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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will

Downward Causation and the Neurobiology of Free Will

O'Connor, Timothy
Ellis, George
Murphy, Nancey

Hardcover

Series: Understanding Complex Systems

Medical ReferenceGeneral MathematicsPhysics

ISBN10: 3642032044
ISBN13: 9783642032042
Publisher: Springer
Published: Sep 23 2009
Pages: 291
Weight: 1.25
Height: 1.00 Width: 9.20 Depth: 6.30
Language: English

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.

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