Voluntary action and social responsibility

Abstract:

Our social culture provides a dualist concept of action: it assumes that the conscious mind decides on our actions, that we could therefore have chosen alternative actions to those we did choose, and that we are therefore responsible for what we have done.  This talk will examine two key questions about voluntary action from a neuroscientific point of view.  First, I will discuss how the brain's capacity for voluntary action is related to conscious awareness.  I will show that conscious experience is a product of brain activity that precedes action, and not a cause of it.  In the second part of the talk, I will consider how a mechanistic, neuroscientific account of voluntary action might relate to the essential social concept of individual responsibility.