How is free will possible in the light of the physical and
chemical underpinnings of brain activity and recent neurobiological
experiments? How can the emergence of complexity in hierarchical
systems such as the brain, based at the lower levels in physical
interactions, lead to something like genuine free will? The nature
of our understanding of free will in the light of present-day
neuroscience is becoming increasingly important because of
remarkable discoveries on the topic being made by neuroscientists
at the present time, on the one hand, and its crucial importance
for the way we view ourselves as human beings, on the other. A key
tool in understanding how free will may arise in this context is
the idea of downward causation in complex systems, happening
coterminously with bottom up causation, to form an integral whole.
Top-down causation is usually neglected, and is therefore
emphasized in the other part of the book 's title. The concept is
explored in depth, as are the ethical and legal implications of our
understanding of free will.
This book arises out of a workshop held in California in April
of 2007, which was chaired by Dr. Christof Koch. It was unusual in
terms of the breadth of people involved: they included physicists,
neuroscientists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians. This
enabled the meeting, and hence the resulting book, to attain a
rather broader perspective on the issue than is often attained at
academic symposia. The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne
Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis, Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett,
David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso,
Christof Koch, Hans K ng, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Nancey Murphy,
William Newsome, Timothy O Connor, Sean A.. Spence, and Evan
Thompson.
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