Is there something like free will, or are we entirely driven by external stimuli on which we react? A new paper from researchers at the NC State sought to analyse previous studies, showing that many contained methodical inconsistencies and conflicts arose.
Analysing no less than 48 such studies, the team found that the interpretation of the results seems to be driven by the metaphysical position of the people who carried tham out, not careful analysis of the results. Furthermore,they found a significant variability across the studies, like that a subset of them actually looked at where the activity was located in the brain and whether this was linked to will, which often lead to conflicting results. Other articles did not even assess the neural activity in question, meaning that their conclusions were based on mere speculation.
Such work is necessary because the informations available on such an important thing as free will does alter many aspects of life, like behaviour, as it has been shown through yet more studies, since the sense of responsibility for one’s actions might decrease.
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