The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial CausationA neuroscientific perspective on the mind-body problem that focuses on how the brain actually accomplishes mental causation. The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. In this book, Peter Tse examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and "downward" mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains. |
Contents
The Mind Body Problem Will Be Solved by Neuroscience | 1 |
2 Overview of Arguments | 11 |
3 A Criterial Neuronal Code Underlies Downward Mental Causation and Free Will | 19 |
4 Neurons Impose Physical and Informational Criteria for Firing on Their Inputs | 31 |
5 NMDA Receptors and a Neuronal Code Based on Bursting | 79 |
6 Mental Causation as an Instance of Criterial Causation | 115 |
7 Criterial Causation Offers a Neural Basis for Free Will | 133 |
8 Implications of Criterial Causality for Mental Representation | 151 |
Physical Evidence for Ontological Indeterminism | 241 |
Ontological Indeterminism Undermines Kims Argument against the Logical Possibility of Mental Causation | 247 |
Why There Are No Necessary A posteriori Propositions | 257 |
Notes | 261 |
Glossary | 289 |
References | 309 |
Author Index | 411 |
443 | |
Readiness Potentials and the Role of Conscious Willing | 169 |
10 The Roles of Attention and Consciousness in Criterial Causation | 183 |