Free Will and Neuroscience

In this paper I argue that Robert Kane’s defense of event-causal libertarianism, as presented in Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism, fails because his event-causal reconstruction is incoherent. I focus on the notions of efforts and self-forming actions essential to his defense.

In this paper I argue that Robert Kane’s defense of event-causal libertarianism, as presented in Responsibility, Luck, and Chance: Reflections on Free Will and Indeterminism, fails because his event-causal reconstruction is incoherent. I focus on the notions of efforts and self-forming actions essential to his defense.

The question of whether humans have free will, like the question of the meaning of life, is one whose answer depends on how the question itself is interpreted. In his recent book Neurophilosophy of Free Will: From Libertarian Illusions to a Concept of Natural Autonomy, Henrik Walter examines whether free will is possible in a deterministic natural world, and he concludes that the answer is "It depends" (xi). He rejects a libertarian account of free will as internally inconsistent, but argues (...) for a version of compatibilism that he calls "natural autonomy." Natural autonomy, or "giving oneself laws" (8), is a successor concept to libertarian free will, and it provides for a self-determination that is consistent with a deterministic and fully physical world. Walter covers a lot of ground in this book. He debunks dualism, examines classical and modern physics, critiques radical constructivism, and utilizes chaos theory, and he refers to figures from St. Augustine to Humberto Maturana, Dennett, Einstein, Hegel and Nozick. This book could be seen as encompassing two distinct projects. The first project is a defense of what Walter calls "neurophilosophy" as a methodology for answering traditional philosophical questions. This methodology is more commonly known as "cognitive science," and Walter accepts the naturalistic premises that underlie most of the work being done by cognitive scientists today. The second project is an application of the neurophilosophical methodology to the traditional question of whether free will is compatible with determinism. The defense of a neurophilosophical methodology is concentrated in the second section of the book, whereas the first and third sections focus on the issue of free will. In the first section Walter presents a thorough overview of the free will debate. It is the final third of the book that warrants the most attention, for this is where the original work is concentrated. Before we examine Walter's contribution to the free will debate, let us briefly look at his historical analysis and the neurophilosophical method that he advocates.. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the different ways to describe brain behaviour with the goal to provide a basis for an informed discussion of the nature of decisions and actions that humans perform in their lives. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 outlines a number of concepts exhibiting how many subtle details and distinctions lie behind the broad notions of determinacy and stochasticity. These details are necessary for a discussion, in Section 3, of particular aspects relevant for the characterization of (...) brain states and their dynamics. The descriptions of brain behaviour currently provided by neuroscience depend on the level and context of the descriptions. There is no clear-cut evidence for ultimately determinate or ultimately stochastic brain behaviour. As a consequence, there is no solid neurobiological basis to argue either in favour of or against any fundamental determination or openness of human decisions and actions. (shrink)

A philosopher considers whether the scientific and philosophical arguments against free will are reason enough to give up our belief in it.

In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he (...) argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy--in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way; in other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question. (shrink)

A seminal experiment found that the reported time of a decision to perform a simple action was at least 300 ms after the onset of brain activity that normally preceded the action. In Experiment 1, we presented deceptive feedback (an auditory beep) 5 to 60 ms after the action to signify a movement time later than the actual movement. The reported time of decision moved forward in time linearly with the delay in feedback, and came after the muscular initiation of (...) the response at all but the 5-ms delay. In Experiment 2, participants viewed their hand with and without a 120-ms video delay, and gave a time of decision 44 ms later with than without the delay. We conclude that participants' report of their decision time is largely inferred from the apparent time of response. The perception of a hypothetical brain event prior to the response could have, at most, a small influence. (shrink)

There are numerous theoretical reasons which are usually said to undermine the case for mental causation. But in recent years, Libet‘s experiment on readiness potentials (Libet, Wright, and Gleason 1982; Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl 1983), and a more recent replication by a research team led by John Dylan Haynes (Soon, C.S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.J., and Haynes, J.-D. [2008]) are often singled out because they appear to demonstrate empirically that consciousness is not causally involved in our choices and actions. (...) In this paper, an alternative interpretation of these studies is offered; one which is in accordance both with the empirical evidence and also with the phenomenology of the will, demonstrating that the two opposing views of agency – both the ones that deny the reality of free will and the ones that affirm it – are equally compatible with the outcomes of these two experiments. On this basis, it is shown that the claim that the results on the timing of readiness potential tip the scales in favour of one or the other view cannot be justified - neither from a neurological, nor from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

This volume is aimed at readers who wish to move beyond debates about the existence of free will and the efficacy of consciousness and closer to appreciating ...

Free will sceptics claim that we do not possess free will—or at least, that we do not possess nearly as much free will as we think we do. Some free will sceptics hold that the very notion of free will is incoherent, and that no being could possibly possess free will (Strawson this volume). Others allow that the notion of free will is coherent, but hold that features of our cognitive architecture prevent us from possessing free will. My concern in (...) this chapter is with views of the second kind. According to an increasingly influential line of thought, our common-sense commitment to the existence of free will is threatened in unique ways by what we are learning from the sciences of human agency. (shrink)

Free will sans metaphysics? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9525-5 Authors Helen Beebee, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

I agree with Nachev and Hacker’s general approach. However, their criticism of claims of covert automaticity can be strengthened. I first say a few words on what voluntary action involves and on the consequent limited relevance of brain research for the determination of voluntariness. I then turn to Nachev and Hacker’s discussion of possible covert automaticity and show why the case for it is weaker than they allow.

Chris Frith's target chapters contain a wealth of interesting experiments and striking theoretical claims. In these comments I begin by drawing out some of the key themes in his discussion of action and the sense of agency. Frith's central claim about conscious action is that what we are primarily conscious of in acting is our own agency. I will review some of the experimental evidence that he interprets in support of this claim and then explore the following three questions about (...) the awareness of agency: Should we locate the phenomena that Frith describes as awareness of agency at the personal level or at the subpersonal level? If we are indeed operating at the personal level, then should we think about awareness of agency as something we experience, or as something that we believe? If awareness of agency is to be understood experientially, is there what some authors have called “a sense of agency“, where this is understood to be a distinctive type of experience that accompanies agentive behaviors but is absent in behaviors that are not under the control of the agent? In what follows I argue that awareness of agency should be located at the personal level, and that we should think of it as something we experience . But I will reject the claim that there is a distinctive sense of agency. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the importance of multidisciplinary research to tackle the questions that empirical sciences, and in particular neuroscience, ultimately encounter. The last decades have witnessed an enormous progress in brain research, mainly because of the improvement of neuroimaging techniques and neurogenetics, and the development of optogenetics. Furthermore, the US Government and European Union have launched the BRAIN Initiative and Human Brain Project, respectively, to promote a better understanding of brain functioning and its disorders. Unfortunately, their gates appear (...) sealed for disciplines that pursue a deep knowledge of the mind, such as philosophy or psychology. The most probable outcome of this situation is “promissory materialism”, as Sir John Eccles warned several decades ago. I review the multidisciplinary approach of Eccles to the study of the brain and mind, especially through his relationship with Mariano Artigas. Finally, I propose that interdisciplinary research may be improved by a more solid understanding of the discipline one wants to dialogue with, and a multidisciplinary training from the beginning of the research career. (shrink)

Discusses Eddy Nahmias' “Is Free Will an Illusion?”.

With certain topics the general reader experiences a double-whammy wherein one must peer through a curtain of needlessly obscure jargon to try glimpsing something that is inherently weird in nature. Bell’s nonlocality was once such a topic, but authors have had considerable success over the years in showing where the line is between the enigma itself and the human-made oddities surrounding it . Libet-ology has yet to undergo that de-mystifying process. Accordingly, our first order of business here is to restate (...) its basic tenets in plain English so that only nature’s inherent puzzle is left on the table, free of certain peculiarities of the existing technical literature. We also address the question of the central topic versus its byways, as alluded to by ‘left turn into veto-as-volition’ in our title. In the ensuing parts of the paper, we look outside the field to see how hypnotherapy and Hinduism might shed light on it. (shrink)

Various authors have argued that progress in the neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric sciences might threaten the commonsense understanding of how the mind generates behavior, and, as a consequence, it might also threaten the commonsense ways of attributing moral responsibility, if not the very notion of moral responsibility. In the case of actions that result in undesirable outcomes, the commonsense conception—which is reflected in sophisticated ways in the legal conception—tells us that there are circumstances in which the agent is entirely and fully (...) responsible for the bad outcome and circumstances in which the agent is not at all responsible for the bad outcome. (shrink)

It is assumed that mental action, such as free will, exists, and an exploration is made of its relationship to the brain, physical laws, and evolutionary selection. If the assumption is made that all content of conscious experience is encoded in the brain, it follows that free will must act as process only. This result is consistent with the experimental results of Libet and others that if free will exists, it must act by making a selection between alternatives provided by (...) the brain. Also, proposals for some additional actions of consciousness, besides free will, are reviewed. The use of mental action by consciousness is not in accord with presently known physics, in which physical changes are either deterministic or random, and an extension would have to be made to known physics to account for physical changes produced by such an action. However, such an extension could be fairly simple in overview, such as the assumption that consciousness can produce the ordering of randomness. Examples of several such theories are given. If consciousness can make selections among programs in the brain/nervous system, and thereby contribute to the formation of behavior, less programming would be needed, especially in situations affected by a variety of types of factors. For this reason consciousness might be present early in the evolutionary line for animals that explore new territory. Emotions and cognitive ability, even though determined by the brain, could be viewed as “choice guiders,” and for this reason their presence in an animal would indicate the presence of consciousness. (shrink)

Two forms of independent action by consciousness have been proposed by various researchers – free will and holistic processing. (Holistic processing contributes to the formation of behavior through the holistic use of brain programs and encoding.) The well-known experiment of Libet et al. (1983) implies that if free will exists, its action must consist of making a selection among alternatives presented by the brain. As discussed herein, this result implies that any physical changes mind can produce in the brain are (...) very small, and this in turn implies that holistic processing would also act to select among brain programs. The latter process would contribute to flexibility of behavior, which would therefore be an indication of the possible presence of consciousness in an animal. Because locomotion requires response to varying and unpredictable conditions, the above conclusions support the idea that simple forms of consciousness appear very early in the evolutionary line of the animal kingdom. (shrink)

The concept of free will is central to our lives, as we make day-to-day decisions, and to our culture, in our ethical and legal systems. The very concept implies that what we choose can produce a change in our physical environment, whether by pressing a switch to turn out electric lights or choosing a long-term plan of action which can affect many people. Yet volition is not a part of presently known physical laws and it is not even known whether (...) it exists -- no physics experiments have ever established its presence. The purpose of this article is to make two points: first, that free will cannot be accounted for by presently known physical laws and second, that if free will exists, any description of its effects in the physical world would necessarily constitute a radical addition to presently known physical laws. (shrink)

REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry Stapp.

In this paper we analyze Libet’s conclusions on «free will» (FW), rejecting his view of the concept and defending a partially aligned view with Wittgenstein’s early remarks on FW. First, the concept of Readiness Potential (RP) and Libet’s view are presented. Second, we offer an account of Wittgenstein´s point of view. Third, a dual-domain analysis is proposed; finally, we offer our conclusions. This article´s conclusion is part of an ongoing research.

Given dramatic increases in recent decades in the pace of scientific discovery and understanding of the functional organization of the brain, it is increasingly clear that engagement with the neuroscientific literature and research is central to making progress on philosophical questions regarding the nature and scope of human freedom and responsibility. While patterns of brain activity cannot provide the whole story, developing a deeper and more precise understanding of how brain activity is related to human choice and conduct is crucial (...) to the development of realistic, just, and intellectually rigorous models of human agency and moral responsibility. In this special issue, we acknowledge that “free will” and “moral responsibility” are not concepts with which neuroscience can directly engage, and instead focus on self-governance, and the capacities that contribute to self-governance, which are more tractable for scientific investigation and are prerequisites for the presence of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This book argues two main things: The first is that there is no such thing as free will—at least not in the sense most ordinary folk take to be central or fundamental; the second is that the strong and pervasive belief in free will can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness.

This paper is to spell out a version of perception dualism, whose ontological description of the mind-body relation is stronger than property dualism but weaker than substance dualism, that is, to define mental events as perceptions from an internal point of view and physical events as perceptions from an external point of view, then, the author set out to tackle some long-persisting ontological issues in philosophy of mind, such as the psycho-physical interaction, the criterion of mind, the clash between free (...) will and natural necessity, Benjamin Libet’s Experiment. It also recovers some of the observations and conclusions achieved byCartesian internalism and Leibniz’s parallelism. Since perception is the most essential feature of mind, while defining mental and physical events in terms of perception, the author also develops a philosophical theory of perception. (shrink)

This two-part, mainly to explore the neurobiological scientists proposed "new image": In the first part, I will apply on the proposed neural biological sciences "new image." The second part, I will examine the neurobiology challenge success. I concluded with three points: mental status can not be based around the physical phenomena; edge of the system can not completely control the will of the act; the self is not the brain, the self is a social and cultural construction. The current study (...) is structured in two parts and partially inquired into the neurobiology scientist proposed "new human image": In the first part, "the new human image" which the author discusses the neurobiological science proposed. The second part, the author inspects neurobiology challenge whether it does succeed. The author proposes three main points: The mental phenomenon is unable to reduce to the physical phenomenon; the limbic system is unable completely to control the will action; the self is not the cerebrum, the self is one sociality and the culture constructs. (shrink)

As neuroscience uncovers these and other mechanisms regulating choices and social behaviour, we cannot help but wonder whether anyone truly chooses anything (though see "Is the universe deterministic?"). As a result, profound questions about responsibility are inescapable, not just regarding criminal justice, but in the day-to-day business of life. Given that, I suggest that free will, as traditionally understood, needs modification. Because of its importance in society, any description of free will updated to fit what we know about the nervous (...) system must also reflect our social need for a working concept of responsibility. (shrink)

A neurophilosopher?s take on the self, free will, human understanding, and the experience of God, from the perspective of the brain.

Advanced biological brains are by nature open-ended opportunistic controllers. Such controllers compute, pretty much on a moment-to-moment basis, what problem-solving resources are readily available and recruit them into temporary problem-solving wholes. Neural plasticity, exaggerated in our own species, makes it possible for such resources to become factored deep into both our cognitive and physical problem-solving routines. One way to think about this is to depict the biological brain as a master of what I shall dub ‘ecological control’. Ecological control is (...) the kind of top-level control that does not micro-manage every detail, but rather encourages substantial devolvement of power and responsibility. This kind of control allows much of our skill at walking to reside in the linkages and elastic properties of muscles and tendons. And it allows much of our prowess at thought and reason to depend upon the robust and reliable operation, often in dense brain-involving loops, of a variety of non-biological problem-solving resources spread throughout our social and technological surround. Are the complex distributed systems that result in some sense ‘out of control’, beyond the reach of useful governance? I shall argue that they are not, although understanding them requires us to re-think some key ideas about control and the nature of the self. To make this case, I shall first examine some strategies for efficient, external opportunity exploiting control in simple systems. I shall then argue that many of the same lessons apply to the case of higher-level human problem-solving. (shrink)

This article reviews contributions to The Volitional Brain, some of which defend a libertarian, contra-causal account of free will, while others take a so-called compatibilist view, in which adequate conceptions of human liberty and moral responsibility are claimed to be compatible with naturalistic causality. Siding with compatibilism, this review finds that defenders of libertarian free will place undue weight on the first person feeling of freedom, while discounting scientific evidence that human choices are fully a function of antecedent causes at (...) various levels of description. It is argued that morality, justice, and personal responsibility and efficacy do not require the assumption that persons are first causes, so that we need not fear mechanism when applied to human agency. (shrink)

Rose's Lifelines justifiably attacks the rigid genetic determinism that pervades the popular press and even some scientific writing. Genes do not equate with destiny. However, Rose's argument should not be taken too far: genes do influence behavior, in animals as well as in man.

In this paper, I will take into account and criticize two of the most celebrated neuroscientific experiments about free will, which seem to deny that agents freely deliberate about simple choices of their everyday life: the pioneering experiment of Benjamin Libet and the more recent one of John Dylan Hayes. My aim is to reject the relevance of their empirical results, which deny the existence of free will. However, such a rejection will not rely on criticisms about how the experiments (...) are conducted. Instead, I would like to bring about a broad philosophical and methodological concern: namely, that the success or the failure of the experiments in arguing for the illusion of free will is strictly dependent on the meaning of the notion of free will which is put through an experimental investigation. (shrink)

: In his book Free Will Sam Harris tries to persuade us to abandon the morally pernicious idea of free will. The following contribution articulates and defends a more sophisticated model of free will that is not only consistent with neuroscience and introspection but also grounds a variety of responsibility that justifies both praise and blame, reward and punishment. This begins with the long lasting parting of opinion between compatibilists and incompatibilists. While Harris dismisses compatibilism as a form of theology, (...) this article aims at showing that Harris has underestimated and misinterpreted compatibilism and at defending a more sophisticated version of compatibilism that is imprevious to Harris’ criticism. Keywords : Sam Harris; Free Will; Compatibilism; Incompatibilism; Neuroscience Riflessioni su "Free Will" di Sam Harris Riassunto : Nel suo libro Free Will Sam Harris cerca di persuaderci ad abbandonare l’idea, a suo avviso moralmente perniciosa, del libero arbitrio. Il contributo seguente articola e difende un modello di libero arbitrio che non solo è coerente con le neuroscienze e con l’introspezione, ma che dà anche fondamento a varie responsabilità giustificando encomi e biasimo, premi e punizioni. Questo prende le mosse dalla discussione della disputa di lunga data fra compatibilisti e incompatibilisti. Mentre Harris respinge il compatibilismo alla stregua di una forma di teologia, questo articolo ambisce a mostrare come Harris abbia sottostimato e mal interpretato il compatibilismo e come invece sia possibile enucleare una forma di compatibilismo più sofisticata, insensibile alle sue critiche. Parole chiave : Sam Harris; Libero arbitrio; Compatibilismo; Incompatibilismo; Neuroscienza. (shrink)