Throughout my research and writing I have endeavored to provide compelling evidence for dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material components of the synaptic networks. I have identified the difficulty in finding articles from neuroscience that support this perspective. In this blog I am posting viewpoints that run counter to dualism. It is important for my readers to understand these perspectives to which I have made reference in my writing.
An article in Wikipedia, entitled “Neuroscience of Free Will,” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will) is my source for the following posts. The field is highly controversial. “One significant finding of modern studies is that a person’s brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. . . . although we may experience that our conscious decisions and thoughts cause our actions, these experiences are in fact based on readouts of brain activity in a network of brain areas that control voluntary action. . . . It is clearly wrong to think of [feeling of willing something] as a prior intention, located at the very earliest moment of decision in an extended action chain. . . . Researcher Itzhak Fried says that available studies do at least suggest that consciousness comes in a later stage of decision making than previously expected - challenging any versions of ‘free will’ where intention occurs at the beginning of the human decision process. . . . the conscious self is somehow alerted to a given behavior that the rest of the brain and body are already planning and performing. . . . Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris believes that we are mistaken in believing the intuitive idea that intention initiates actions. . . . Harris argues: ‘Thoughts simply arise in the brain.’ . . . Walter Glannon and Alfred Mele say that the available research is more evidence against any dualist notions of free will . . . Mele says that most discussions of free will are now in materialist terms.”