On True and False Freedom in Neuroscience
Abstract
In ordinary experience, voluntary movement is perceived as the expression of human ability to make decisions, of free will. Neuroscience now has instruments to check the popular concept of elementary connection between decision-making and movement. It demonstrates that brain processes causing movement can precede the subjective experience of free will. However, the neuroscientific experiment puts its subject into an unnatural situation, breaks her down into neural mechanisms that interest it, and limits her to the definite number of elementary reactions. Clinical cases on the other hand show that people are never a set of functions, because damage to any function changes an individual as a unity. The author believes that the resistance of this unity to illness is a manifestation of the will to life - the true freedom of will.
About the Authors
Michel Hulin
Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris-IV)
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Alexander Chikin
Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
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Review
For citations:
Hulin M., Chikin A. On True and False Freedom in Neuroscience. Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences. 2017;(11):59-70. (In Russ.)
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