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Do we have free will?

What do we mean by free will?

Are we the conscious authors of our actions, or deterministic automata in which consciousness is an epiphenomenon, and free will merely a construct we have a social need for?

Does any of this matter... after all, if everything is pre-determined why worry about anything?

These issues have been debated for millennia, and are fundamental to how we view the actions of others, how sympathetically we may treat them or assign punishments to transgressors.

Forty years ago, Benjamin Libet compared the relative timings of awareness of a decision to act, with EEG signals associated with preparation to act, and thus began the field of volitional neuroscience. His findings have been debated, criticised, ridiculed, dismissed… and replicated... in environments ranging from the lab to bungee jump platforms. And forty years later the implications of those findings are still being debated.

I have a background in Physics and Engineering, and having taught control systems design and non-linear systems analysis in parallel with my interest in volition for a decade. I’m bringing the two together: using signal processing and machine learning analysis techniques unavailable to Libet, to refine and provide subtler and more objective measurements of the non-conscious neural activity that leads to a conscious outcome - be it a thought, decision or physical action.

Why am I doing all this?.... I’m not sure I have any choice to do otherwise.

• MSc: Psychological Research Methods. Dissertation topic: Moral Decision Making
  Open University, 2013

Research interests around free will and consciousness.

Currently looking at using machine learning to identify neural correlates of 'conscious awareness of specfiic tasks' in EEG data

Applying this to replace subjective self report of awareness in 'Libet's Clock' paradigm

dvc25tkb@bangor.ac.uk