ALEKSANDER PANCHIN:"Free will: the illusion of your "Self"

About the Lecture

You decided to read this text.

Was that an expression of your free will—or not?

And if you decide to attend this lecture, will that be a genuinely free choice? Or merely the outcome of neural processes set in motion long before you became aware of the feeling that “I decided”?

We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as the authors of our actions. It seems obvious that our conscious self makes decisions, weighs options, doubts, chooses, and controls behavior. But is that really the case?

For centuries, free will has been a subject of philosophy and religious debate. Today, it has become a topic of experimental science. Research into the human brain is increasingly challenging many of our deepest intuitions about choice, agency, and personal responsibility.

In this lecture, we will explore:

• Whether consciousness actually makes decisions or merely becomes aware of them after the fact
• Whether our sense of being the author of our actions is reliable or deceptive
• Where the boundary lies between automatic brain processes and what we call the “self”
• Whether a unified sense of self can fragment—and what that means for free will
• Why people experience the influence of external forces, spirits, or a “foreign will”
• Whether responsibility, morality, and personal choice still have a place in a scientific understanding of the world

Join us for a fascinating journey into one of the oldest and most profound questions of human existence: are we truly free, or is free will an illusion?