Researchers have succeeded in controlling a group of beetles’ flight initiation, cessation, and elevation via stimulus of the brain which elicited, suppressed, or modulated wing oscillation. What, if any, are the implications in this for the free will basis of action?

Much of cognitive science and philosophy of mind is oriented around computational and functionalist theories of mind which hold, respectively, that the human mind is a digital computer and that what makes a mind a mind is not what it’s made of but rather how it functions. Strong AI is the thesis that computers are (at least potentially) capable of human-like thought. John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment and related argument for the impossibility of Strong AI is commonly referenced in philosophical discussions of the mind and has been cited as central to cognitive science. However, Searle’s reasoning contains a modality problem and an oversight of computers’ inherent semanticity.

Concept formation is a hallmark of intelligence, but we know very little of how brains form and use concepts. Using fMRI scanning, Dharshan Kumaran and his colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, part of University College London, identified the hippocampus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), respectively, as the relevant regions of the brain.