On April 14 at 7:00 PM in Riga, biologist and science communicator Alexander Panchin will give a new lecture on free will 💥
You decided to read this text.
Is that an expression of your free will — or not?
And if you decide to attend the lecture — will that be your free choice?
Or the result of neural processes set in motion long before you experienced the feeling “I decided”? An inevitable consequence of a chain of events connecting your past and your present?
We are used to thinking of ourselves as the authors of our own actions. It seems to us that the conscious “I” makes decisions, chooses, doubts, and controls what we do. But is that really so?
For centuries, free will was a subject of philosophical and religious debate. Now it has become an object of experimental science. And research into the human brain increasingly challenges our привычные intuitions.
At the lecture, we will discuss:
— whether consciousness makes decisions or merely becomes aware of them after the fact
— whether the sense of authorship over our actions is reliable or illusory
— where the boundary lies between automatic brain processes and what we call the “self”
— whether a unified subject can fragment — and what happens to free will if it does
— why people experience the intervention of external forces, spirits, or a “foreign will”
— and whether there is still room for responsibility, morality, and personal choice in the scientific picture of the world
When: April 14, 19:00
Where: Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa Daugava
The lecture will be delivered in Russian.
About the speaker:
Alexander Panchin holds a PhD in Biology, is a recipient of the Enlightener Prize, author of the book Immortality or Death, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Commission against Pseudoscience and of the Evolution Foundation’s council, and the creator of a popular YouTube channel.
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Please note that tickets are non-refundable, but you can always give them to your friends as a gift!
Radisson Blu Daugava Hotel, Riga • Kuģu iela 24, 1007 Rīga, Latvia
