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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 5

Publication Date: May 25, 2023

DOI:10.14738/assrj.105.14556.

Madonna, F. (2023). Free Will-Mentalizing: Some Reasons to Consider Them a Single Phenomenon. The "Indeterminist" Point of

View. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(5).63-70.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Free Will-Mentalizing: Some Reasons to Consider Them a Single

Phenomenon. The "Indeterminist" Point of View

Federica Madonna

University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino, Italy

ABSTRACT

The following essay aims to provide some arguments in favor of equality of the

phenomena of mentalizing and free will; in order to be able to highlight the overlap,

therefore, the equality of the phenomena concerned, it is desirable,

methodologically, that the three characteristics of mentalizing (the cognitive effort

of the self to “understand” the other; the processing time of the message and the

presence of the You) be displayed as intrinsic properties to the free will in order to

conclude that the field of intersoggetivity is an extension of the investigation of the

latter and not a phenomenon in its own right. It will be argued, in fact, that “reading

of the mind” is the answer to the accusation made against indeterminists about the

physical localisation of causality sui generis. The latter, unduly exploiting the

characteristics of mentalizing, would find in the “mind/brain” of the agent its

manifestation, masking, however, the fact that the ontological nature of the same

mentalizing is that of free will.

Keywords: cognitive empathy, free will, reading of the mind, mentalizing, metacognition,

mindreading.

INTRODUCTION

For some years now, the phenomenon of empathy has been proposed to the attention of most

people in the scientific debate, declined – as we will certainly know – in the problem of

mentalizing or “reading of the mind”. Elsewhere, I have already argued that, in my humble

opinion, the latter responds to the transcendental need, of a purely analytical nature, to provide

an answer to the question of Cartesian memory (are we res cogitans or res extensa?), thus

introducing into the debate an epistemic, moral, and phenomenological glue of a purely natural

identification. On that occasion, moreover, I intervened that precisely for this reason it was not

possible to identify the phenomenon “mentalizing” as something separate and different from

the best known one of free will, leaving the explanations of this position momentarily on the

sideline’s sui generis. The reasons that lead me to think that we are faced with the same

phenomenon, declined in different contexts, but ontologically referring to only one, finds its

explanations in some arguments related to the nature of both free will and the reading of the

mind.

It will certainly be remembered that when it comes to cognitive empathy there are three main

aspects of the phenomenon:

• The cognitive effort of the self to “understand” the other;

• The processing time of the message;

• The presence of the You [1-7];

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 5, May-2023

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

the combination of which, in addition to giving rise to the “reading of the mind”, polarizes the

current debate, especially on the first of the three aspects; as if to clarify the ways in which the

Self interacts with the You means to understand the ontological nature of cognitive empathy!

This tendency, if you like, is evident in a particular “target article” [8], which collects the summa

of what has just been said, in which mentalizing is “explained” through the use of priority or

less than one of the two probable channels of access to the mind of the You: mindreading or

metacognition [9-14]; in my opinion, we are witnessing at the alternation of positions that

discuss the functioning of the same, giving for granted and certain their very existence by their

own lives. However, neither there nor elsewhere is there an even more radical question

concerning the actual existence of these hypothetical but probable access channels, declined

either in the priority of reading the mind or in that of the metacognitive effort of the agent

himself.

In order to be able to highlight the overlap, therefore, the equality of the phenomena concerned,

it is desirable, methodologically, that the three aforementioned characteristics of mentalizing

be displayed as intrinsic properties to the free will in order to conclude that the field of

intersoggetivity is an extension of the investigation of the latter and not a phenomenon in its

own right.

FIRST ASPECT: THE COGNITIVE EFFORT OF THE SELF

Generally speaking, it is known that on the actual existence of the free will there are two orders

of problems which, metaphysically and ontologically, grip the positions of indeterminism and

determinism (I'm going to use the terms generic "indeterminism" and "determinism" to

indicate their respective positions on the concept of cause, not specifying, from time to time,

the infinite nuances of both to make the reasoning more understandable and not to run the risk

of going out of the question): indeterministic localisation, in the former; the possibility of

alternative, for the latter [15-16].

Discussing, therefore, the priority of one channel of access compare to another as what regards

the mindreading means that you are trying, maskedly, to respond to these two kinds of

problems, shifting the debate to the effects of free will and not to its probable cause, since the

insurmountable difficulty of supporting the existence of the “causal, but not causal contingency”

of indeterminism lies precisely in clarifying where and at what time such causality can manifest

itself sui generis.

The appeal, then, to the existence of mentalizing itself, discussing the priority of mindreading

rather than metacognition or vice versa, means providing at least a satisfactory answer to the

problem of indeterministic localisation.

A conceptual operation that for several reasons finds its foundation.

• The commonality of cognitive restrictedness both of the functioning of the mind and of the

principles of hidden variables [17-18] (relating to quantum mechanics) support the

convinced indeterminist or to argue that “the physical place” in which the “causal

contingency” would occur is precisely the mind.

This would mean not incurring, momentarily, any radical rebuttal of the same position, since

as far as the first aspect is concerned, it would be undeniable that as much as Science can be

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Madonna, F. (2023). Free Will-Mentalizing: Some Reasons to Consider Them a Single Phenomenon. The "Indeterminist" Point of View. Advances in

Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(5).63-70.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.105.14556

advanced in knowledge of the brain, the latter still remains a transcendental and naturalised

“mystery”, but still “in part” unknown; for the second, it must be said that quantum mechanics

bases its foundations on the recognition of what it still does not know (“principle of hidden

variables”) for which the convinced indeterminist could take advantage of a partial “ontological

thesis”, “sleeping quiet dreams” also for another reason.

• Where he is called to answer by supporters of the equality of the mind with the brain that,

during a “process of reading of the mind” the energy of the whole system would remain

roughly the same as any other cognitive act, the indeterminist could always appeal to

Heisenberg’s principle of indetermination [19]: the measurement of the system itself would

alter it so much that it is always and only probable to identify indeterministic localisation.

This would mean, bearing in mind the equality (so far hypothetical) free will=mentalizing, that

when we talk about “reading the mind” we would be pointing to a process of a more complex

system (free will) which, responding to the indeterminacy of its calculability, would translate

into high probability that the process would take place in the manner theorised by the

indeterminists themselves.

In fact, the characteristic of the “reading of the mind”, identified in the cognitive effort of the

Self to “understand” the other, would mean – from this point of view – that the free will (in its

conscious aspect) needs cognition by the subject and that causality sui generis, taking place “in

the mind”, would follow an alleged theorisation of the beliefs and desires of the You.

A process that would begin only and exclusively from the placet of the subject himself: the Self,

in fact, would be faced with the alternative or to walk the path of cognition addressed to the

You or not to follow it; in the first case, the process that is emerging would be triggered; in the

second, the manifested behavior would be that defined by many (improperly, given this

position) “selfish drift” or neutralisation of empathy.

The debate, therefore, on the priority mindreading/metacognition would concern neither the

conscious aspect of mind reading nor the “neurobiological” aspect, but the attempt to

understand the naturalised bases of free will, forming a hybrid between metaphysical logic and

neuroscientific not reaching any “solution” neither with the first nor with the second; the

miscellaneous ness of the instruments used could not benefit any approach, since it is neither

scientific arguments nor scientific “instruments”.

This, then, explains the increasing use of the principles of quantum mechanics, on the one hand,

and the questions on mentalizing, on the other: they constitute, in their “parallel unit”, a single

aspect of the problem relating, as mentioned, to the free will.

SECOND ASPECT: THE PROCESSING OF THE MESSAGE

If what has been said so far is true, then the time of processing the message would also become

merely probabilistic, indeterminate, “transforming” the question as follows: the time necessary

for the activation of cognition by the Self would result in the time of activation of the mentalizing

process, that is, of the same cognitive activity.

Not by chance, in fact, following the logic of Schrodinger’s cat paradox [20], cognition (the first

aspect of mentalisation) could both happen and not happen, simultaneously, placing the