Free will, the self, and the brain

Recent results suggest that people hold a notion of the true self, distinct from the self. Here, we seek to further elucidate the “true me”—whether it is good or bad, material or immaterial. Critically, we ask whether the true self is unitary. To address these questions, we invited participants to reason about John—a character who simultaneously exhibits both positive and negative moral behaviors. John’s character was gauged via two tests--a brain scan and a behavioral test, whose results invariably diverged (i.e., one test indicated that John’s moral core is positive and another negative). Participants assessed John’s true self along two questions: (a) Did John commit his acts (positive and negative) freely? and (b) What is John’s essence really? Responses to the two questions diverged. When asked to evaluate John’s moral core explicitly (by reasoning about his free will), people invariably descried John’s true self as good. But when John’s moral core was assessed implicitly (by considering his essence), people sided with the outcomes of the brain test. These results demonstrate that people hold conflicting notions of the true self. We formally support this proposal by presenting a grammar of the true self, couched within Optimality Theory. We show that the constraint ranking necessary to capture explicit and implicit view of the true self are distinct. Our intuitive belief in a true unitary “me” is thus illusory.

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Hoe dik is het ik?

Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte ◽

10.5117/antw2019.3.002.meij ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 111 (3) ◽

pp. 311-338

Author(s):

Monica Meijsing

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

The Self ◽

Self In Relation ◽

The Third ◽

The Brain

Abstract How fat is the I? Neuroscience and the elusive selfThis article explores the concept of self in relation to neuroscience. Four options are discussed on the basis of a key representative. The first is the dualist position where the non-material self controls its brain, as defended by Eccles. Next comes the option of the self as a relatively or completely powerless entity within the brain, as exemplified by Libet’s experiments on free will. The third option is the identity of self and brain, as argued by Dennett. The last option is the identity of self and body, and here Gallagher is the representative. It is shown that no monist position is completely consistently defended. In the conclusion, four factors are identified that hinder a simple and consistent monist conceptualisation of the self in the context of neuroscience.

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Is Neuroscience Relevant to Philosophy?

Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume ◽

10.1080/00455091.1990.10717230 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 16 ◽

pp. 323-341 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patricia Smith Churchland

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Theoretical Foundation ◽

The Self ◽

Advanced Technology ◽

The World ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

Many questions concerning the nature of the mind have remained intractable since their first systematic discussion by the ancient Greeks. What is the nature of knowledge, and how is it possible to represent the world? What are consciousness and free will? What is the self and how is it that some organisms are more intelligent than others? Since it is now overwhelmingly evident that these are phenomena of the physical brain, it is not surprising that an established empirical and theoretical foundation in this domain has eluded us for so long. For in order to understand what we are and how we work, we must understand the brain and how it works. Yet the brain is exceedingly difficult to study, and research on any significant scale is critically dependent on advanced technology.

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The Ghost in the Machine

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336746.013.19 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Janet Metcalfe ◽

Bennett L. Schwartz

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Function ◽

Pineal Gland ◽

Free Will ◽

The Self ◽

Reflective Function ◽

Potential Threat ◽

The Core ◽

Control Functions ◽

Feeling States ◽

The Brain

Although metacognition is considered to be the highest human cognitive function and a crucial self-reflective function allowing us to have free will, finding where this modern “pineal gland” resides in the brain is an enterprise fraught with peril. Searching for metacognition in the brain is like searching for the Holy Grail: It always seems to be in the next valley. We focus on two considerations. First, metacognitions are conscious. They spontaneously occur when something goes wrong, and conflict-based “feeling states” are manifest. We argue that when metacognitive feelings are spontaneous, feeling states are adaptive because they trigger action needed to resolve conflict. Conscious feeling states are, therefore, related to the control functions of metacognition. Second, metacognitive feelings are self-referential. They refer to the core person and indicate that conflict being experienced is a potential threat to the self. These two considerations drive our search for neural activations related to metacognition.

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The brain minds whether we believ in free will

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e512592013-279 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

D. Rigoni ◽

M. Brass ◽

B. Burle

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

The Brain

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Consciousness, law of nature, and nomological determinism

10.31219/osf.io/h5jsm ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Xiaoyang Yu

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Important Thing ◽

Law Of Nature ◽

The World ◽

The Law ◽

The Brain

Nomological determinism does not mean everything is predictable. It just means everything follows the law of nature. And the most important thing Is that the brain and consciousness follow the law of nature. In other words, there is no free will. Without life, brain and consciousness, the world follows law of nature, that is clear. The life and brain are also part of nature, and they follow the law of nature. This is due to scientific findings. There are not enough scientific findings for consciousness yet. But I think that the consciousness is a nature phenomenon, and it also follows the law of nature.

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From many to one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

10.31234/osf.io/5sw6m ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ruben Laukkonen ◽

Heleen A Slagter

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Enhancement ◽

The Self ◽

Predictive Processing ◽

Focused Attention ◽

Conceptual Processing ◽

Current State ◽

Contemplative Science ◽

Open Monitoring ◽

Living Organisms ◽

The Brain

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many- to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes available to introspection, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

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Consciousness, decision making, and volition: freedom beyond chance and necessity

Theory in Biosciences ◽

10.1007/s12064-021-00346-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hans Liljenström

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Free Will ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Brain Structures ◽

Complex Process ◽

Neural Information ◽

Neural Information Processing ◽

Stochastic Population Model ◽

The Brain

AbstractWhat is the role of consciousness in volition and decision-making? Are our actions fully determined by brain activity preceding our decisions to act, or can consciousness instead affect the brain activity leading to action? This has been much debated in philosophy, but also in science since the famous experiments by Libet in the 1980s, where the current most common interpretation is that conscious free will is an illusion. It seems that the brain knows, up to several seconds in advance what “you” decide to do. These studies have, however, been criticized, and alternative interpretations of the experiments can be given, some of which are discussed in this paper. In an attempt to elucidate the processes involved in decision-making (DM), as an essential part of volition, we have developed a computational model of relevant brain structures and their neurodynamics. While DM is a complex process, we have particularly focused on the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) for its emotional, and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) for its cognitive aspects. In this paper, we present a stochastic population model representing the neural information processing of DM. Simulation results seem to confirm the notion that if decisions have to be made fast, emotional processes and aspects dominate, while rational processes are more time consuming and may result in a delayed decision. Finally, some limitations of current science and computational modeling will be discussed, hinting at a future development of science, where consciousness and free will may add to chance and necessity as explanation for what happens in the world.

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