Free will is the idea that humans can make their own choices and determine their own fates. Is a person’s will free, or are people's lives in fact shaped by powers outside of their control? The ...

Does something like "free will" really exist? We often take it for granted, but philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have debated the issue for decades—if not centuries. In his recent Ph.D.

Robert Sapolsky, a 66-year-old Stanford neurobiologist, has a controversial view on the nature of human existence: he doesn’t think “free will” exists. At all. A MacArthur “genius” grant recipient at ...

A SIMPLE insect can help us understand free will, and the lack of it. When a female digger wasp is ready to lay her eggs, she hunts down a cricket or similar prey, paralyses it with a sting, drags it ...

Philip Ball argues that “free will” is not ruled out by physics – because it doesn’t stem from physics in the first place Wrong way If physics can disprove free will, then it must override everything ...

As you read these words, there are likely dozens of algorithms making predictions about you. It was probably an algorithm that determined that you would be exposed to this article because it predicted ...

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Before epilepsy was understood to be a neurological condition, people believed it was caused by the moon, or by phlegm in the brain. They condemned seizures as evidence of witchcraft or demonic ...

It seems like we have free will. Most of the time, we are the ones who choose what we eat, how we tie our shoelaces and what articles we read on The Conversation. Sapolsky summarises the latest ...

One fall night I lay awake wondering how I should begin this essay. I imagined a variety of ways I could write the first sentence and the next and the one after that. Then I thought about how I could ...

Neuroscientists who work on the human brain seldom mention free will. Most consider it a subject better left, at least for the time being, to philosophers. Meanwhile, their sights are set on ...