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Concept
Neuroscience of free will
Summary
Neuroscience of free will, a part of neurophilosophy, is the study of topics related to free will (volition and sense of agency) using neuroscience and the analysis of how findings from such studies may impact the free will debate.
As it has become possible to study the living human brain, researchers have begun to observe decision-making processes. Studies have revealed unexpected things about human agency, moral responsibility, and consciousness in general. One of the pioneering studies in this domain was conducted by Benjamin Libet and colleagues in 1983 and has been the foundation of many studies in the years since. Other studies have attempted to predict participant actions before they make them, explore how we know we are responsible for voluntary movements as opposed to being moved by an external force, or how the role of consciousness in decision-making may differ depending on the type of decision being made.
Philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Alfred Mele consider the language used by researchers. They explain that "free will" means many different things to different people (e.g., some notions of free will posit that free will is compatible with determinism, while others do not). Dennett insists that many important and common conceptions of "free will" are compatible with the emerging evidence from neuroscience.
The neuroscience of free will encompasses two main fields of study: volition and agency. Volition, the study of voluntary actions, is difficult to define. If we consider human actions as lying along a spectrum of our involvement in initiating the actions, then reflexes would be on one end, and fully voluntary actions would be on the other. How these actions are initiated and consciousness’ role in producing them is a major area of study in volition. Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment which has been debated since the beginning of philosophy. Within the neuroscience of free will, the sense of agency—the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one's volitional actions—is usually what is studied.
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