Dr. Peter Ulric Tse is a Professor of cognitive neuroscience and chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. He also directs the NationalScience Foundation’s EPSCoR Attention Consortium. 

He is the author of The Neural Basis of Free Will, CriterialCausation; and his two part book: A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will; and Free Imagination: the deep roots of creativity, freedom, and meaning in the human brain and mind. Needless to say He is a modern pioneer in the defense ofand offense for free will.

Today we begin by discussing by definingimportant terms such as free will, and Libertarian free will, further clarifying the position he defends. We subsequently move in to debunk the interpretations of common studies used when arguing for determinism, and the error in Sapolsky’s arguments for determinism. Dr. Tse follows by discussinghis core idea of criterial causation, and free will from neurons to neural circuits. Then we move into a discussion of consciousness, intelligence, and physicalism. This transitions into the evolutionary account for free will, and why it emerged and the importance of imagination. We wrap up with our rapid fire questions to more deeply understand who Dr. Tse is as a person.