Björn Brembs http://brembs.net

Universität Regensburg

“Mental states are always brain states, meaning physical states”

Hans Flohr, neurobiologist

No empirical evidence

“I could have done otherwise”

Taylor & Dennett 2002

“We could often have done otherwise than we in fact did”

Searle 1984

“If we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may”

David Hume (1711-1776)

We have it, but it‘s biology, not magic

Source: Ken Catania

Reproducibility is not evolutionary stable

H. geographicus

Variability in jumping Royan et al., 2010

M. trinitatis

Romuald Nargeot

“The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Under carefully controlled experimental circumstances, an animal will behave as it damn well pleases.

Behavioral variability in a constant stimulus situation: Actions, not responses

Decisions or just noise in complex stimulus-response systems?

Geometric Random Inner Products: GRIP

All computations Alexander Maye, UKE Hamburg (Maye et al. 2007)

Maye et al. (2007)

If one simple stochastic point process is insufficient, maybe we need more…

Source: This is Spinal Tap

Phototaxis: Gáspár Jékely

Polychaete: Platynereis dumerilii

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

Pelagial

Benthal

LIGHT PRESSURE GRAVITY

CHEMICALS

TEMPERATURE SALINITY

G Jékely et al. Nature 456, 395-399 (2008) doi:10.1038/nature07590

α-FVRIamide α-acTub

Ongoing activity inhibited/modified by stimuli

The limiting factor in the evolution of brain size was

energy supply 42

43

The additional energy burden associated with […] the environment may be as little as .5-1.0% of the total energy budget. Marcus Raichle (2006): Science 314, p1249

Ongoing activity inhibited/modified by stimuli

Action – Outcome Evaluation

=

Jonathan Wolpaw

Wolpaw TINS (1997) + later data

Wolpaw et al, 1984&94; Carp et al, 2006; Wolf et al, 1995

Deterministic

Stochastic

Dete

rmin

istic

Dete

rmin

istic

Dete

rmin

istic