One of the things students learn in first-year philosophy is David Hume's argument that the notion of cause-and-effect is a 'useful fiction' we create through 'custom and habit', and not a real thing in the world. And indeed, the determinism offered by traditional models of cause-and-effect pose a challenge for our conception of things like free will. But what if causation isn't purely mechanical in the way the traditional model suggests? New models of cognition and neuroscience may be pushing us in that direction, according to this article. For example, there's the concept of 'criterial causation' "emphasizes the broader conditions under which neural activity becomes effective in producing behavior." Or there's 'semantic causation', based on "the meanings (neural signals) represent to the organism based on past experiences and adaptive significance."
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