Thomas More Institute

for a more informed ethical engagement in public and professional life

José Manuel Giménez-Amaya, MD, PhD

Departamento de Anatomía, Histología y Neurociencia
Facultad de Medicina
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Freedom or free will has been a subject of great interest for philosophers and neuroscientists alike. However, for some of them, the very existence of free will has been challenged. Freedom is commonly understood as something that we possess and that allows us to act without any interference (‘freedom of’) in our interior as well as in our exterior worlds. This presentation is aimed to illustrate and to give some insight upon the absence of contradiction between Philosophy and Neuroscience when we deal with the issue of free will.

The introduction briefly outlines some trends in the history of modern Philosophy and the encounter of the ‘unconscious’ mind and the ‘development’ of the mind in the awake of the modern experimental Neuroscience in the twentieth century. Here, some reflections about luck, chance and the being coincidental are pointed out. The presence in the human being of temperament and character as well as the process of ageing is also taken into account. All this is kept in mind within the general context of the explosion of results brought about by the modern neuroimaging.

As examples of neuroscientific challenges of the classical concept of freedom the well-known Libet`s and Haggard`s experiments are brought up and they are evaluated within the framework of our understanding of the neurobiology of the voluntary movement. But something is missing here altogether. A brief, and hopefully insightful, overview of the different concepts of freedom is outlined now trying to understand better the significance of our ethical (moral) life as a whole.

The general conclusion of this paper is to show that the concept of positive freedom (‘freedom for’) is the best way to grasp the true meaning of freedom in our lives.