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Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates

Until the advent of modern neuroscience, free will used to be a theological and a metaphysical concept, debated with little reference to brain function. Today, with ever increasing understanding of neurons, circuits and cognition, this concept has become outdated and any metaphysical account of free...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Brembs, Björn
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049057/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21159679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2325
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author Brembs, Björn
author_facet Brembs, Björn
author_sort Brembs, Björn
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description Until the advent of modern neuroscience, free will used to be a theological and a metaphysical concept, debated with little reference to brain function. Today, with ever increasing understanding of neurons, circuits and cognition, this concept has become outdated and any metaphysical account of free will is rightfully rejected. The consequence is not, however, that we become mindless automata responding predictably to external stimuli. On the contrary, accumulating evidence also from brains much smaller than ours points towards a general organization of brain function that incorporates flexible decision-making on the basis of complex computations negotiating internal and external processing. The adaptive value of such an organization consists of being unpredictable for competitors, prey or predators, as well as being able to explore the hidden resource deterministic automats would never find. At the same time, this organization allows all animals to respond efficiently with tried-and-tested behaviours to predictable and reliable stimuli. As has been the case so many times in the history of neuroscience, invertebrate model systems are spearheading these research efforts. This comparatively recent evidence indicates that one common ability of most if not all brains is to choose among different behavioural options even in the absence of differences in the environment and perform genuinely novel acts. Therefore, it seems a reasonable effort for any neurobiologist to join and support a rather illustrious list of scholars who are trying to wrestle the term ‘free will’ from its metaphysical ancestry. The goal is to arrive at a scientific concept of free will, starting from these recently discovered processes with a strong emphasis on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying them.
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spelling pubmed-30490572011-03-15 Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates Brembs, Björn Proc Biol Sci Special Feature Until the advent of modern neuroscience, free will used to be a theological and a metaphysical concept, debated with little reference to brain function. Today, with ever increasing understanding of neurons, circuits and cognition, this concept has become outdated and any metaphysical account of free will is rightfully rejected. The consequence is not, however, that we become mindless automata responding predictably to external stimuli. On the contrary, accumulating evidence also from brains much smaller than ours points towards a general organization of brain function that incorporates flexible decision-making on the basis of complex computations negotiating internal and external processing. The adaptive value of such an organization consists of being unpredictable for competitors, prey or predators, as well as being able to explore the hidden resource deterministic automats would never find. At the same time, this organization allows all animals to respond efficiently with tried-and-tested behaviours to predictable and reliable stimuli. As has been the case so many times in the history of neuroscience, invertebrate model systems are spearheading these research efforts. This comparatively recent evidence indicates that one common ability of most if not all brains is to choose among different behavioural options even in the absence of differences in the environment and perform genuinely novel acts. Therefore, it seems a reasonable effort for any neurobiologist to join and support a rather illustrious list of scholars who are trying to wrestle the term ‘free will’ from its metaphysical ancestry. The goal is to arrive at a scientific concept of free will, starting from these recently discovered processes with a strong emphasis on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying them. The Royal Society 2011-03-22 2010-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3049057/ /pubmed/21159679 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2325 Text en This Journal is © 2010 The Royal Society http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Special Feature
Brembs, Björn
Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title_full Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title_fullStr Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title_full_unstemmed Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title_short Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
title_sort towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
topic Special Feature
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3049057/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21159679
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.2325
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