Free Will and Modern Science

Edited by Richard Swinburne

A British Academy Publication

British Academy Original Paperbacks

Discusses latest relevant scientific results and how they extend our understanding of free wll
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Free Will and Modern Science

Edited by Richard Swinburne

A British Academy Publication

British Academy Original Paperbacks

Description

Do humans have a free choice of which actions to perform? Three recent developments of modern science can help us to answer this question. First, new investigative tools have enabled us to study the processes in our brains which accompanying our decisions. The pioneer work of Benjamin Libet has led many neuroscientists to hold the view that our conscious intentions do not cause our bodily movements but merely accompany them. Then, Quantum Theory suggests that not all physical events are fully determined by their causes, and so opens the possibility that not all brain events may be fully determined by their causes, and so maybe - if neuroscience does not rule this out - there is a role for intentions after all. Finally, a theorem of mathematics, Godel's theory, has been interpreted to suggest that the initial conditions and laws of development of a mathematician's brain could not fully determine which mathematical conjectures he sees to be true. Papers by Patrick Haggard, Tim Bayne, Harald Atmanspacher and Stefan Rotter, Solomon Feferman, and John Lucas investigate these issues.

The extent to which human behaviour is determined by brain events may well depend on whether conscious events, such as intentions, are themselves merely brain events, or whether they are separate events which interact with brain events (perhaps in the radical form that intentions are events in our soul, and not in our body). The papers of Frank Jackson, Richard Swinburne, and Howard Robinson investigate these issues.

The remaining papers, of Galen Strawson, Helen Steward, and R.A. Duff, consider what kind of free will we need in order to be morally responsible for our actions or to be held guilty in a court of law. Is it sufficient merely that our actions are uncaused by brain events, or what?

Free Will and Modern Science

Edited by Richard Swinburne

A British Academy Publication

British Academy Original Paperbacks

Foreword, Peter Simons
Introduction, Richard Swinburne
1. Does Brain Science Change our View of Free Will?, Patrick Haggard
2. Free Will and the Sciences of Human Agency, Tim Bayne
3. Physicalism and the Determination of Action, Richard Swinburne
4. Dualism and the Determination of Action, Richard Swinburne
5. Determinacy or its Absence in the Brain, Harald Atmanspacher and Stefan Rotter
6. Godel's incompleteness theorems, free will, and mathematical thought, Solomon Feferman
7. Response to Feferman, John Lucas
8. The Impossibility of Ultimate Moral Responsibility?, Galen Strawson
9. Moral Responsibility and the Concept of Agency, Helen Steward
10. Substance Dualism and its Rationale, Howard Robinson
11. What Kind of Responsibility must Criminal Law Presuppose?, R.A. Duff

Free Will and Modern Science

Edited by Richard Swinburne

A British Academy Publication

British Academy Original Paperbacks

Author Information

Richard Swinburne is Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy

Contributors:

Harald Atmanspacher is Head of the Department of Theory and Data Analysis, Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg
Tim Bayne is Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Oxford
R.A. Duff is Professor of Philosophy, University of Sterling, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
Solomon Feferman is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics, Stanford University
Patrick Haggard is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London
Frank Jackson is Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
John Lucas is Emeritus Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
Howard Robinson is Professor of Philosophy, Central European University, Budapest.
Stefan Rotter is Professor of Computational Neuroscience, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiberg, and Bernstein Centre, Freiberg.
Peter Simons is Professor of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
Helen Steward is Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Leeds.
Galen Strawson is Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading.
Richard Swinburne is Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
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