Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagTomáš Dominik

man-standing-in-front-of-various-paths-needing-to-make-a-decision-to-move-forward-in-life-generative-ai-stockpack-adobe-stock
man standing in front of various paths, needing to make a decision to move forward in life. Generative Ai.

At Scientific American, free will seems very much alive

The concept is incompatible with their “mind is just the brain” thesis but they can’t let go of it anyway
The debate will surely continue but it’s remarkable that it’s even HELD at Scientific American. Wasn’t materialism supposed to have disproved free will by now? Read More ›
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Mousetrap with a piece of cheese on a dark vintage background. The concept -

Finding From Recent Brain Research Supports Free Will

Researchers, altering Libet’s classical experiment, found that human brains show no “readiness potential” when a decision is important

Philosopher Alessandra Buccella and experimental psychologist Tomáš Dominik, both at Chapman University, offer some interesting support for free will. Many commentators interpreted Benjamin Libet’s experiments that showed that the brain’s readiness to make a decision (readiness potential) often preceded the subject’s conscious awareness of the choice that had been made. There! they said, that proves that there is no free will: To many observers, these findings debunked the intuitive concept of free will. After all, if neuroscientists can infer the timing or choice of your movements long before you are consciously aware of your decision, perhaps people are merely puppets, pushed around by neural processes unfolding below the threshold of consciousness. Alessandra Buccella, Tomáš Dominik, “Free Will Is Only an Read More ›