Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
Published on: October 28, 2020
Free will as relative freedom with conscious component
1Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Abstract:
The general notion of relative freedom is introduced. It is a kind of freedom that is observed everywhere in nature. In biology, incomplete knowledge is defined for all organisms. They cope with the problem by Popper's trial-and-error processes. One source of their success is the relative freedom of choice from the basic option ranges: mutations, motions and neuron connections. After the conjecture is adopted that communicability can be used as a criterion of consciousness, free will is defined as a conscious version of relative freedom. The resulting notion is logically self-consistent and it describes an observable phenomenon that agrees with our experience.
Related Concept Videos
Personal Choice and Fate Attributions
Carl Rogers' Humanistic Perspective on Personality
The organism refers to an individual's inherent blueprint, which Rogers saw as innately positive and directed toward helping others, unlike Freud's view of the id as driven by base impulses. The self is a person's...
Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud's concept of psychic determinism asserts that...
Structure of Self
Components of the Mind: Id, Ego, and Superego
The Behavioral Perspective on Personality
Freudian Psychology

