How is free will possible in the light of the physical and chemical
underpinnings of brain activity and recent neurobiological experiments?
How can the emergence of complexity in hierarchical systems such as the
brain, based at the lower levels in physical interactions, lead to
something like genuine free will? The nature of our understanding of
free will in the light of present-day neuroscience is becoming
increasingly important because of remarkable discoveries on the topic
being made by neuroscientists at the present time, on the one hand, and
its crucial importance for the way we view ourselves as human beings, on
the other. A key tool in understanding how free will may arise in this
context is the idea of downward causation in complex systems, happening
coterminously with bottom up causation, to form an integral whole.
Top-down causation is usually neglected, and is therefore emphasized in
the other part of the book's title. The concept is explored in depth, as
are the ethical and legal implications of our understanding of free
will.
This book arises out of a workshop held in California in April of 2007,
which was chaired by Dr. Christof Koch. It was unusual in terms of the
breadth of people involved: they included physicists, neuroscientists,
psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians. This enabled the meeting,
and hence the resulting book, to attain a rather broader perspective on
the issue than is often attained at academic symposia. The book includes
contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis, Christopher
D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero,
J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans Küng, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs,
Nancey Murphy, William Newsome, Timothy O'Connor, Sean A.. Spence, and
Evan Thompson.
