- Thursday 17 September 2009
- 7.00pm-8.30pm
- Lecturers: Prof Patrick Haggard Prof Alfred Mele
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A MEMBERS ONLY EVENT
The concept of free will remains a major unresolved issue in psychology and neuroscience - does it exist and do we choose to act as we do, or are our actions a result of influences beyond our control?
Neuroscientists can use high-resolution brain scans to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. Most argue that this ‘conscious experience' is a product of specific patterns of brain activity and cannot exist independently of brain activity. Therefore the notion of 'free will' must be wrong: my actions are generated by my brain activity and not by my conscious thought.
At the same time, psychologists have argued that our feeling of free will is an illusion. One line of argument for the illusion thesis is the claim that certain experiments show that our decisions are made unconsciously and that conscious intentions are never among the causes of corresponding actions.
So does this mean that there is no such thing as free will and if so what are the consequences?
Join acclaimed author Al Mele and neuroscientist Patrick Haggard as they discuss how and why the brain activity surrounding action produces the conscious experience of will and explore the problems with the alleged neuroscientific evidence.
This event is free to Ri Full Members, £10 for Associate Members and £15 for guests.
To become a member of the Ri please visit http://www.rigb.org/membership or call 020 7670 2919.
Listen to the audio archive of this event:
http://ri.content.s3.amazonaws.com/podcasts/2009/September/17 FreeWill.mp3
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