The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will

It is widely accepted in science that the universe is a closed deterministic system in which everything can, ultimately, be explained by purely physical causation. And yet we all experience ourselves as having the freedom to choose between alternatives presented to us -- 'we' are in the driving seat.

Times Literary Supplement - A.C. Grayling

On the face of it, advances in brain science in recent decades make the old mind-body problem seem redundant, because even if we still do not know how grey matter gives rise to the polychrome pyrotechnics of consciousness - how the firing of axons translates into the delicate hue and heady fragrance of the rose, or the pain inflicted by its thorns, or the hum of the bee visiting it - nevertheless, it is obvious and undeniable that minds are somehow secreted by brains, which means that minds are part of the natural material realm. But the material realm is a deterministic one - everything that happens in it has a cause; there is nothing new under the sun but what was implicit in, and brought about by, antecedent conditions. And that means that mental phenomena are causally determined; which means that we have no free will. We do what we do because we must; our doings are the products of earlier determined events, running back from effect to cause into the history of the world before we were born.

Freeman read chemistry and then theology at Oxford University and was ordained in 1972. "When God In Us" was first published in 1993 he was dismissed from his parish for contravening church teaching, but he remains a priest in the Church of England.

Sutherland is a Microsoft Certified Professional, IT consultant, trainer and technical author.

Benjamin Libet is Professor Emeritus of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis.