Epiphenomenalism is the thesis that though physical events may cause mental events, those mental events never cause physical events. In this paper, I will be concerned with the claim that our thoughts, intentions, and awareness play no causal role in producing actions. Though epiphenomenalism has been defended with a priori philosophical arguments, the majority of the support that it has gained in recent years has come from advances in neuroscience. At the center of these experiments is the Libet paradigm that (...) aims to show that our actions are initiated by unconscious brain processes prior to our awareness of the intention or decision to perform the corresponding actions. It has been widely suggested that these studies support the view that consciousness is epiphenomenal, and if Libet-style experiments support this conclusion, the results have direct implications for free will. I argue by way of a dilemma that any study that relies on reports of subjects’ awareness in its methodology cannot be used to support epiphenomenalism because the experimenters would have to rule out the possibility that consciousness plays a causal role in order to do so. (shrink)

This book aims to show that recent developments in neuroscience permit a defense of free will. Through language, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.

This article describes three experiments that would advance our understanding of the import of data already generated by scientific work on free will and related issues. All three can be conducted with existing technology. The first concerns how reliable a predictor of behavior a certain segment of type I and type II RPs is. The second focuses on the timing of conscious experiences in Libet-style studies. The third concerns the effectiveness of conscious implementation intentions. The discussion of first two experiments (...) highlights some important problems with certain inferences made on the basis of existing data in scientific work on free will. The discussion of the third calls attention to powerful evidence that conscious intentions sometimes are among the causes of corresponding actions. This evidence has been largely ignored in the literature on free will. (shrink)

Over the last decade in Germany, a number of neuroscientists—and among them most prominently Wolf Singer—have claimed to be able to offer scientific evidence derived from neurophysiologic findings to conclusively negate the existence of human free will. In this paper, Singer’s position is examined according to its principal characteristics in order to answer the question whether it is a novel position as opposed to a position pertaining to one of the traditions of western philosophy and anthropology. Furthermore, we try to (...) judge whether the neurobiological findings Singer and others use to justify their position are apt to satisfy the criteria for the presence of scientific evidence, i.e., if they are good reasons to believe that human will is unfree. (shrink)

Experimental studies investigating the contribution of conscious intention to the generation of a sense of agency for one’s own actions tend to rely upon a narrow definition of intention. Often it is operationalized as the conscious sensation of wanting to move right before movement. Existing results and discussion are therefore missing crucial aspects of intentions, namely intention as the conscious sensation of wanting to move in advance of the movement. In the present experiment we used an intentional binding paradigm, in (...) which we distinguished between immediate intention, as usually investigated, and longer standing intention. The results showed that the binding effect was significantly enhanced for distal intentions compared to proximal intentions, indicating that the former leads to stronger sense of agency. Our finding provides empirical support for a crucial distinction between at least two types of intention when addressing the efficacy of conscious intentions. (shrink)

The conclusions drawn by Benjamin Libet from his work with collegues on the timing of somatosensorial conscious experiences has met with a lot of praise and criticism. In this issue we find three examples of the latter. Here I attempt to place the divide between the two opponent camps in a broader perspective by analyzing the question of the relation between physical timing, neural timing, and experiential timing. The nervous system does a sophisticated job of recombining and recoding messages from (...) the sensorial surfaces and if these processes are slighted in a theory, it might become necessary to postulate weird operations, including subjective back-referral. Neuroscientifically inspired theories are of necessity still based on guesses, extrapolations, and philosophically dubious manners of speech. They often assume some neural correlate of consciousness as a part of the nervous system that transforms neural activity in reportable experiences. The majority of neuroscientists appear to assume that the NCC can compare and bind activity patterns only if they arrive simultaneously at the NCC. This leads to a search for synchrony or to theories in terms of the compensation of differences in neural delays . This is the main dimension of the Libet discussion. Examples from vision research, such as “temporal-binding-by-synchrony” and the “flash-lag” effect, are then used to illustrate these reasoning patterns in more detail. Alternatively one could assume symbolic representations of time and space that are not coded in their own dimension . Unless such tags are multiplexed with the quality message , one gets a binding problem for tags. One of the hidden aspects of the discussion between Libet and opponents appears to be the following. Is the NCC smarter than the rest of the nervous system, so that it can solve the problems of local sign and timing on its own, or are these pieces of information coded symbolically early on in the system? A supersmart NCC appears to be the assumption of Libet's camp . The wish to distribute the smartness evenly across all stages of processing in the nervous system appears to motivate the opponents. I argue that there are reasons to side with the latter group. (shrink)

The belief that conscious will is merely "an illusion created by the brain" appears to be gaining in popularity among cognitive neuroscientists. Its main adherents usually refer to the classic, but controversial 'Libet-experiments', as the empirical evidence that vindicates this illusion-claim. However, based on recent work that provides other interpretations of the Libet-experiments, we argue that the illusion-claim is not only empirically invalid, but also theoretically incoherent, as it is rooted in a category mistake; namely, the presupposition that neuronal activity (...) causes conscious will. We show that the illusion-claim is based on the behaviorist 'input-output' paradigm, and discuss the notions of 'self-organization' and 'self-steering' to provide an alternative perspective on the causal efficacy of conscious will. In the final sections, a tentative theoretical picture is sketched of conscious will as an instance of self-steered self-organization. We conclude that the subjective experience of conscious will is not a misguided one, but rather that the mechanisms supporting conscious will are considerably more complex than mainstream cognitive neuroscience currently acknowledges. (shrink)

The idea that our conscious decisions determine our actions has been challenged by a report suggesting that the brain starts to prepare for a movement before the person concerned has consciously decided to move . Libet et al. claimed that their results show that our actions are not consciously initiated. The current article describes two experiments in which we attempted to replicate Libet et al.'s comparison of participants' movement-related brain activity with the reported times of their decisions to move and (...) also the reported times of their decisions of which hand to move. We also looked at the distribution of participants' reports over time to evaluate an alternative explanation of Libet et al.'s results. Although the Readiness Potential was usually present before all of the decisions to move, consistent with the findings of Keller and Heckhausen and Libet et al. , we found that many reported decision times were before the onset of the Lateralized Readiness Potential, which measures hand-specific movement preparation. The latter finding is consistent with the conclusion that the LRP always started after the conscious decision to move. We conclude that even though activity related to movement anticipation may be present before a conscious decision to move, the cortical preparation necessary for the movement to happen immediately may not start until after the conscious decision to move. (shrink)

Can perceptual experiences be states of uncertainty? We might expect them to be, if the perceptual processes from which they're generated, as well as the behaviors they help produce, take account of probabilistic information. Yet it has long been presumed that perceptual experiences purport to tell us about our environment, without hedging or qualifying. Against this long-standing view, I argue that perceptual experiences may well occasionally be states of uncertainty, but that they are never probabilistically structured. I criticize a powerful (...) line of reasoning that we should expect perceptual experience to be probabilistic, given their interfaces with unconscious probabilistic information, with behavior responsive to it, and with credences. (shrink)

In previous research Libet discovered that a critical time period for neural activation is necessary in order for a stimulus to become conscious. This necessary time period varies from subject to subject. In this current study, six subjects for whom the time for neural activation of consciousness had been previously determined were administered a battery of psychological tests on the basis of which ratings were made of degree of repressiveness. As hypothesized, repressive subjects had a longer critical time period for (...) neural activation of consciousness, suggesting the possibility that this neurophysiological time factor is a necessary condition for the development of repression. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new version of the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, the clustered-minds multiverse, that has been presented in detail elsewhere. It briefly shows why it grants us with free will and reflects upon the possibilty of singular-universe explanations of free will. It also critically comments upon S. Sarasvathy's 'choice matters,' one of the other contributions to this mini symposium.

The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet’s et al.’s :623–642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently interpreted (...) as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.’s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.’s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake. (shrink)

The critical reinterpretations of Libet's research by G. Gomes make speculative, unwarranted, and untested assumptions. These assumptions and arguments are analyzed and their status relative to Libet's findings is criticized.

S. Pockett and G. Gomes discuss a possible bias in the method by which Libet's subjects estimated the time at which they became aware of their intent to move their hands. The bias, caused by sensory delay processing the clock information, would be sufficient to alter Trevena and Miller's conclusions regarding the timing of the lateralized readiness potential. I show that the flash-lag effect would compensate for that bias. In the last part of my commentary I note that the other (...) target articles do not examine the most interesting aspect of Libet's unfashionable views on free will. I point out that Libet's views are less strange than they at first appear to be. (shrink)

This issue of Consciousness and Cognition presents four target articles and eight commentaries on the target articles. The present article presents comments on those commentaries, grouped into backward referral and volition categories. Regarding backward referral: I disagree with my fellow commentators and take the unpopular position of defending Libet's notion of backward referral. I join my fellow commentators in critiquing Libet's notion of a 500-ms delay. I examine several of the hypotheses suggested by other commentators for why cortical and lateral (...) meniscus stimulation give very different timing results. I suggest a simple experiment to help discriminate among the hypotheses. I comment on why temporal reordering is more likely to occur late rather than early in mental processing. Regarding Libet's volition experiments, I ask what is the root of the controversy, given the general agreement on the data. I agree with a commentator that Libet's chronotheology rather than his chronoscience is the cause of much of the controversy. Rather than joining others in criticizing Libet for his chronotheology I point out that he is making a respectable philosophical point regarding nondeterministic Free Will, but one that is easily misunderstood. I discuss two ways by which Libet's viewpoint can be brought into mainstream science. (shrink)

Consciousness as used here, refers to the private, subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents. This compelling, intuitive consciousness-centric account has, and continues to shape folk and scientific accounts of psychology and human behavior. Over the last 30 years, research from the cognitive neurosciences has challenged this intuitive social construct account when providing a neurocognitive architecture for (...) a human psychology. Growing evidence suggests that the executive functions typically attributed to the experience of consciousness are carried out competently, backstage and outside subjective awareness by a myriad of fast, efficient non-conscious brain systems. While it remains unclear how and where the experience of consciousness is generated in the brain, we suggested that the traditional intuitive explanation that consciousness is causally efficacious is wrong-headed when providing a cognitive neuroscientific account of human psychology. Notwithstanding the compelling 1st-person experience that convinces us that subjective awareness is the mental curator of our actions and thoughts, we argue that the best framework for building a scientific account is to be consistent with the biophysical causal dependency of prior neural processes. From a 3rd person perspective,, we propose that subjective awareness lacking causal influence, is than our experience of being aware, our awareness of our psychological content, knowing that we are aware, and the belief that that such experiences are evidence of an agentive capacity shared by others. While the human mind can be described as comprising both conscious and nonconscious aspects, both ultimately depend on neural process in the brain. In arguing for the counter-intuitive epiphenomenal perspective, we suggest that a scientific approach considers all mental aspects of mind including consciousness in terms of their underlying, preceding biological changes, in the realization that most brain processes are not accompanied by any discernible change in subjective awareness. (shrink)

An extended examination of Libet's works led to a comprehensive reinterpretation of his results. According to this reinterpretation, the Minimum Train Duration of electrical brain stimulation should be considered as the time needed to create a brain stimulus efficient for producing conscious sensation and not as a basis for inferring the latency for conscious sensation of peripheral origin. Latency for conscious sensation with brain stimulation may occurafterthe Minimum Train Duration. Backward masking with cortical stimuli suggests a 125-300 ms minimum value (...) for the latency for conscious sensation of threshold skin stimuli. Backward enhancement is not suitable for inferring this latency. For determining temporal relations between stimuli that correspond to subjects' reports, theendof cerebral Minimum Train Duration should be used as reference, rather than its onset. Results of coupling peripheral and cortical stimuli are explained by a latency after the cortical Minimum Train Duration, having roughly the same duration as the latency for supraliminal skin stimuli. Results of coupling peripheral stimuli and stimuli to medial lemniscus (LM) are explained by a shorter LM latency and/or a longer peripheral latency. This interpretation suggests a 230 ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of somatosensory near-threshold stimuli. The backward referral hypothesis, as formulated by Libet, should not be retained. Long readiness potentials preceding spontaneous conscious or nonconscious movements suggest that both kinds of movement are nonconsciously initiated. The validity of Libet's measures of W and M moments (Libet et al., 1983a) is questionable due to problems involving latencies, training, and introspective distinction of W and M. Veto of intended actions may be initially nonconscious but dependent on conscious awareness. (shrink)

A commentary on articles by Klein, Pockett, and Trevena and Miller, in this issue, is given. Average shift in the point of subjective equality , calculated by Klein on Libet's data, and corresponding change in mean shift, calculated by Libet et al. , may be “corrected,” taking as a reference point the end of the minimum train duration. Values obtained, if significant, indicate a latency for conscious sensation of the skin stimulus of at least 230 ms. Pockett's main conclusions are (...) favored, but her explanation of peripheral–lemniscal couplings is found to be unconvincing. Trevena and Miller's article unsuccessfully tries to rescue a dualist interactionist view. Libet's method of timing intentions is thoroughly criticized. (shrink)

A commentary is given on Trevena and Miller . The comparability of their experimental task and of the potential they recorded with those used and recorded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl is questioned. An interpretation is given for the similarity of event-related potentials recorded when subjects decided to move and when they decided not to move.

People have disagreed on the significance of Libet-style experiments for discussions about free will. In what specifically concerns free will in a libertarian sense, some argue that Libet-style experiments pose a threat to its existence by providing support to the claim that decisions are determined by unconscious brain events. Others disagree by claiming that determinism, in a sense that conflicts with libertarian free will, cannot be established by sciences other than fundamental physics. This paper rejects both positions. First, it is (...) argued that neuroscience and psychology could in principle provide support for milder deterministic claims that would also conflict with libertarian free will. Second, it is argued that Libet-style experiments—due to some of their peculiar features, ones that need not be shared by neuroscience as a whole—currently do not support such less demanding deterministic claims. The general result is that neuroscience and psychology could in principle... (shrink)

Neuroscientists frequently use two folk psychology terms –self and consciousness– in formulating decision-making process models. According to Daniel Dennett, such notions lead them to dualistic view of brain functions and hence to dead ends or, at least, to less than optimal designs in the research field. Indeed, Dennett’s position offers interesting insights that may help neuroscientists to comprehend the distinction between conscious and non-conscious behavior. In this paper, I first explore how habitual behavior could be defined from Dennett’s model. Second, (...) taking his view into account, I try to offer a better interpretation of habits. Particularly, I define habits as involving a teleological and preconscious process whose traits and dynamics are indistinguishable from computational ones, but this is so more in their ends than in their origins. Finally, I propose seven lines of experimental hypothesis to support this definition. (shrink)

We report two experiments in which participants had to judge the time of occurrence of a stimulus relative to a clock. The experiments were based on the control condition used by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl [Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. . Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activities : The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106, 623–642] to correct for any bias in the (...) estimation of the time at which an endogenous event, the conscious intention to perform a movement, occurred. Participants’ responses were affected systematically by the sensory modality of the stimulus and by the speed of the clock. Such findings demonstrate the variability in judging the time at which an exogenous event occurs and, by extension, suggest that such variability may also apply to the judging the time of occurrence of endogenous events. The reliability of participants’ estimations of when they formed the conscious intention to perform a movement in Libet et al.’s study is therefore questionable. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical study of the nature of thinking based on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Steiner. For Heidegger, the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers exemplified genuine thinking, appreciating the meaning of Being. But this kind of philosophy was soon replaced by the onto-theological approach, in which Being was reductively objectified, and the question of the meaning of Being was forgotten. Hence, according to Heidegger, we still have to learn to think. Commentators on Heidegger point to the similarities (...) between his approach to thinking and that of various mystical teachings, such as those of Meister Eckhart or Zen Buddhism. Another less well known philosopher who devoted himself to this question was Rudolf Steiner. Like Heidegger, Steiner claims that we do not know what it means to really think. Steiner was however more outspoken in insisting that only through a kind of meditative practice can we directly experience the nature of thinking. Present day materialistic explanations of thinking as caused by the brain stand in clear opposition to his spiritual conception of thinking. Drawing upon Heidegger and Steiner I argue against the materialistic understanding of thinking as jumping to unwarranted conclusions. The paper ends with describing some of the elements of Steiner Waldorf education which are intended to promote the development of living, creative thinking. (shrink)

La neuroética nace oficialmente a comienzos del siglo XXI, gracias al avance de las neurociencias, como ética aplicada vinculada a la bioética, pero también como neuroética autónoma. Como ética aplicada, aborda cuestiones cercanas a la bioética. Como neuroética autónoma, se enfrenta a problemas clásicos de la filosofía desde una perspectiva neurocientífica en sentido amplio. Dos cuestiones serán centrales en ella: diseñar un marco para seleccionar, interpretar e integrar los datos de las neurociencias acerca de la moralidad, y trazar el método (...) -o métodos- adecuados para el nuevo saber. Curiosamente, en ambos casos la mayor parte de los neuroéticos dice inscribirse en posiciones naturalistas, pero realmente procede de forma no-naturalista. El artículo se propone analizar los distintos lados de la neuroética y sacar a la luz el método que realmente siguen los neuroéticos, que desmiente al naturalismo. (shrink)

We report two experiments in which participants had to judge the time of occurrence of a stimulus relative to a clock. The experiments were based on the control condition used by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl [Libet, B., Gleason, C. A., Wright, E. W., & Pearl, D. K. . Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activities : The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 106, 623–642] to correct for any bias in the (...) estimation of the time at which an endogenous event, the conscious intention to perform a movement, occurred. Participants’ responses were affected systematically by the sensory modality of the stimulus and by the speed of the clock. Such findings demonstrate the variability in judging the time at which an exogenous event occurs and, by extension, suggest that such variability may also apply to the judging the time of occurrence of endogenous events. The reliability of participants’ estimations of when they formed the conscious intention to perform a movement in Libet et al.’s study is therefore questionable. (shrink)

To be autonomous is to be a law to oneself; autonomous agents are self-governing agents. Most of us want to be autonomous because we want to be accountable for what we do, and because it seems that if we are not the ones calling the shots, then we cannot be accountable. More importantly, perhaps, the value of autonomy is tied to the value of self-integration. We don't want to be alien to, or at war with, ourselves; and it seems that (...) when our intentions are not under our own control, we suffer from self-alienation. What conditions must be satisfied in order to ensure that we govern ourselves when we act? Philosophers have offered a wide range of competing answers to this question. (shrink)

The basic difficulties and challenges of Quantum Mind program are analyzed. The conclusion is that the recent form of quantum theory is not enough to overcome the challenges posed by the philosophical problems of quantum physics and quantum mind theories, and the puzzles of quantum biology and quantum neuroscience. Certain anomalies of recent day biology giving hints about how quantum theory should be generalized serve as an introduction to the summary of the aspects of quantum TGD especially relevant to the (...) notion of Quantum Mind. These include the notions of many-sheeted space-time and field (magnetic) body, zero energy ontology, the identification dark matter as a hierarchy of phases with large value of Planck constant, and p-adic physics proposed to define physical correlates for cognition and intentionality. Especially relevant is the number theoretic generalization of Shannon entropy: this entropy is well defined for rational or even algebraic entanglement probabilities and its minimum as a function of the prime defining p-adic norm appearing in the definition of the entropy is negative. Therefore the notion of negentropic entanglement makes sense in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds and is negative: this motivates the proposal that living matter resides in this intersection. TGD inspired theory of consciousness is introduced as a generalization of quantum measurement theory. The notions of quantum jump and self defining the generalization of the notion of observer are introduced and it is argued that the notion of self reduces to that for quantum jump. Negentropy Maximization Principle reproduces standard quantum measurement theory for ordinary entanglement but respects negentropic entanglement so that the outcome of state function reduction is not random for negentropic entanglement. The new view about the relationship of experienced time and geometric time combined with zero energy ontology is claimed to solve the basic philosophical difficulties of quantum measurement theory and consciousness theory. The identification of the quantum correlates of sensory qualia and Boolean cognition, emotions, cognition and intentionality and self-referentiality of consciousness is discussed. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. An influential series of experiments by Libet has suggested that conscious intentions arise as a result of brain activity. This contrasts with traditional concepts of free will, in which the mind controls the body. A more recent study by Haggard and Eimer has further examined the relation between intention and brain processes, concluding that conscious awareness of intention is linked to the choice or selection of (...) a specific action, and not to the earliest initiation of action processes. The exchange of views in this paper further explores the relation between conscious intention and brain activity. (shrink)

1. Introduction The readiness potential was found to precede voluntary acts by about half a second or more (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965). Kornhuber (1984) discussed the readiness potential in terms of volition, arguing that it is not the manifestation of an attentional processes. Libet discussed it in relation to consciousness and to free will (Libet et al. 1983a; 1983b; Libet, 1985, 1992, 1993). Libet asked the following questions. Are voluntary acts initiated by a conscious decision to act? Are the physiological (...) facts compatible with the belief that free will determines our voluntary acts? What is the role of consciousness in voluntary action? In this paper I will discuss these questions and the answers that Libet gave to them. (shrink)

The question of whether we have free will is a longstanding philosophical debate that has led to divided fronts and interpretations. The first ambiguity arises due to a misconception about the relation between causal determinism, as formulated in classical physics, and the notion of free will, which, once clarified, undermines not only compatibilism but also naïve formulations of libertarianism. We show that either one maintains a material monistic physical causal determinism and must give up free will, or one must give (...) up determinism and embrace metaphysical ontologies. Moreover, with the advent of modern neuroscientific investigations, the questions surrounding our freedom of choice have received renewed attention but, so far, lead to several inconclusive findings. In fact, the issue is far from settled and no resolution is in sight. We contend that an exclusively third-person approach that abstracts from the deeper complexities of the human psychological nature and resists a first-person inquiry has led to a much too simplistic and superficial understanding of the problem and is affected by fallacious inferences and unwarranted conclusions. Meanwhile, an introspective approach easily reveals that our identity can't be reduced to a single personality whose choice-making is determined by a unique agency and volition. Our nature is much more complex than that. Therefore, every analysis involving propositions about free will requires more careful articulation. One cannot meaningfully answer the question of free will if it is not clear (1) what determinism is in physical sciences, (2) who is supposed to be free from what and (3) what will is. Here, we show that the question regarding free will isn't meaningful in the first place unless cleared from conceptual conflations and that it is unlikely it will ever be answered by a binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ statement. (shrink)

The electromagnetic field theory of consciousness proposes that conscious experiences are identical with certain electromagnetic patterns generated by the brain. While the theory has always acknowledged that not all of the electromagnetic patterns generated by brain activity are conscious, until now it has not been able to specify what might distinguish conscious patterns from non-conscious patterns. Here a hypothesis is proposed about the 3D shape of electromagnetic fields that are conscious, as opposed to those that are not conscious. Seven predictions (...) arising from this hypothesis are described. Existing empirical evidence shows that four of these predictions have already been successfully tested. Requirements for experimental testing of the other three are discussed. (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)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints on (...) views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

Presento la trascendencia de la neurociencia para el estudio de la relación entre determinismo y libre albedrío. Diversos trabajos vinculan la actividad de ciertas áreas nerviosas con el desempeño de las funciones volitivas, el trabajo de Benjamin Libet y de Daniel Wegner otorga gran importancia al inconsciente en nuestros actos, y hay pruebas de influencia causal del entorno sociocultural sobre el cerebro del individuo. Todo esto sugiere una concepción determinista de nuestra voluntad, pero sostengo que ni esta ni la indeterminista (...) están claras actualmente y que se debe profundizar en la neuroplasticidad, las decisiones distales y la deliberación. (shrink)

In this article we will argue that given certain conditions for the evolution of bi- ological controllers, these will necessarily evolve in the direction of incorporating consciousness capabilities. We will also see what are the necessary mechanics for the provision of these capabilities and extrapolate this vision to the world of artifi- cial systems postulating seven design principles for conscious systems. This article was published in the journal Neural Networks special issue on brain and conscious- ness.