Free will as the subject of research in the neuroethics: traditions and prospects

The article examines some aspects of the current state of the philosophical problem of free will. Now, this problem has been at the center of the subject field of neuroethics, a new interdisciplinary area of knowledge that has arisen in cultural neuroscience. The author considers the problem of free will as one of the cross-cutting for all levels of philosophical knowledge: from metaphysics to ethics and the theory of law and has various options for resolution in the history of philosophy. One of them is presented in the works of Descartes, Kant and Schopenhauer. Freedom of will in this tradition is understood as a person's conviction that he is the source of his choice and actions and is responsible for them. External reality in this case appears as deterministic. Hence freedom cannot be deduced from the concept of the external world, it does not lend itself to empirical fixation, it is transcendental. The discussion on the compatibility of freedom of will and causal determinism in neuro-ethics can be presented as the resumption of these reflections. The position that recognizes the causal determinism of all events is called combatibilism. Determinism is not an obstacle to freedom, but, on the contrary, is necessary for it, for example, as a way of orientation in the world. Opponents of combatibilism — incombatibilists — argue that free will and causal determinism are incompatible. The article gives a number of examples of experimental study of the correlation of free will and determinism, which point to a kind of "spontaneous" combatibilism of participants in making a moral decision about free will. The author revels some weaknesses in the basic model of such studies and makes assumptions about possible prospects for the development of studies of the problem of free will in neuro-ethics.