Is free will an illusion? : Article : Nature - The Diigo Meta page

• 05 Aug 09
  

  Rudy Garns

  This debate has focused on humans and 'conscious free will'. Yet when it comes to understanding how we initiate behaviour, we can learn a lot by looking at animals. Although we do not credit animals with anything like the consciousness in humans, researchers have found that animal behaviour is not as involuntary as it may appear. The idea that animals act only in response to external stimuli has long been abandoned, and it is well established that they initiate behaviour on the basis of their internal states, as we do. (Nature)

  freewill biology Kant science grue

• 22 May 09
  

  Benno Hansen

  science evolution biology philosophy neuroscience consciousness behaviour free-will determinism randomness

  • Some scientists and philosophers argue that recent findings in neuroscience — such as data published last year suggesting that our brain makes decisions up to seven seconds before we become aware of them — along with the philosophical principle that any action must be dependent on preceding causes, imply that our behaviour is never self-generated and that freedom is an illusion
  • animal behaviour is not as involuntary as it may appear. The idea that animals act only in response to external stimuli has long been abandoned, and it is well established that they initiate behaviour on the basis of their internal states, as we do.
  • 6 more annotations...
  • • life is an interplay between the deterministic and the random
    • There is plenty of evidence of chance at work in the brain
    • behavioural output can be independent of sensory input
    • fruit flies, in situations they have never encountered, can modify their expectations about the consequences of their actions. They can solve problems that no individual fly in the evolutionary history of the species has solved before.
    • humans can be considered free in their behaviour, in as much as their behaviour is self-initiated and adaptive.
    • Conscious awareness may help improve our behaviour, but it does not necessarily do so and is not essential. Why should an action become free from one moment to the next simply because we reflect upon it?
• 15 May 09
  

  Andrew Murphie

  freewill cognition agency

• 14 May 09
  

  Pheen Cruz

  free will

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