Freeing the Will from Neurophilosophy: Voluntary Action in Thomas Aquinas and Libet-Style Experiments

Author:

De Haan Daniel D.1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Campion Hall and Blackfriars, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1QS, UK

Abstract

This essay presents a substantive Thomist response to neurophilosophy’s main experimental challenge to free will: the Libet-style experiments on the neural antecedents of conscious voluntary actions. My response to this challenge will disclose that Thomists are rationally justified in rejecting both the conclusions of neurophilosophy skeptics of free will, and more fundamentally, the rival philosophical conceptions of voluntary action and free will that were chosen to be operationalized in these neuroscientific experiments. I show how the Thomists’ alternative conception of human action justifies a significantly different interpretation of Libet-style experiments, one which reveals the psychological phenomenon targeted by these experiments is miscategorized as a voluntary action.

Funder

Templeton World Charity Foundation

Publisher

MDPI AG

Reference85 articles.

1. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1972). Intention, Basil Blackwell. [2nd ed.].

2. Geach, Mary, and Gormally, Luke (2005). Human Life, Action and Ethics, Imprint Academic. chp. 15.

3. Mulligan, Robert W., McGlynn, James V., and Schmidt, Robert W. (1952–1954). Truth, Regnery.

4. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1981). The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Christian Classics.

5. H. Robb, James (1984). Questions on the Soul, Marquette University Press. Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation.

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