Tuesday, December 5, 2017

The neural basis of free will

You can read some excerpts of Tse’s The Neural Basis of Free Will at this Project Muse link. From the section on readiness potentials:
“Here I argue that conscious feelings of willing or agency are not central to understanding the neural basis of free will. Simple actions, such as repeatedly lifting a finger, or even complex actions, such as driving a car while daydreaming, may not generate conscious feelings of willing at all. Consciousness of willing appears to primarily arise in cases that require endogenous selection and inhibition of options held and assessed in working memory. As such, Libet’s paradigm may not particularly evoke conscious feelings of willing. And even if it did, neither the readiness potential nor the lateralized readiness potential appears to be a signature of a neural process involved in conscious willing.”

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