Neuroscience and Faith

Duration: 1 hour 9 mins

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Description:	Talk given by Dr Daniel De Haan as part of Summer Course 10


Created:	2015-08-13 12:32
Collection:	Faraday Institute Lectures
Publisher:	Faraday Institute
Copyright:	Faraday Institute
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	neuroscience; faith; brain; de haan; faraday; science; religion;


Abstract:	It is not difficult to find headlines announcing the death or illusion of free will. In many recent cases, the executioner comes in the form of some undisputable conclusive evidence produced in neuroscience laboratories. Journalists often exaggerate, but it is no less difficult to find the neuroscientists themselves coming to such grand conclusions about their experiments. In this paper I shall critique such wholesale rejections of free will on the basis of evidence from neuroscience. We shall look beyond the headlines and declarations of neuro-scientism, to the deeper conceptual and technical issues with the experiments of neuroscientists that seem to ensnare the will. By critiquing neuroscientism in this way, I hope my listeners will not only be instructed on particular ways of responding to neuro-skepticism about free will, but that this approach will also provide them with a heuristic or methodology that will enable them to examine critically other issues concerning human nature that are often pronounced upon by neuroscientism.

Abstract:

It is not difficult to find headlines announcing the death or illusion of free will. In many recent cases, the executioner comes in the form of some undisputable conclusive evidence produced in neuroscience laboratories. Journalists often exaggerate, but it is no less difficult to find the neuroscientists themselves coming to such grand conclusions about their experiments. In this paper I shall critique such wholesale rejections of free will on the basis of evidence from neuroscience. We shall look beyond the headlines and declarations of neuro-scientism, to the deeper conceptual and technical issues with the experiments of neuroscientists that seem to ensnare the will. By critiquing neuroscientism in this way, I hope my listeners will not only be instructed on particular ways of responding to neuro-skepticism about free will, but that this approach will also provide them with a heuristic or methodology that will enable them to examine critically other issues concerning human nature that are often pronounced upon by neuroscientism.

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