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Beschreibung
The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one's actions.

The question of free will is no mere curio of philosophy seminars. A belief in free will underwrites both the religious notion of "sin" and our enduring commitment to retributive justice. The Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law. Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in [...] Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, we actually have free will?
The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one's actions.

The question of free will is no mere curio of philosophy seminars. A belief in free will underwrites both the religious notion of "sin" and our enduring commitment to retributive justice. The Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law. Any scientific developments that threatened our notion of free will would seem to put the ethics of punishing people for their bad behaviour in [...] Free Will Harris debates these ideas and asks whether or not, given what brain science is telling us, we actually have free will?
Über den Autor
Sam Harris is the author of the bestselling books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, and Lying. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing has been published in over fifteen languages. Dr. Harris is cofounder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. Please visit his website at [...].
Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2012
Genre: Importe, Technik allg.
Rubrik: Naturwissenschaften & Technik
Medium: Taschenbuch
Inhalt: 83 S.
ISBN-13: 9781451683400
ISBN-10: 1451683405
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Klappenbroschur
Autor: Harris, Sam
Auflage: Trade Paperback
Hersteller: Simon + Schuster LLC
Free Press
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Petersen Buchimport GmbH, Vertrieb, Weidestr. 122a, D-22083 Hamburg, gpsr@petersen-buchimport.com
Abbildungen: French flaps; rough front
Maße: 203 x 141 x 15 mm
Von/Mit: Sam Harris
Erscheinungsdatum: 06.03.2012
Gewicht: 0,124 kg
Artikel-ID: 107669725

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