October 30, 2025

Aaron Schurger: "No. Neuroscience Does NOT Threaten Free Will."

1 hour 32 minutes

The Libet experiment didn't kill free will, says professor of neuroscience Aaron Schurger; the brain's "readiness potential" is simply stochastic neural noise. We then tackle consciousness's role in initiating action, the hard problem, and what it'd take for neuroscience to truly disprove our choices. If you’re interested in the topics above, I think you’ll love this podcast.

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Timestamps:

- 00:00 - The Readiness Potential

- 07:14 - Reinterpreting Libet's Results

- 24:18 - Autocorrelated Neural Noise

- 36:06 - Noise vs. Conscious Imperative

- 43:46 - Resolving Libet's Paradox

- 50:55 - The Point of No Return

- 56:11 - Attention Schema Theory

- 01:03:47 - Explaining "What It's Like"

- 01:17:00 - Consciousness & Action Initiation

- 01:24:54 - Testing Consciousness Thresholds

Links mentioned:

- Aaron Schurger’s Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lBSjfagAAAAJ&hl=en

- Daniel Dennett [TOE]: https://youtu.be/bH553zzjQlI

- Determined: A Science Of Life Without Free Will [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Determined-Science-Life-without-Free/dp/B0BVNSX4CQ/ref=sr_1_1

- Robert Sapolsky [TOE]: https://youtu.be/z0IqA1hYKY8

- An Accumulator Model For Spontaneous Neuralactivity Prior To Self-Initiated Movement [Paper]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.1210467109

- Consciousness Iceberg [TOE]: https://youtu.be/65yjqIDghEk

- Stephen Wolfram [TOE]: https://youtu.be/0YRlQQw0d-4

- Awareness As A Perceptual Model Of Attention [Paper]: https://grazianolab.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf3411/files/graziano/files/cog_neurosci_2011b.pdf

- Cortical Activity Is More Stable When Sensory Stimuliare Consciously Perceived [Paper]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.1418730112

- Propofol Anesthesia Destabilizes Neural Dynamics Across Cortex [Paper]: https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0896-6273%2824%2900446-X

- Jenann Ismael [TOE]: https://youtu.be/7kvXihDAOi0

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