26/06/2014 - Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will

Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will   

by Kerri Smith  

Scientists think they can prove that free will is an illusion. Philosophers are urging them to think again.  

The experiment helped to change John-Dylan Haynes's outlook on life. In 2007, Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, put people into a brain scanner in which a display screen flashed a succession of random letters. He told them to press a button with either their right or left index fingers whenever they felt the urge, and to remember the letter that was showing on the screen when they made the decision. The experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal brain activity in real time as the volunteers chose to use their right or left hands. The results were quite a surprise.  more...