Can neuroscience enlighten the philosophical debate about free will?
Neuropsychologia
; 188: 108632, 2023 09 09.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37385373
ABSTRACT
Free will has been at the heart of philosophical and scientific discussions for many years. However, recent advances in neuroscience have been perceived as a threat to the commonsense notion of free will as they challenge two core requirements for actions to be free. The first is the notion of determinism and free will, i.e., decisions and actions must not be entirely determined by antecedent causes. The second is the notion of mental causation, i.e., our mental state must have causal effects in the physical world, in other words, actions are caused by conscious intention. We present the classical philosophical positions related to determinism and mental causation, and discuss how neuroscience could shed a new light on the philosophical debate based on recent experimental findings. Overall, we conclude that the current evidence is insufficient to undermine free will.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Neurosciences
/
Personal Autonomy
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Neuropsychologia
Year:
2023
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
France