the influence of individual and social “liberal vs. conservative” mindsets on
moral judgments, and young children’s early moral development. She has
published papers on these and other topics in Cognition, Mind & Language,
Journal of British Developmental Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Journal of Moral
Education, Philosophical Psychology, Journal of Cognition and Culture, Personality
and Individual Differences, Social Development, Personality & Social Psychology
Bulletin, and Merrill-​Palmer Quarterly. She co-​edited, with Hagop Sarkissian,
Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology, and she is currently co-​authoring
a book titled Virtue Measurement: Theory and Application with Nancy Snow.
When she’s not writing, she is usually busy warping young minds in the class-
room, brainstorming experiments in her lab, or satisfying her lust for travel
by backpacking across Europe or South East Asia—​or sometimes just trekking
(with the help of a fuel-​efficient car) across the United States.

List of Contributors [ xvii ]

xvii
CHAPTER 1

Neuroexistentialism
Third-​Wave Existentialism
OWEN FL ANAGAN AND GREGG D. C ARUSO

J ean Paul Sartre (1946/​2007) was correct when he said existentialism is a

humanism. Existentialisms are responses to recognizable diminishments
in the self-​image of persons caused by social or political rearrangements or
ruptures, and they typically involve two steps: (a) admission of the anxiety
and an analysis of its causes, and (b) some sort of attempt to regain a pos-
itive, less anguished, more hopeful image of persons. What we call neuroex-
istentialism is a recent expression of existential anxiety over the nature of
persons. Unlike previous existentialisms, neuroexistentialism is not caused
by a problem with ecclesiastical authority, as was the existentialism repre-
sented by Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche,1 nor by the shock of com-
ing face to face with the moral horror of nation state actors and their citizens,
as in the mid-​century existentialism of Sartre and Camus.2 Rather, neuroex-
istentialism is caused by the rise of the scientific authority of the human sci-
ences and a resultant clash between the scientific and the humanistic image
of persons. Specifically, neuroexistentialism is twenty-​first-​century anxiety
over the way contemporary neuroscience helps secure in a particularly vivid

This chapter includes some passages from Flanagan (2002, 2009) and Flanagan and
Barack (2010).
1. See Kierkegaard (1843/​1983, 1843/​1992, 1844/​2014, 1846/​1971, 1849/​1998),
Dostoevsky (1866/​2001, 1880/​1976), and Nietzsche (1882/​1974, 1883/​1975, 1886/​
1989, 1887/​1969).
2. See Sartre (1943/​1992, 1946/​2007), Camus (1942/​1989, 1942/​1991), de Beauvoir
(1949/​1989).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Book of parlor
tricks: How to perform them
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Book of parlor tricks: How to perform them

Author: Anonymous

Release date: June 23, 2022 [eBook #68386]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: A. B. Courtney, 1895

Credits: Demian Katz, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova
University.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOK OF

PARLOR TRICKS: HOW TO PERFORM THEM ***
 MULTUM IN PARVO LIBRARY.
Entered at the Boston Post Office as second class
matter.

Vol. 2. APRIL, 1895. No. 16.

Published Monthly.
 Book
OF

Parlor
Tricks.
How to Perform Them.

Smallest Magazine in the world. Subscription price

50 cts. per year. Single Copies 5 cts. each.

PUBLISHED BY
A. B. COURTNEY,
Room 74, - - 45 Milk Street,
BOSTON, MASS.
 The Diviner.
The point of this trick consists in divining a word which is named,
together with several others. Two of the players commonly agree
between themselves to place it after an object that has four legs; for
instance, a quadruped, a table, etc., etc.
Example.—If Emily wishes to have Henry guess the word which
Susan has secretly told her, she says to him, “Susan has been
shopping; she has bought a rose, a dress, some jewelry, a table, a
bonnet, a shawl——” Henry, of course, will easily guess that the
object in question is a bonnet, for the word “table,” which precedes it,
has four legs.
 To Walk Upon a Hot Iron Bar.
Take half an ounce of camphor, dissolve it in two ounces of aqua
vitæ, add to it one of quicksilver, one ounce of liquid storax, which is
the droppings of myrrh, and prevents the camphor from firing; take
also two ounces of hematis, which is a red stone, to be had at the
druggists’; and when you buy it, let them beat it into a powder in their
great mortar, for, being very hard, it cannot well be reduced in a
small one; add this to the ingredients already specified, and when
you purpose to walk upon the bar, anoint your feet well with it, and
you may do so without the slightest danger.
 The Restored Ribbon.
Have two pieces of colored ribbon of exactly the same size and
appearance, one of which, being damped, may be secured in the
palm of the hand, previous to exhibiting. The other may be cut in
pieces and burned in a plate by the audience. Taking now the ashes,
you call for a basin of water, with which you moisten them, stating by
the magical influence of the “cold water cure,” the color and form of
the burned ribbon will be restored. Rubbing the damp ashes in the
hand, you draw forth, at the same time, the concealed ribbon, which
will appear to be the same that had been consumed.
 Interesting Problems.
By steeping an egg in vinegar for some time it can be made pliable
enough to be stuffed into a bottle. Then restore the egg to its natural
shape by pouring water into the bottle.
 How to Drop a Tumbler on the Floor
Without Breaking It.
This requires a steady hand and smooth table. You simply set a
tumbler upon a table near the edge and gently push the tumbler with
your forefinger until it is very nicely balanced upon the edge of the
table. Now by giving the tumbler a very gentle push again it will fall to
the floor, striking upon its bottom edge, and remain standing either
upon its bottom or lying upon its side perfectly sound. Be careful and
have no covering upon the table, as the less friction you can get the
surer you are to perform your trick.
 Magic Money.
This conjuring trick is performed thus: Procure two quarters and a
half-dollar; conceal one of the quarters in the right hand; lay the
other quarter and the half-dollar on a table, in full view of the
audience; now ask for two handkerchiefs; then take the half-dollar
up, and pretend to roll it in one of the handkerchiefs; but, in lieu
thereof, roll up the quarter, which you had concealed, and retain the
half-dollar; give the handkerchief to one of the company to hold; now
take the quarter off the table, and pretend to roll that up in the
second handkerchief; but put up the half-dollar instead; give this
handkerchief to another person, and beg him to “hold it tight,” while
you utter, “Presto! fly!” On opening the handkerchiefs the money will
appear to have changed places. This is one of the best tricks in this
book.
 Sorcery.
This is a somewhat singular trick. One of the party is placed behind a
screen in an adjoining room, where he cannot possibly see the
players—or may be blindfolded. One of the party must then call out,
“Do you know Miss ——?” naming a lady’s name. “Yes.” “Do you
know her dress?” “Yes.” “Her wreath, her slippers, her gloves and
her bracelets?” “Yes.” “Her handkerchief?” “Yes.” “Her fan?” “Yes.”
“Well, then, since you know her dress so well, tell me what article of
her costume I am now touching?” If the one behind the screen is
acquainted with the trick, he will, of course, answer directly, “her
bracelet,” the only article mentioned which has the word “and” before
it.
 Odd or Even.
To tell in which hand of a person, having an odd number in one hand
and an even number in the other, the odd or even number is. Desire
the person to multiply the number in his right hand by a figure which
is an odd number, and the number in his left by an even one; and to
say if the products added together are odd or even. If even, the even
number is in the right hand; if odd, the even number is in the left
hand.
 To Discover Card by Weight.
Desire any person in company to draw a card from the pack, and
when he has looked at it, to return it to you with its face downward;
then, pretending to weigh it nicely, take notice of any particular mark
on the back of the card, which, having done, put it among the rest of
the cards, and desire the person to shuffle them as much as he
pleases; then, receiving the pack from his hands, you pretend to
weigh each card as before, and proceed in this way until you
discover, from the back of it, the particular card he selected.
 How Money is Saved.
Why pay a dollar, or even twenty-five cents each for books when we
offer to send you the following set of twelve volumes on receipt of
only ten cents. Read the list.
Book of Short Stories. A collection of interesting sketches.
Mormonism Exposed, by a Mormon Slave Wife. Telling about the
secret rites of the Danites, doings of Polygamists with their
numerous wives, etc., etc. This book is of thrilling interest.
Prize Cook Book. A collection of valuable household recipes from
the best cooks in America. If you don’t need this book yourself, some
lady will appreciate it.
Dr. Parkhurst’s Exposures. This book tells about the celebrated
exposure of dens of iniquity in N. Y. Low life in the Metropolis is laid
bare.
Art of Love Making, and Guide to Etiquette. This little volume is
indeed interesting.
Book of Brief Narratives. Never before published. Very interesting.
Guide to Fortune Telling and Dream Book, compiled from the secrets
of Madame Le Normand.
Book of Detective Stories. Thrilling adventures of detectives in
ferreting out crime.
Secrets of the Harem. A description of the beautiful wives and slaves
of the Sultan, by one who has been there.
How to Get Rich. Secrets for coining wealth, many of which have
never been published before.
Marriage Manual. If you are married, or expect to be, you should get
this important book and keep it securely under lock and key.
How to Become a Lightning Calculator. By a glance at this book you
can learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide instantaneously.
To get the complete set, send ten cents, silver or stamps, to
Keystone Book Co., P. O. Box 1634, Philadelphia, Pa., or to the firm
from whom you purchased this book. You will receive the books
promptly and will be well pleased with them.
 Eatable Candle-Ends.
Take a large apple and cut out a few pieces in the shape of candle-
ends, round at the bottom and flat at the top, in fact, as much like a
piece of candle as possible. Now cut some slips from a sweet
almond, as near as you can to resemble a wick, and stick them into
the imitation candles. Light them for an instant to make the tops
black, blow them out, and they are ready for the trick. One or two
should be artfully placed in a snuffer-tray, or candlestick; you then
inform your friends that during your “travels in the Russian Empire,”
you learned, like the Russians, to be fond of candles; at the same
time lighting your artificial candles (the almonds will readily take fire
and flame for a few seconds), pop them into your mouth, and
swallow them one after the other.
 The Wonderful Hat.
Upon a table place three pieces of bread, or any other eatable, at a
little distance from each other, and cover each with a hat, take up the
first hat, and removing the bread put it into your mouth, letting the
company see that you swallow it, then raise the second hat, and eat
the bread which was under that, then proceed to the third hat in the
same manner. Having eaten the three pieces, ask any person in the
company to choose which hat he would like the three pieces of
bread to be under, and when he has made his choice of one of the
hats, put it on your head, and ask him if he does not think they are
under it. By the way, if you are interested in tricks, let us call your
attention to Prof. Roltair’s celebrated cabinet of magic. It contains
twenty-five new and startling tricks with complete apparatus, so that
you can easily give a two hour’s entertainment. Among the
numerous tricks are: The load of articles from a borrowed hat, such
as cannon balls, cabbages, boxes, etc.; the famous ink and water
trick, with apparatus, so that you can instantly change a glass of ink
to clear water, new and surprising card tricks including a pack of
wizard’s cards, the famous dancing skeleton, true secret of
ventriloquism, by means of which you can learn to throw the voice
into hay-lofts, closets, trunks, etc., magic wand, and many other
wonderful sleight of hand marvels are all contained in Prof. Roltair’s
cabinet. The regular price is two dollars, but you can now obtain it,
complete, postpaid, by sending fifty cents in stamps or money order
to W. S. Everett & Co., 113 Munroe Street, Lynn, Mass., or the firm
from whom you purchased this book.
 The Invisible Coin.
“Is silver a visible or invisible thing?” What a singular question! You
will reply, certainly silver is a visible thing. A good many poor
creatures, however, are of a different opinion; and possibly they are
not altogether wrong, as we are about to show.
Will you kindly lend me a quarter, having first marked it, that you may
know it again. Very well! There is a little handkerchief which will
serve for me to make the experiment I have promised you. In the
middle of this handkerchief, as you will perceive, I will put the
quarter, which you have marked with a small cross. I am only folding
the handkerchief that the quarter may be well wrapped up in it; you
can have no difficulty in recognizing its shape. However! You are
suspicious! I will make an improvement. There, sir, hold the
handkerchief yourself, first above the little parcel formed by the coin.
You may touch it, and convince yourself that it is still in its place.
Now, I take the handkerchief by the opposite corner, I draw it toward
me, unfolding it entirely; I then turn it over, shake it, and wave it in
the air, to convince you that the coin has disappeared. The fact is
evident. But, did you see it go? No! Certainly, then, silver is
sometimes an invisible body.
Which fact you may prove by the foregoing process, if you have a
handkerchief in one corner of which a quarter dollar has been
sewed. You appear to put the borrowed quarter in the middle of the
said handkerchief; then, instead of this coin, which you retain in your
hand, concealed between the fore and middle fingers, you fold the
handkerchief making the little parcel in the middle with the quarter
sewed in the corner, in a sort of hem, so that the coin is not seen,
and cannot drop out. When you quickly pull the handkerchief out of
the hand which held it, the illusion is complete.
As to the marked coin which it is easy for you to have put on the
table, or in your pocket, you may make it reappear in a cup, a box, or
anything else, which adds to the effect of the trick you have
performed.