Free will and whether or not we have it has been a topic that has set philosophers going for millennia, but it's only recently that scientists have entered the fray too.
We experience ourselves as very free, and think that whether we act or not is completely up to us. But the reality is, no mechanism for this kind of freedom is known to science.
Uri Maoz has dedicated his career to answering the question Do we have free will?, not through philosophy but by looking at the brain and human behaviour. He's Assistant Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Chapman University in the US, and runs a large, international project that brings neuroscientists and philosophers together to investigate free will. Now, he's joining us in The Garden to help us understand what the cutting edge of science tells us about whether we're really as free to make decisions as we think we are.
Read moreThe unconscious mind is a vast unmapped territory of feelings, thoughts, urges and memories that sit just outside our awareness. Luckily, our intrepid Garden Fellows are at the forefront of exploring it, and they're taking you with them on the journey.
1 Why does the mind create real symptoms in the absence of disease?
46m
2 How can psychedelics help us understand consciousness?
43m
3 Where do we go when we go to sleep?
45m
4 Do you still have free will when your unconscious mind is in charge?
51m
5 Does where you're from change how you dream?
46m
6 What happens in the brain when you meditate?
52m
7 What happens to your body under stress?
50m
8 How is the digital age transforming our response to stress?
42m
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