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Thursday, 22 June 2023

Free Will or Agency: What Drives Our Behavior?

 In the area of philosophy, and now neuroscience, the question of free will has been a hotly debated topic for a long time.

Neuroscientists like David Eagleman, who has hosted specials on the Brain for PBS, are now of the opinion that the brain works on the basis of neural networks.  Eagleman maintains that these networks may sometimes even compete for which “decides” on the action.

He goes as far as to speculate that the visual areas of the brain, which are presumably “off” during sleep, actually remain active to remain “relevant” during sleep which results in dreams.  The suggestion is that they do not want to cede their participation as part of the networks by shutting them down.

That’s an interesting theory because of course dreams are themselves a rich area of speculation in which many believe one may be accessing other dimensions or realities unavailable when awake.

In modern spiritual circles and among many philosophers who stress the wholeness of Everything or the concepts of nonduality, free will is, of course, a nonstarter....<<<Read More>>>...