The Neuroscience of Free Will

Abstract

Abstract This chapter begins by asking why free will might have evolved. It concludes that animals that are driven to fulfill goals by intrinsic cybernetic error signals, and that can do so in an unpredictable way, have a survival advantage over animals lacking such goal-directing signals. We then consider the basics of how neurons function and emphasize that the neural code is about coincidence detection at the level of receptors, dendrites, neurons, and populations of neurons, which has as a consequence the emergence of synchrony and bursty patterns of firing among neurons. We then examine different sources of indeterminism in the brain and look at the neural circuits that underlie executive, volitional, and nonvolitional control. The chapter addresses the centrality of cingulate cortex both to willpower and cybernetic error minimization and argues that many of the goal-directed cybernetic processes governing animal volition and behavior concern optimization of paths toward the fulfillment of goals, from physical desires to emotional longings, shaped by aspects of cognition such as imagination and hope. It emphasizes that consciousness and volitional operations, such as volitional attentional tracking and volitional operations in working memory, are inseparable; consciousness is the domain of active and potential operands for volitional operators. The chapter closes with a discussion of the types of learning and automatization that afford freedom within constraint in the form of mastery.