The neurobiological nature of free will
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Transcript of The neurobiological nature of free will
Björn Brembs
http://brembs.net
Universität Regensburg
“If we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may”
David Hume (1711-1776)
“We could often have done otherwise than we in fact did”
Searle 1984
“I could have done otherwise”
Taylor & Dennett 2002
Hans Flohr
Dr Lisa Jones University of St Andrews
1. Determinism rules out freedom
2. Randomness doesn‘t make us free either
Freedom cannot exist / is a useless concept
Double-Incompatibilists:
What is behavior?
“The whole neural organism, it will be remembered, is, physiologically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli into reactions” (James, 1890, p. 372).
BehaviorBehavior: An analysis of the world, followed by deliberation and : An analysis of the world, followed by deliberation and planning, followed by execution of the plan.planning, followed by execution of the plan.
““sense, think, act”sense, think, act”
motoroutput
sensoryinput
ReactionPerception
representationof the world
Cognition
representationof the motor plan
William James
Source: Paul Cisek
1890
1949
Source: Ken Catania
Pursuit-evasion contests & competition (courtship, predator-prey, territoriality, chess, sports etc.)
H. geographicus
Variability in jumpingRoyan et al., 2010
M. trinitatis
I. Steymans
“The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Phototaxis: Gáspár Jékely
Polychaete: Platynereis dumerilii
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Light Pressure Gravity
benthic
pelagic
Temperature
Salinity
Chemicals
G Jékely et al. Nature 456, 395-399 (2008) doi:10.1038/nature07590
G Jékely et al. Nature 456, 395-399 (2008) doi:10.1038/nature07590
FVRIamide acTub
Cornelia Bargmann 302 neurons, connectome
Gordus et al. 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.018
Gordus et al. 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.018
Marcus Raichle fMRI
The limiting factor in the evolution of brain size was
energy supply48
49
The additional energy burden associated with […] the environment may be as little as .5-1.0% of the total energy budget.Marcus Raichle (2006): Science 314, p1249
=
Exploration (of resources or solutions.)
Romuald Nargeot
Behavioral variability in a constant stimulus situation:
Actions, not responses
Geometric Random Inner Products: GRIP
All computations Alexander Maye, UKE Hamburg (Maye et al. 2007)
Maye et al. (2007)
If one simple stochastic point process is insufficient, maybe we need more…
Source: This is Spinal Tap
1. Determinism rules out freedom
2. Randomness doesn‘t make us free either
Freedom cannot exist / is a useless concept
Double-Incompatibilists:
Freedom can arise in non-linear systems, comprising stochastic and deterministic components
Deterministic
Stochastic
Determi
nistic
Determi
nistic
Determi
nistic