The neural basis of free will: criterial causation

1. Introduction: The Mind-Body Problem Will Be Solved by Neuroscience

2. Overview of the Arguments

3. A Criterial Neuronal Code Underlies Downward Mental Causation and Free Will

What Is Will?

What Is Criterial Causation?

4. Neurons Impose Physical and Informational Criteria for Firing on Their Inputs

How Can Neurons Realize Informational Criteria?

The Bottom-Up Information-Processing Hierarchy for Visual Recognition

Decision Making and Action

Attention and Top-Down Modulation of Bottom-Up Processing

Basic Issues in Neuronal Information Processing: Balancing Excitation and Inhibition

Tonic versus Phasic Firing

The Sweet Spot of Neural Criticality

Synchrony among inhibitory Interneurons

Attentional Binding and Gamma Oscillations

Attentional Binding by Neuronal Bursting

Neural Epiconnectivity and Rapid Synaptic Resetting

Amplifying Microscopic Randomness to Spike Timing Variability

5. NMDA Receptors and a Neuronal Code Based on Bursting

Spiny and Nonspiny Neurons

The NMDA Receptor

Long-Term Potentiation Is Not the Mechanism of Rapid Synaptic Plasticity

Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity

The Role of Back-Propagating Action Potentials in Rapid Synaptic Plasticity and Bursting

A Neuronal Burst Code

Attentional Binding by Bursting: The Role of Cholinergic Feedback

Attentional Binding by Bursting: The Role of Noncholinergic Feedback

Conclusion

6. Mental Causation as an Instance of Criterial Causation

Criterial Causation and the Detection of Patterns in Input

Criterial Causation: Multiple Realizability Is Not Enough

Addressing Kim's Challenge

There Is No Backward Causation in Criterial Causation

Criterial Causation Is a Causation of Pattern-Released Activity

7. Criterial Causation Offers a Neural Basis for Free Will

Strong Free Will

Criterial Causation Escapes the Basic Argument against Free Will

James and Incompatibilist Physicalist Libertarianism

Decision Making and Choice

Conclusion

8. Implications of Criterial Causality for Mental Representation

The Neural Code Is Not Algorithmic

Criterialism, Descriptivism, and Reference

Countering Kripke's Attack

Wittgenstein and Criteria

Propositions and Vectorial Encodings

Mental Operations versus Mental Representations

Beyond Functionalism

9. Barking Up the Wrong Free: Readiness Potentials and the Role of Conscious Willing

Libet's Experiments Do Not Disprove the Possibility of Free Will

Is Conscious Willing Causal?

Illusions of Volitional Efficacy

10. The Roles of Attention and Consciousness in Criterial Causation

Why Are There Qualia?

Iconic versus Working Memory

Stage 1 Qualia as Precompiled Informational Outputs of Preconscious Operations

Qualia as a Shared Format for Endogenous Attentional Operations

Experience Is for Endogenously Attending, Doing, and Planning

Volitional Attentional Tracking Requires Consciousness

If an Animal Can Attentionally Track, Is it Conscious?

Volitional Attention Can Alter Qualia

Qualia and Chunking: Types of Qualia

Qualia and the Frontoparietal Network

The Superpositionality of Qualia

Zombies Are Impossible

Tying It All Together.