A Lunch BIT from The Neural Basis of Free Will by Peter Ulric Tse
Throughout history, the nature of free will has been a hot topic of examination and debate in both philosophy and the sciences. In his book The Neural Basis of Free Will, Peter Tse examines the unanswered questions of free will from a neuroscience perspective. As opposed to philosophers who reason the problem through logic, Tse proposes that we listen to what neurons have to say. Using recent neurophysiological research, Tse presents what the New York Journal of Books called “a groundbreaking new paradigm about how the mind works.”
In his review of the book, Stephen Macknik writes in Scientific American:
Tse has thought through this enormous problem and realized something important that brings free will back to the realm of the living. Remember that determinism is an unavoidable fact of the universe at the macroscopic but not the quantum level. Well what if the macroscopic universe is not deterministic because the brain is designed to amplify quantum level particle effects to the macroscopic level through the action of specialized neuronal channels that make decisions potentially truly stochastic?...I love Tse’s book. It has literally set me free. It explains these ideas in full glory, in exquisite detail..."
Read Criterial Causation Offers a Neural Basis for Free Will: A BIT of The Neural Basis of Free Will to learn about the role of physical/informational criteria in the neuronal model of mental causation and free will.