donald trump has angrily defended his handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the united states — which has killed 22,000 americans. the president says he acted at the earliest opportunity. us infection figures have begun to stabilise, and a programme has been set out for reopening after the shutdown. president macron of france has announced that coronavirus lockdown is to remain in place until may the 11th. in a televised address he said the current measures had slowed but not beaten the virus. the lockdown has confined the french to their homes since mid—march. the number of coronavirus deaths recorded in british hospitals has passed 11,000 — an increase of more than 700 in 2a hours. the government says it doesn't yet expect to relax the lockdown as the uk is not past the peak of the outbreak.

now on bbc news: melissa hogenboom considers the age—old question of free will — and what the latest scientific research can tell us about how we make decisions. i'm placing the electrodes. i chose to be here. this was my choice — at least, i think it was. most of you will believe that you chose to watch this video. we do worry about manipulation by the media and by advertising and by other people and so on. you freely willed it. what is the degree of freedom that you give to this definition of free will? 0ur choices define us... so — if that's what we're talking about — then we don't have free will. ..but reality may not be so simple. there you go. he chuckles in the early ‘80s, benjamin libet designed an elegant experiment to help us understand the mechanism of decision—making in the brain. this is the libet experiment. all i have to do is watch the spinning dots and click a button

whenever i feel like it — then report to the scientist at what time i felt the urge to click. meanwhile, my brain activity is being monitored. most of us would assume that our choices register as an increase in brain activity and result in us clicking the button — but what's actually observed is a build—up of brain activity — called the readiness potential — a full second earlier than the conscious urge to click. this has been replicated hundreds of times. what are the implications of this kind of experiment? so, the folk definition of free will is that your mind controls your body — meaning that your mind is free to decide what to do and send the command to your body — but — when you consider the libet experiment — it means that conscious intentions — instead of being the cause of motor preparation — is the consequence of an antecedent brain activity — so it challenges this dualistic view of mind—body causation. and so — in my group — you know —

we've gone back and redone all the libet experiments very carefully — and we find that you get a readiness potential even in the absence of a motor act — like doing this versus that — if a person expects something to happen, so my own guess is that the readiness potential is tied up with expectation or anticipation that something is about to happen. the experiment is over. my mind is no longer the controller. rather, it's firmly seated in my conscious brain — guiding and responding to whispers from my subconscious. right, i need some food. probably we can see that a lot of our decisions — even not all our decisions — are the result of a prior brain activity — and — as an example — there is an elegant study by the team ofjohn—dylan haynes — who showed that — by using neuroimaging measurements with mri scanner — you can actually predict what will be the decision of participants before they're actually conscious of having taken that decision.

this begs the question — how can we have free will if our unconscious brain is making decisions before we do? the unconscious is not unintelligent. the unconscious guides us in ways which is itself responsive to reasons. take the following scenario. i'm walking, over eight months pregnant, hungry and very tired. when i listen into what my subconscious is saying, she's tired and hungry, too. strangely, she wants beans for lunch. sometimes we're influenced badly by unconscious reasons — there's no doubt about it — because advertisers do psychological experiments to find what we're sensitive to and then they set up the environment so we make decisions through unconscious subliminal influences. we know there's lots of examples of priming. even if we start from the kind of everyday... which baked beans do i choose in the supermarket? it's sort of quite easy to get from there to a genuine worry about whether you really made that choice freely, when you pick the heinz

versus the own brand or whatever it is. fine. no beans, then? or am ijust saying that because i feel my subconscious has been duped? that might be a problem, but then that happens with conscious decision—making too. people lie to us. once you start sort of pushing the boundaries of manipulation, it starts to be a really hard question. when are we sufficiently in control and when aren't we? how can we step outside that and get outside those influences — or can we, even? yeah. no, we can't. i mean, the best we can do is — because we're human beings and we're incredibly clever — we're able to reflect on all of this stuff. i think a lot of our decision—making is playing out in this internal virtual reality of our imagination — and we spend about half of our waking day in there, imagining this versus that — and some of those imaginings or deliberations are not terribly consequential — like whom to invite for dinner.

others are very consequential. like whom should i marry or what country should i live in? and i want to argue that our internal virtual reality of our imagination is where free will is really active. it's not picking — as in the libet test — it's really an issue of choosing consequential decisions. right, i'm still hungry. i'm back at the beans — but i'll take some time to avoid any unconscious bean—based biases i may have — and deliberate on which to buy. if you want to call free willjust our capacity to make intelligent decisions — which is hugely impressive — then i have no problem with that. in that case, you'd want to say we have lots of free will. other animals have some. even a tiger can weigh its options — so we have the sort of first order deliberation in common with the tiger. however, in addition, humans have this sort of higher level — or second order — capacity to deliberate — namely, to deliberate

about our own future self. and here's the strange thing — i felt much freer randomly clicking buttons for the libet test than i did when i started to overthink which can of beans to buy — or certainly any of the big life stuff — where all sorts of constraints are put upon the possible choices i can make. we do have some freedom to act within the parameters given to us by nature and by our society, and then those parameters that we set for ourselves — like deciding to learn a new language, or to go to the gym or even to become a better person. when we spoke on the phone, you said you weren't sure about free will, and now you're saying you don't think we have it. yeah... because i'm just waiting for additional scientific evidence. it's just that at the moment with what we know, it's hard to really believe in free will, um, but perhaps somebody — no matter in the field neuroscience, neurobiology or physics —

will find a new experiment. wait, why did she say physics? the laws of physics suggest that if something happens it's caused by something before it — and so — tracing all the way back to the big bang — the laws of physics tell us how one thing — one event — will lead to another — cause and effect. in this scenario, there are two choices i could make, but when i knock over the big bang domino right at the back, it would result in a cascade of events that inevitably leads me to making choice a rather than b. this is determinism — the view that all our choices in life are in some way fated to happen. now, since we and our brains are — after all — only made of atoms — there's nothing else — no magic extra — then our brains are subject to the laws of physics — so — in a deterministic universe where one thing follows the other — surely when we think we're making free choices it's just the laws of physics playing themselves out.

it's just that our brains are so complex that we can never predict in advance what someone‘s going to do or even what we ourselves are going to do — so we have the illusion of free will. "name a woman" and you might say — oh, i don't know — you'll name someone, and i say, "ok, name a woman politician, " and you might say — oh, i don't know — hillary clinton. then i'll add a third criterion. name a european woman politician and you'll say theresa may or, you know, margaret thatcher or angela merkel. i would say a fundamental mistake the determinists make is that they think of causation in general — and causation in the brain in particular — in terms of what is sufficient — that this event in the brain is sufficient to cause that event in the brain. if causation in the brain is, however, criterial — and there's lots of different ways to meet any given set of criteria, then causation is not a matter of sufficiency — that if this happens, that has to happen — it's a matter of adequacy.

why did you say, say, angela merkel first as opposed to margaret thatcher? i would say, well, that comes down to chance. it's not utterly random, right? when i said to you, "think of a woman european politician," you didn't say frog or, you know, truth or democracy. you said, you know, whatever you said. so, it was not utterly random, but it was constrained randomness within those criteria. 0k. now i'll add some randomness with turbulence and we'll see that knocking over the big bang domino could result in either choice a or choice b. there are some criteria, though — the blocks must all be the same size and not ducks. still, it could be argued that that randomness we added with the turbulence — even though incredibly complex — would still obey the laws of determinism. here's a pattern of energy. it's a rhythm. tap along. keep tapping. in a second, i will cut the track

and you should carry on tapping. that pattern of sound caused a pattern of activity in your brain — which resulted in a pattern of movement in your finger, but not all of you would have kept to the rhythm exactly — and there would have been those amongst you who refused to tap at all. rebels. so, patterns of energy that trigger patterns of energy may not cause a predictable effect. patterns of energy don't obey the traditional laws of physics. what evolution has done is taken matter and made it sensitive to patterns of energy. let's go back to those dominoes. let's zoom into this part here that's happening inside the brain. so, this pattern of dominoes will result in either choice a or choice b — depending on turbulence — but — in the brain — the pattern is not fixed. if i find choice a morally repugnant, i can change the pattern so that only choice b is ever possible. my abstract morality — which is itself a pattern

of information — will shape the decisions i make. so, i think that evolution created a whole new kind of physical system — which we call life — which is rooted in patterns of energy — triggering patterns of energy — and paramount to that is our consciousness — which is, ultimately, a kind of pattern of information realised in the brain that allows us to model the world and ourselves in it. but what if our future already exists? in what way then are the choices we make ever truly free? the block universe is an idea in physics that developed pretty soon after einstein came up with his special theory of relativity — where he said that time and space have to be unified. you can't talk about three—dimensional space and one—dimensional time as though they're separate things. they're part of one four—dimensional space time. so, the block universe isa bit like... imagine space was only flat —

only two—dimensional, and then the third dimension is time. so, think of a loaf of bread. the time axis is along the length of the loaf and space are the individual slices. the block universe says that it's not just the present time that exists. the past hasn't gone and been forgotten — and the future hasn't yet to be decided. in the block universe, all times co—exist. they're just different slices of the loaf. there is no universal present moment. in this scenario, it doesn't matter which of the domino simulations i pick — because every single frame of that animation already exists and will exist forever. there can only ever be one outcome. we've done many, many experiments over the last century — since einstein's theory of relativity — and we know this is really the case. if the future already exists — if it's already set — as it were — even though we haven't experienced it yet — then that suggests that we have no free will. is that not a bit dangerous to go

through life thinking, "oh, it doesn't really matter what decision i make "because it's all set in stone anyway"? would that not have a negative impact? i mean, i think it can engender a certain kind of worry about, you know, the meaninglessness of human existence or the futility of going through life as though we're making all these choices and determining our own path — and really we're not determining our own path. but actually, we can't see the future. we have that illusion that we have free will and that is powerful. in fact, that is good enough. for all practical purposes, we are making free choices. the fact that once the future has arrived and we can turn back and say, "it was always going to be this way" hasn't detracted from us feeling that we were making free choices to begin with. so, i don't feel depressed about the fact that my free will isjust an illusion, because for me it's very real. but which reality

are we talking about? physics currently has two main theories to describe reality. the theory of relativity is used to describe events at the large and very large scale — while quantum mechanics describes events at the small and the very small scale. what quantum theory does is it predicts the probability of outcomes. so, now let's add a quantum domino. this domino can be in one of two places, but we'll only know which one once it's been hit by the previous domino. we can run the simulation over and over. sometimes we'll end up with choice a and others with choice b. this is a truly random domino and we could substitute this for the turbulence that we added earlier to create a more accurate model that refutes determinism. now, you can talk about a block universe that's very different. this would be a block universe where all possibilities exist — and i think that is valid. now, take this new notion of a block universe of all possible things in some sense already having happened because they're possible. well, in that notion

of a block universe, you carve out this reality versus that reality. you choose to make happen this reality where you will in a year from now speak swahili versus that alternate reality where in a year from now you'll speak mandarin — and that comes down to your own decisions. so, general relativity seems to support determinism and no free will — while with quantum mechanics the opposite is true. it's called indeterminism and does support the presence of free will. the problem is that both theories work really well at describing their own events at their scale, but not at the other‘s. but which is most true for us? still, they do agree on one thing — that all our choices — freely willed or not — will echo through space for all time. i guess i think it doesn't really matter whether determinism is true or not — because i think even if it is true — we can have the kind of control over our actions that we need in order to be accountable.

so, now we get to the crux of it. what's the actual point of asking these questions about free will in the first place? because humans have the capacity to reason and humans also have the capacity to realise their potential and become a new kind of person, they are moral or immoral — in the sense that they became the kind of person that could, for example, kill a girl — and they have some responsibility in having become such a person because their own choices led to the cultivation of becoming this kind of person — say a murderer or that kind of person, say, someone who will take care of children. so if you offered me £100 to torture a kitten, i definitely wouldn't do it. definitely wouldn't. well done, me. but why is it that i wouldn't take the £100 to torture the kitten? well, it's probably partly an external constraint. like, if £100 was life or death, maybe i would take the £100

and torture the kitten, but it's not. so, there's the external constraints, but there's also internal constraints, right? here i am — i'm the sort of person that doesn't go around torturing kittens for a hundred quid — but that's a function of my background, my environment, my upbringing — all of those things. if i'd been brought up in a very different kind of environment, maybe i would have made a different decision. one example of reduced control over our choices seems to be when following orders. the moral behaviour of people can change drastically when theyjust obey the orders of an authority. emily devised an experiment to investigate brain activity in this scenario. two participants were sat facing each other where the agent could deliver a mildly painful electric shock to the victim in exchange for money. sometimes she would order them to deliver the shock, and other times she would not. even if people know that they can say no and refuse an order — specifically in the context of an experiment — because in the case of war you can still consider that military are afraid of being sent to, like, the military court,

but — for the sake of an experiment — people should mainly refuse to follow the orders to send the shock to somebody else. and in fact, we have observed that it's not the case. i've tested about 600 participants so far and only five refused to administer shocks to somebody else — which is, like, not a lot, for sure. how did the differences play out in the brain between the condition where the participant is free to decide how many shocks versus when they're told to give shocks? first of all, the sense of agency of agents is reduced when they obey the orders of somebody else — in comparison with a condition in which participants are free to decide what to do — and that's very interesting because the sense of agency is a subjective experience that everybody has when one is performing an action. also, by using electrooculography we have seen that outcome processing is reduced when people obey orders.

so, it means — somehow — that when people obey orders the brain uses less resources to process the surrounding environment. it's more like a passive condition for the brain. so, here we see external and internal constraints having a measurable effect on brain activity and inhibiting our ability to freely choose our actions. and it's by no means the only situation where this is the case. we've put people under all kinds of disadvantages in terms of knowledge, education, opportunities — even brain development — because you can show that poverty leads to less in the way of the capacity to inhibit impulses neurally. and having put people in these circumstances through social choices, we then blame them when they commit the actions which they're likely to commit in any case. in that sense, i don't think we have free will. what i'm denying is

the retributive punishment — which is what we do — we put them in worse conditions — they come out worse — not better. in order to do that, some people try to justify the existence of free will. i don't think that's morally justified. i think that's treating the unlucky worse because they're unlucky. i don't think we have that kind of free will. i don't think that that has to be the case. you don't have to have a punishment—oriented notion ofjustice at all. ithink, you know, for example, the attitude in sweden — where you try to cultivate a new way of thinking in a prisoner as opposed to, you know, hanging them for being an evil person — works great — and that is totally consistent with the libertarian free will. this is a very unpopular view, but i'm a bit inclined to think that moral responsibility kind of comes in degrees — and a big part

of the reason why it comes in degrees is because control comes in degrees. so, there's a sort of sliding scale of how much control we're exercising and degree of moral responsibility maybe kind of goes along with that. that's quite interesting — because in the dutch criminaljustice system — from what i understand, it's the only system where there is five degrees of moral responsibility when you commit a crime — it's not black and white — and the punishment is according to which level you are. that's really interesting, yeah, and i think the british criminal justice system does tend to see things in black and white, right? so, there's an insanity defence for murder, but it sets the bar pretty high — where that's kind of it. when you think about the age of criminal responsibility, right, i mean, you know, in some sense, when you've got a legal system, you need to impose some boundaries, but the idea that you suddenly flip from being the kind of person that can't be convicted of a crime to someone who can is... that's a very strange idea, right? the human brain and mind meets the scaffolding of our culture — of our family, our society, our community — to help build us up

in every way, right? we didn't invent our mother language, right? my mother language is english. i didn't invent english. i was surrounded by people who spoke english as scaffolding — and we — as a society — should really think about how can we enhance the scaffolding that goes into the construction of human minds and affords their ability to notionally choose later in life? how can we enhance that? 0ur society doesn't really ask that question. well, i think we do have to face up to the fact that certain people — due to no fault of their own — are more likely to commit crimes than others because badly distributing resources damages people. they're not necessarily lovable because they're damaged, but they have a right to better opportunities, and we have an obligation to ensure that the next generation isn't damaged in the way they have been. so, thinking about free will is much more than academic navel gazing.

there are real—world implications that force us to reflect not only on ourselves but the societies we wish to build. 0ur consciousness, determined or not, does have a direct impact on the universe where the choices we make will play out for all time. hello there. we saw a big cooldown in the weather over the easter period. sunday, the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures up to 25 degrees celsius. well, that's more than hot enough to melt some of those chocolate easter eggs. by monday, though, temperatures certainly dropped away significantly for many of us. top of the drops — manston in kent, with things 15 degrees celsius cooler on monday. now, temperatures will be picking up over the next few days, but that said, tuesday morning starting on a cold note for quite a few of us,

with some patches of frost developing where the skies stay clear for any length of time. and that said, across parts of eastern england and also the south, there's probably going to be a bit too much in the way of breeze and/or cloud to see much in the way of frost. high pressure still in charge of our weather on tuesday. it is sinking a little bit further south. the winds not as strong, so it will feel a little bit warmer for many of us. for western scotland, though, westerly winds will bring a bit more cloud to the highlands, the western isles and quite cloudy weather as well for the northern isles of scotland. and although we start off cloudy in lincolnshire, east anglia, south east england, the east midlands, that cloud will tend to burn back toward some of those north sea coasts into the afternoon. it's going to feel a bit warmer, the winds a bit lighter, temperatures a couple of degrees higher with highs up to 1a degrees. 0n into wednesday's forecast, high pressure is with us once again. if anything, it's

going to be warmer for just about everyone, with temperatures around three orfour degrees higher. highs of 17 degrees or so for london, for birmingham, for newcastle and for aberdeen, but maybe 19 the top temperature around the cardiff area. temperature contrast then begins to increase on thursday. they're getting a bit warmer across england and wales, but a bit colder across parts of scotla nd and north—east england. that colder air is arriving with a very weak cold front. so, it will bring a strip of cloud, maybe an odd light shower with it. most areas, though, will stay dry. but those temperatures certainly dropping away. highs only nine degrees celsius in aberdeen, so starting to feel quite chilly once again here, whereas for england and wales, it's a warmer day with temperatures quite widely pushing on into the low 20s. now, it's been a very dry month so far, but that looks set to change as we head towards friday and indeed the weekend, as this area of low pressure drifts up from iberia. it's going to bring increasingly cloudy skies and the prospect of some rain.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm mike embley. donald trump angrily defends his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has now killed 22,000 americans. reporter: what did your administration do in february with the time that your travel ban bought you? a lot. what? a lot, and in fact, we'll give you a list, what we did — in fact, part of it was up there. we did a lot. it wasn't clear — your video has a gap. look, look. president macron announces he will begin to lift the french lockdown on 11 may. the number of deaths in the uk passes 11,000 as the government says the lockdown measures are working. and in other news: signs of unity among the democrats, as bernie sanders endorses joe biden to fight donald trump