What does freedom mean to you?
Freedom for me is the very specific – but challenging – question of whether consciousness is an acausal force in the universe. In particular, freedom for me is the question of whether human actions are caused by biophysical forces – or by conscious decisions processes that are (mostly) not influenced by such forces. Some philosophers and psychologists suggest that we are in conscious control over our actions – yet given the biological and chemical makeup of our brains it is not clear how conscious choice itself escapes such systems. In contrast, physicists and sociologists view the physical and social structures of our universe as largely determining our individual actions. Yet, we all experience agency over our actions and behaviors and it is hard to believe that experience of agency evolved without a function or reason. Thus, freedom for me is a yet to be settled concept which I am hoping 21st century science and humanities will be better poised to answer.

How does freedom feature in your work? 
In my current research I focus primarily on the neuroscience of (i) experience and (ii) causality of agency. On the phenomenology side, I’m interested in understanding how neural activity in brains is linked to the “sense of agency” – the feeling that accompanies most of our bodily movements (e.g. the intention to move your arm) and long term outcomes (i.e. the intention to complete your university degree). Here, I largely try to advance sense-of-agency research by untangling the complex web of timing and prediction processes that are believed to underpin sense of agency experience. On the causality side, I’m interested in how preceding behavior and neural activity (1 sec, 10 seconds or 10 days) prior to an action may determine the action itself. Here, I am searching for the “smoking-gun” of causality: are there datasets, models and computational methods that can predict future behavior prior to action – and if so, what would this tell us about freedom of choice?

What project(s) are you working on during your fellowship at the Forum Basiliense?
My project at the Forum is focused specifically on agency representation in artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Large Language Models (LLMs). I am seeking to understand whether the pressures of artificial neural network optimisation create LLMs that begin to represent the world in terms of agents and their capacities. LLMs appear very good at mimicking discussions and knowledge of agency – but do they create latent or abstract spaces in which agency is a critical or necessary representational structure? Understanding such structures may provide a novel way to think about agency – and certainly anticipate how LLMs and future AI systems may acquire agency themselves.