💡
Week 4
Date @27/01/2025 → 29/01/2025
courses 💡 Consciousness, free will and real-world-behaviour
Week 4:
HC1: Free will - empirical challenges from neuroscience and psychology
Inhoud
Hoorcollege 1: 27-01-25
1. Real-world relevance
1. Definitions
2. Free will and determinism
2. Neural activity preciding conscious decisions
1. The readiness potential (RP)
2. Libet experiments
3. Extensions and improvements
4. Interpretation
5. Objections
6. Different view
3. Unconscious influences on decision-making
1. Implicit processing
2. Unconscious processing
3. Criticism
4. Role of consciousness
Hoorcollege 2: 29-01
1. Ethical implications
2. How can we know consciousness?
Structural theories
Functional theories
Beyond theories
2. Aspects of consciousness
Assesment of sentience
Observe unconscious processors
Week 4 1
, 3. Unconscious processors
1. Unlearned approach and avoidance
2. Unlearned responses by emotional stimuli
3. Stimulus discrimination
4. Classical condition
Practice questions
Hoorcollege 1: 27-01-25
1. Real-world relevance
1. Definitions
Moral responsibility: Requires the capability to reflect upon one’s situation, to form intentions about how
to act, and to carry out the action
Criminal responsibility: Requires a voluntary act (intentional bodily movement) in a reasonably integrated
state of consciousness and a culpapble mental state e.g. purpose (i.e. free will?)
Free will: ability to do otherwhise, to be free one needs to have at least two alternatives of courses of
actions to choose from
However the challenge by determinism: all events, including the future, are completey determined by
previous causes
2. Free will and determinism
Reponses to the challenge of determinism
Incompatibilism: if determinism is true, free will does not exist
hard determinism: determinism is true, thus free will does not exist
would radically change our society
libertarianism
Week 4 2
, causa sui (= uncaused): uncaused mental proces influences physical world (= a miracle)
this is not investigated in empirical approaches: seems absurd and unscientific
seems to support dualism, this is not scientific
free will: human beings act uncaused by anything other than by themselves
Compatibilism: free will exist despite determinism being true
free will is not the ability to do otherwhise (because determinism is true)
free will: a choice is free when it is caused by one’s conscious desires, implying a causal role of
conscious mental processes
conscious control over one’s choices: to be free one must be the conscious authers of one’s
choices (agency), without interference of people or mechanisms outside of one’s reach
conscious reason-responsiveness: to be free, a decision must by consciously and rationally
motivated and cannot be the effect of random choice
= one of the compatibilist framework (there are multiple)
action is in line with conscious reasoning and desires, that it is free (you feel that you freely
choose)
for compatibilist, consciousness is key ingredient to free will
Week 4 3
Week 4
Date @27/01/2025 → 29/01/2025
courses 💡 Consciousness, free will and real-world-behaviour
Week 4:
HC1: Free will - empirical challenges from neuroscience and psychology
Inhoud
Hoorcollege 1: 27-01-25
1. Real-world relevance
1. Definitions
2. Free will and determinism
2. Neural activity preciding conscious decisions
1. The readiness potential (RP)
2. Libet experiments
3. Extensions and improvements
4. Interpretation
5. Objections
6. Different view
3. Unconscious influences on decision-making
1. Implicit processing
2. Unconscious processing
3. Criticism
4. Role of consciousness
Hoorcollege 2: 29-01
1. Ethical implications
2. How can we know consciousness?
Structural theories
Functional theories
Beyond theories
2. Aspects of consciousness
Assesment of sentience
Observe unconscious processors
Week 4 1
, 3. Unconscious processors
1. Unlearned approach and avoidance
2. Unlearned responses by emotional stimuli
3. Stimulus discrimination
4. Classical condition
Practice questions
Hoorcollege 1: 27-01-25
1. Real-world relevance
1. Definitions
Moral responsibility: Requires the capability to reflect upon one’s situation, to form intentions about how
to act, and to carry out the action
Criminal responsibility: Requires a voluntary act (intentional bodily movement) in a reasonably integrated
state of consciousness and a culpapble mental state e.g. purpose (i.e. free will?)
Free will: ability to do otherwhise, to be free one needs to have at least two alternatives of courses of
actions to choose from
However the challenge by determinism: all events, including the future, are completey determined by
previous causes
2. Free will and determinism
Reponses to the challenge of determinism
Incompatibilism: if determinism is true, free will does not exist
hard determinism: determinism is true, thus free will does not exist
would radically change our society
libertarianism
Week 4 2
, causa sui (= uncaused): uncaused mental proces influences physical world (= a miracle)
this is not investigated in empirical approaches: seems absurd and unscientific
seems to support dualism, this is not scientific
free will: human beings act uncaused by anything other than by themselves
Compatibilism: free will exist despite determinism being true
free will is not the ability to do otherwhise (because determinism is true)
free will: a choice is free when it is caused by one’s conscious desires, implying a causal role of
conscious mental processes
conscious control over one’s choices: to be free one must be the conscious authers of one’s
choices (agency), without interference of people or mechanisms outside of one’s reach
conscious reason-responsiveness: to be free, a decision must by consciously and rationally
motivated and cannot be the effect of random choice
= one of the compatibilist framework (there are multiple)
action is in line with conscious reasoning and desires, that it is free (you feel that you freely
choose)
for compatibilist, consciousness is key ingredient to free will
Week 4 3
