Mele is directing the Templeton Foundation project that is beginning to bring philosophers and neuroscientists together. "I think if we do a new generation of studies with better design, we'll get better evidence about what goes on in the brain when people make decisions," he says. Some informal meetings have already begun. Roskies, who is funded through the programme, plans to spend time this year in the lab of Michael Shadlen, a neurophysiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who works on decision-making in the primate brain. "We're going to hammer on each other until we really understand the other person's point of view, and convince one or other of us that we're wrong," she says.
Philosophers are willing to admit that neuroscience could one day trouble the concept of free will. Imagine a situation (philosophers like to do this) in which researchers could always predict what someone would decide from their brain activity, before the subject became aware of their decision. "If that turned out to be true, that would be a threat to free will," says Mele. Still, even those who have perhaps prematurely proclaimed the death of free will agree that such results would have to be replicated on many different levels of decision-making. Pressing a button or playing a game is far removed from making a cup of tea, running for president or committing a crime.
Mele is hopeful that other philosophers will become better acquainted with the science of conscious intention. And where philosophy is concerned, he says, scientists would do well to soften their stance. "It's not as though the task of neuroscientists who work on free will has to be to show there isn't any."
- Neuroscience vs Philosophy
Philosophers are willing to admit that neuroscience could one day trouble the concept of free will. Imagine a situation (philosophers like to do this) in which researchers could always predict what someone would decide from their brain activity, before the subject became aware of their decision. "If that turned out to be true, that would be a threat to free will," says Mele. Still, even those who have perhaps prematurely proclaimed the death of free will agree that such results would have to be replicated on many different levels of decision-making. Pressing a button or playing a game is far removed from making a cup of tea, running for president or committing a crime.
Mele is hopeful that other philosophers will become better acquainted with the science of conscious intention. And where philosophy is concerned, he says, scientists would do well to soften their stance. "It's not as though the task of neuroscientists who work on free will has to be to show there isn't any."
- Neuroscience vs Philosophy
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