Writers Festival: Free Will and the Brain
- Posted:
- August 23rd, 2009
- Editor
- - AEST
Presented by Neil Levy. University of Melbourne and Oxford Centre for Neuroethics
Articles in popular science frequently claim that scientists have shown that there is no such thing as free will. The findings upon which these claims are based are often interesting, as I will show, but they don’t threaten the existence of free will in any way. Nevertheless, I will argue that we can learn a great deal about human decision-making processes, and the ways in which they go awry, from the sciences of the mind. I will show how we can use cognitive science to understand the loss of self-control in pathological cases like addiction as well as in more ordinary cases.
Chaired by Nick Trakakis, School of Philosophy and Bioethics.
Further information: Melbourne Writers Festival