Free Will and the Brain Neuroscientific, Philosophical, and Legal Perspectives [Hardcover]

Examines how neuroscience can inform the concept of free will and associated practices of moral and criminal responsibility.Drawing upon the perspectives of neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and law in explaining and assessing human thought and behavior, Free Will and the Brain provides a distinctive approach to the perennial question of whether we have free will and can be responsible for our actions.Drawing upon the perspectives of neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and law in explaining and assessing human thought and behavior, Free Will and the Brain provides a distinctive approach to the perennial question of whether we have free will and can be responsible for our actions.Neuroscientific evidence has educated us in the ways in which the brain mediates our thought and behavior and, therefore, forced us to critically examine how we conceive of free will. This volume, featuring contributions from an international and interdisciplinary group of distinguished researchers and scholars, explores how our increasing knowledge of the brain can elucidate the concept of the will and whether or to what extent it is free. It also examines how brain science can inform our normative judgments of moral and criminal responsibility for our actions. Some chapters point out the different respects in which mental disorders can compromise the will and others show how different forms of neuromodulation can reveal the neural underpinning of the mental capacities associated with the will and can restore or enhance them when they are impaired.Part I. Introduction: 1. Free will in light of neuroscience Walter Glannon; Part II. Conceptual Issues: 2. Is free will an observer-based concept rather than a brain-based one? A critical neuroepistemological account Georg Northoff; 3. Evolution, dissolution and the neuroscience of the will Grant Gillett; 4. The experience of free will and the experience of agency: an error-prone, reconstructive process Matthis Synofzik, Gottfried Vosgerau andlS&