Free Will, Causality, and Neuroscience (Value Inquiry Book / Cognitive Science, 338)

Neuroscientists often consider free will to be an illusion. Contrary to this hypothesis, the contributions to this volume show that recent developments in neuroscience can also support the existence of free will. Firstly, the possibility of intentional consciousness is studied. Secondly, Libet’s experiments are discussed from this new perspective. Thirdly, the relationship between free will, causality and language is analyzed. This approach suggests that language grants the human brain a possibility to articulate a meaningful personal life. Therefore, human beings can escape strict biological determinism.



Contributing author Sofia Bonicalzi has received funding from the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754388 (LMUResearchFellows) and from LMUexcellent, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Bavaria under the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal Government and the Länder.

Bernard Feltz, MD in Biology (1976) and PhD in Philosophy (1986), is Emeritus Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He has published many articles and books on the philosophy of biology, including Self-Organization and Emergence in Life Sciences (Springer, 2006).
Marcus Missal is Professor of Neurosciences at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) where he obtained a PhD in Sciences in 1994. His area of interests are time perception in humans and animals, anticipation, and eye movements. He is an expert electrophysiologist and behavioral neuroscientist.
Andrew Sims obtained a PhD in Philosophy from Deakin University in 2015 with a dissertation on the explanation of psychological delusion after brain damage. He writes on topics in the philosophy of mind ranging from the psychogenic explanation of monomania to the explanation of social polarisation in terms of rational choice theory. His contribution to this book is linked to a post-doctoral stay at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.