we are alone

Neurosurgeons preparing the brain of an epileptic before surgery can make the patient’s arm pop up like an eager student’s by electrically stimulating the motor cortex. The patient often insists that she meant to move the arm and even invents a reason why: She was waving to that nurse walking by the door! Neurologists call these erroneous, post-hoc explanations confabulations. Some scientists argue that whenever we explain our acts as the outcome of our conscious choice, we are engaging in a kind of confabulation, because our actions actually stem from countless physiological causes of which we are completely unaware.

Jerry Coyne debates whether or not free will exists.

I find this fascinating.

(via sciencecenter)