Talk by Axel Cleeremans, Research Director with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) and aprofessor of Cognitive Psychology at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
Free will — the capacity to do as we choose — is a central aspect of human agency. Each one of us thinks (perhaps to different degrees) and experiences that we have agency and that we are the actors of our own existence. And yet, neuroscience also tells us that everything that we do is determined by the activity of our brain. Reconciling these two perspectives has proven suprisingly difficult from a philosophical perspective, and elusive from a neuroscientific approach. Here, I will explore the main tenets of two controversial ideas: The idea that there simply is no free will (hard determinism), as defended by Robert Sapolsky, and the idea that free will evolved (Kevin Mitchell). As Dennett put it, the real question is: “How we go from doing things for reasons to having reasons for doing things?”
Music by Lavender Witch
