A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked (theatlantic.com) 166
For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake. From a report: The death of free will began with thousands of finger taps. In 1964, two German scientists monitored the electrical activity of a dozen people's brains. Each day for several months, volunteers came into the scientists' lab at the University of Freiburg to get wires fixed to their scalp from a showerhead-like contraption overhead. The participants sat in a chair, tucked neatly in a metal tollbooth, with only one task: to flex a finger on their right hand at whatever irregular intervals pleased them, over and over, up to 500 times a visit. The purpose of this experiment was to search for signals in the participants' brains that preceded each finger tap. At the time, researchers knew how to measure brain activity that occurred in response to events out in the world -- when a person hears a song, for instance, or looks at a photograph -- but no one had figured out how to isolate the signs of someone's brain actually initiating an action
The experiment's results came in squiggly, dotted lines, a representation of changing brain waves. In the milliseconds leading up to the finger taps, the lines showed an almost undetectably faint uptick: a wave that rose for about a second, like a drumroll of firing neurons, then ended in an abrupt crash. This flurry of neuronal activity, which the scientists called the Bereitschaftspotential, or readiness potential, was like a gift of infinitesimal time travel. For the first time, they could see the brain readying itself to create a voluntary movement. This momentous discovery was the beginning of a lot of trouble in neuroscience. Twenty years later, the American physiologist Benjamin Libet used the Bereitschaftspotential to make the case not only that the brain shows signs of a decision before a person acts, but that, incredibly, the brain's wheels start turning before the person even consciously intends to do something. Suddenly, people's choices -- even a basic finger tap -- appeared to be determined by something outside of their own perceived volition.
The experiment's results came in squiggly, dotted lines, a representation of changing brain waves. In the milliseconds leading up to the finger taps, the lines showed an almost undetectably faint uptick: a wave that rose for about a second, like a drumroll of firing neurons, then ended in an abrupt crash. This flurry of neuronal activity, which the scientists called the Bereitschaftspotential, or readiness potential, was like a gift of infinitesimal time travel. For the first time, they could see the brain readying itself to create a voluntary movement. This momentous discovery was the beginning of a lot of trouble in neuroscience. Twenty years later, the American physiologist Benjamin Libet used the Bereitschaftspotential to make the case not only that the brain shows signs of a decision before a person acts, but that, incredibly, the brain's wheels start turning before the person even consciously intends to do something. Suddenly, people's choices -- even a basic finger tap -- appeared to be determined by something outside of their own perceived volition.
Where that summary was leading (Score:5, Informative)
In case you want to know what the summary was trying to get at without reading the whole article, this paragraph probably best lays it out:
This would not imply, as Libet had thought, that peopleâ(TM)s brains âoedecideâ to move their fingers before they know it. Hardly. Rather, it would mean that the noisy activity in peopleâ(TM)s brains sometimes happens to tip the scale if thereâ(TM)s nothing else to base a choice on, saving us from endless indecision when faced with an arbitrary task. The Bereitschaftspotential would be the rising part of the brain fluctuations that tend to coincide with the decisions. This is a highly specific situation, not a general case for all, or even many, choices.
However, if you have time it's worth at least skimming the whole article as it's pretty interesting.
Re:Where that summary was leading (Score:5, Interesting)
On the subject at hand, I don't see how there's any argument necessary to defeat the concept of "free will", other than that it would require a causeless cause to be both free and willful, which is evidently logically impossible.
If you need that unpacked a bit: to be 'free' the action/choice must not be predetermined by physical processes, or it is obviously constrained to them, i.e. it has to be causeless. We have some apparently causeless things, like radioactive decay of isotopes, so that's not to be immediately dismissed. However, for that causeless event to be also 'willful', it must be authored by an agent because if nobody authored it, it's not will, it's just noise. So how does a so-called free agent author (cause) something causeless?
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Re: Where that summary was leading (Score:2)
Or maybe we decide to tap our finger before we do so and this send the signal tap at the same time the decision is pushed to the front of our brain.
Remember the brain runs on massively paralleled manner.
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"THIS is the part where the person finally 'made' the decision!"
dumb
"THIS is signal before the signal! The 'free will' part comes after the signal-not-that-signal-the-other-signal!"
dumb
I'm sure, or at least hopeful, that the analysis used more actual details than these weird peggings they apparently used as gospel, and my disparage isn't being entirely fair.
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it's all been pre-rolled by the universe before you even existed.
Yep. Lots of fndamental particles were created during the big bang, everything since then is just laws of physics. Free will is an illusion.
Re:Where that summary was leading (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is more to consider.
There are many parts to the brain. How were they monitored? What about the role of the nervous system in all of its points? What autonomous processes were measured and correlated?
I'm not sure that the brain is 100% of what must be monitored, although some may wonder about where to put sensors for the soul should that actually exist.
I don't believe you can derive many conclusions from the data at all. My brain is making hundreds of decisions per second as I type this into a computer
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In a deterministic universe with no soul or spirit, the concept of free will still has merit. It's a function that, even arising from a deterministic world, makes actions less predictable, which is a useful survival trait. Sure, if you knew everything about a situation, including all the complete make up of the brain down to an atomic level, you could predict what actions that brain would take.
In addition, "free will" as a concept explains certain real feelings we have. We know when our actions are limited
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Not necessarily. It can be a quantum particle field state, aligning with the bio-electric state of the brain. So the quantum particle field that is your concious state, sustained in the bio-electric interactive state of the brain, influencing decisions and in turns those decisions also influenced by the biological state of the brain.
That quantum field energy pattern, need not necessarily be confined to your own head but could well, tap into every genetically similar beings state and well, how much genetic a
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On the other hand, the idea of free will as a useful model is something I have no issue with. Even if it's not technically free will, we can treat it as such for a great many purposes, including predicting likely future behavior based on what the model would call past choices, and so on. On the other hand keeping in mind that it's likely a flawed but useful model is probably wise.
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So how does a so-called free agent author (cause) something causeless?
When you wrote out this, beautiful question, did you have free will in doing so? Because it brings into question "causlessness", which is either a thing, or not a thing. If causlessness is a thing, nothing has an ultimate meaning. If causlessness is not a thing, then the Universe has an ultimate meaning.
In my way of thinking, mankind creates meaning, but Nature doesn't.
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Q: What does he do next?
A: Whatever he wants.
Re:Where that summary was leading (Score:5, Interesting)
which is evidently logically impossible
Herein lies an even subtler difficulty. All types of logic are inherently deterministic. Even those that deal with contradictions and non-deterministic problems still deal with them in a probabilistic manner, which itself is rigidly deterministic. This means that in every single logical argument, about anything, there's a hidden premise affirming determinism before anything else will be said, and therefore stating that all that will be said, will be said deterministically.
Now, this premise being hidden makes it so that, if one ignores it's there, when one then analyses a logical argument one "notices" determinism as a (pseudo-)corollary of the conclusion. And if one takes the set of those deterministic pseudo-corollaries from logical arguments premised on natural laws and phenomena, and generalizes from them by inferring reality itself is deterministic, what one's actually doing is incurring in circular reasoning. One cannot therefore logically conclude, from the fact logic argumentation is necessarily deterministic, that reality itself is deterministic. At most what we can say is that logic is unable to work with probabilistic-reduction-resistant non-deterministic elements.
Whether any such radically-non-deterministic element actually exists in nature is an open question, but if one does exist -- and "free will" would be a good candidate --, it's entirely outside of the realm of logical analysis, as trying to use logic to reason about it would always result in invalid conclusions.
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Perhaps what we have is Schrodingers' Will and observing it renders it not free (as in beer).
Sort of like that stuff Isaac Asimov wrote that short story about, you know, the stuff that dissolved exactly 2.4857367 seconds before water was added.
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except "cause" and "causeless" are just human concepts and if nature "violates" them, that's really the concept's problem. The point: science has already proved many previous inviolatable concept to be, to the contrary, not only violated, but, of course, wrong.
Your definition of free will is wrong. (Score:2)
to be 'free' the action/choice must not be predetermined by physical processes, or it is obviously constrained to them, i.e. it has to be causeless.
Wrong in several ways actually... due to its premises.
One... It is beholden to a fallacy of hard determinism both as a concept (which you yourself point out as false by mentioning radioactive decay) and as a false dichotomy of treating biological beings beholden to either hard determinism or nothing at all.
I.e. It's treating incredibly complex [cnet.com] and ever-changing biological computers as if they are mere algorithms written down on paper. Put choices in appropriate brackets - get a result.
And that's without tak
An even better explanation: Dither (Score:5, Interesting)
the article is filled with so many bad and misleading analogies and then flubs explaining the key one.
What I glean from it is this,
1. You have any device that fires when a voltage crosses a certain threshold, e.g. an op amp, or a schmit trigger gate.
2. You add in a slowly varying background voltage.
3. What happens is the moment of firing is advanced/retarded when the background voltage swings high/low.
Now consider making your decision to fire. If that occurs when some input signal (your neural net values) reaches a threshold this will tend to happen more often when the background added on is highest. And when the background is highest then immediately preceding this moment the background was rising.
ergo, if you look a moment before any decision, it will more often than not have a rising background signal.
Another way of saying this is you tend to make spontaneous decisions when the background fluctuations are high.
4. BUT the reason the background is high was not in anticipation of your decision. It's the reverse, you just happen to finalize decisions when the background is high. But the background being high isn't influencing your decision itself.
thus you will often see a rising voltage ahead of a decision.
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It's the reverse, you just happen to finalize decisions when the background is high. But the background being high isn't influencing your decision itself.
That makes a lot of sense. Make a decision to get it out of the way so you can shift focus to what else is going on.
And thanks for the comment, the summary was not helpful at all.
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I feel like the quality of summaries has been declining recently. They're either so badly written that you can't really tell what the article is about or in the case of this one the summary fails to explain or even *mention* the item referred to in the title.
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Thanks, that's a helpful summary. But what does this have to do with free will? Either way you're talking about electrical signals in a brain that lead to an action. Whether one particular rising voltage is a cause or effect is very interesting for neuroscientists, but I don't see how it changes any conclusions about free will. If anything that makes the case against free will even stronger, because it means a random background fluctuation directly caused your action. Did I miss something, or was that
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The connection to free will is that if voltages sending events to actuators (finger) occur prior to actions representing a decision then one can say that there are parts of your decision process that are beyond cognition. Thus all of the attributes of the decision are not under your conscious control. Now how do we leap from that to free will? well it's like this: If I could monitor your brain waves and predict the outcome of your decision Before you knew what your decision was then we can say that the
The obvious flaw (Score:2)
Reading the description of the experiment, the flaw was painfully obvious to me: They were only looking at the activity leading up to the finger movement.
At least comparing to data where the subjects did nothing is far better than the earlier experiments.
But, what would the activity look like when the subjects decide not to move their fingers?
Since the impending decision is about whether to tap one's finger, I suppose other parts of the brain could be preparing for a "yes". Maybe that's not efficient use of
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So clearly, (Score:2)
If my thoughts and actions are ordained outside my personal control by the grand plan puppet master, he/she/it has a delightful sense of humor.
I suppose it's a relief to know I couldn't have avoided behaving that poorly on so many occasions. ;^)
The Fighting Gamer In Me Is Sad (Score:3)
This must be why when I decide to perform action X, and then the opponent changes something milliseconds before to make me not want to perform action X,... I still usually perform action X, while mentally telling myself "I don't want to do this, why am I not stopping".
Well really, I bet you can train yourself to not follow through, but naturally you just want to do it.
I bet this has some bearing on car accidents, too.
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Isn't that simply called reaction time? If you need to emergency brake the car, you are also painfully aware of the time it takes from seeing the emergency until the foot is actually down.
The experience of knowing yet not being able to stop it might just be an effect of the different brain parts running asynchronously - as far as I have read, there are mechanisms to delay some signals in order to achieve experiential synchronicity, but I suppose they might not always be without artifacts.
Harris (Score:3)
I think Harris cuts to the core of the matter in his essay "Free Will", but in short, what is the proposed physical mechanism through which free will is created? I can't answer that, and until someone can I can't see an argument for free will that makes any sense.
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Many people mistake their religious and quasi-religious convictions for "Science".
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How so? His core argument is that the brain is essentially a biological machine, with no magic. If you dispute this, please explain where free will comes from.
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There is no known process that would make the statement "the brain is essentially a biological machine", therefore I believe the burden of proof is now upon you to show some process heretofore unknown to explain it free will. If a thing is deterministic, it's not free will. What process in the brain is provably non-deterministic?
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I see this line of arguments as shifting the burden of proof via re-framing of the argument. "the brain is essentially a biological machine" is Sam's premise, not mine.
So what else would it be? Saying that a physical thing obeys the known physical laws doesn't seem like it's worthy of disagreement but by all means, knock yourself out. I welcome any alternate explanation you have in mind.
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To me, free will means that I am free to consider both Y and !Y and based on my internal reasoning decide to go with Y or !Y. My understanding of Harris' point is that either Y or !Y choice is predetermined for me based on priors.
What is your understanding?
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I don't buy into all Harris says either, but the point that I cited from the essay is simply that the brain is a physical thing that obeys physical laws. If someone wishes to dispute this, they have made an extraordinary claim, much like claiming a bicycle doesn't obey physical laws for some reason. If physical laws are in charge of what we decide to do, that doesn't fit any definition of free will I know of.
For your example, no, you think you considered Y and !Y and then did whatever the physical processes
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No, no it is not. You need to demonstrate that you do indeed have agency over your actions before you can state that you do.
You're skipping the actual problem that we're talking about here. Prove that you have agency over your actions.
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No, no it is not. You need to demonstrate that you do indeed have agency over your actions before you can state that you do.
I choose not to address your point.
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Please explain where consciousness comes from. There is no known mechanism in Physics for it. It is pretty solidly proven factual "magic". If you cannot deal with that, then the problem is on your side. And no, Physics does not allow for "emergent properties" or any such mystical nonsense either.
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There is also no physical mechanism for consciousness. You are making the classical mistake of requiring proof for the obvious instead of the other way round.
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The physical processes in place in the brain can explain consciousness even if we don't UNDERSTAND it, the same cannot be said for free will. I feel like I have free will, sure, but I know that the things I think and do are governed by physical law, as far as anyone can prove, and physical law doesn't explain how I would have free will.
I think free will is an often useful model, but ultimately unless you can come up with an explanation of how the brain works that doesn't amount to delicate and complex clock
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No. There is no consciousness in Physics. The effect itself is not possible with known Physics.
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I'm pretty sure that's an extraordinary claim. Why could it not explain consciousness? I see no issue with consciousness being compatible with deterministic processes.
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Nope. Something not explained by a scientific model is not explained by it. That is in no way an extraordinary claim. The current Physical standard model does not contain consciousness. It is not an element of the model because nobody knows what it is or how to measure or create it.
You are probably and incorrectly assume that currently known Physics explains everything (it does not and does not claim to do so, there is still no GUT and what is known is inconsistent, i.e. known to be fundamentally wrong in s
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That's not the point, the point is that there is nothing in the known physical laws that precludes them from being applied to produce consciousness. The idea of free will is different in that free will is at odds with both the concepts of random chance and determinism.
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That's not the point, the point is that there is nothing in the known physical laws that precludes them from being applied to produce consciousness.
Of course there is. Consciousness is not a physical thing. I defy you to:
1: Rigorously define consciousness.
2: Demonstrate how it physically works.
3: Define an objective test to determine if something is conscious.
4: Prove to someone else that you, yourself, are conscious (or not).
It is logically impossible to do any of those things. The best you can do is prove to yourself that you are conscious, by the fact that there's a "you".
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Nobody can do any of these. The best we have is assumptions about consciousness. Quantum theory tells us that since information flows into it and out of it, energy or matter must be flowing into it or out of it, as otherwise not information transfer is possible. Yet matter or energy flowing into or out of something must be stored there in between by traditional conservation laws. Stored matter and energy can be detected. Yet, despite extremely sensitive instruments having been used, noting was ever detected
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That's not the point, the point is that there is nothing in the known physical laws that precludes them from being applied to produce consciousness.
Actually, that is a completely unscientific argument. Either something is explicitly explained by Physics or it is not part of the model. Consciousness is not part of the model and if you keep claiming that it is you are just demonstrating your incompetence.
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Because there's no physical mechanism or phenomena that creates an observer.
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Because there's no physical mechanism or phenomena that creates an observer.
Indeed. Excellent point. Unobserved Physics does not collapse the wave-function. There is no purely Physics-based construct that can do it. That requires observation by a proper observer and nobody has the faintest clue how that works. Actual Physicists are well aware of that little problem. They are content to wait and see and doing more research. It is just the quasi-religious hacks that have to push their non-scientific fantasies as "truth".
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I haven't seen that essay, but I did see Harris's TED Talk, which from my perspective was pure bunk.
In the video I saw, he didn't talk about physical mechanisms at all. I don't recall him even mentioning that subject in passing. Instead, he talked about this experiment (that TFA is all about), which to me didn't seem relevant to the question, even if the experiment was valid and taken entirely at face value. I mean, why should it even matter whether our decisions are made "consciously" or not, anyhow? H
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I haven't seen that essay ...
I don't buy into all Harris says either, but the point that I cited from the essay is simply that the brain is a physical thing that obeys physical laws. If someone wishes to dispute this, they have made an extraordinary claim, much like claiming a bicycle doesn't obey physical laws for some reason. If physical laws are in charge of what we decide to do, that doesn't fit any definition of free will I know of.
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I guess that you don't know my definition of free will, and I don't understand yours.
If "free will" means to you that the brain has to somehow operate outside the laws of physics, then, okay, I guess there is no "free will" to you. I don't know why anybody would want the brain to be magical, though. I don't know why anybody would even look for that.
To me, "free will" means that we can make decisions of our own volition and act on them. And of course, we're surrounded by evidence that we do this all the t
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To me, "free will" means that we can make decisions of our own volition and act on them.
What is going on in your brain when you do that? If it's not some process that obeys the physical laws, I'd like to know what that is. If it is some process that is governed by the physical laws, do you have the ability to alter physical law at your whim? I myself do not, as far as I know. If that's also true of you, how can the outcome of a process you cannot control be called free will?
No (Score:5, Interesting)
This new experiment does
not prove free will exists - it just refutes the old experimental data. Here's an excerpt from the article which casts doubt on these new findings:
Why don't we go deeper than that? Do we control how the universe was created, which physical laws govern it, the Sun, the solar system, the chemistry of this planet, evolution, our genes, our environment, our parents, etc. etc. etc. For free will to exist there must be something nondeterministic existing in our brains, and not only existing but actively influencing the decisions we make.
So, far only quantum mechanics/effects could be the sole solution to the free will problem but they haven't been observed or proven to be the cause of the processes happening in our brains.
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So, far only quantum mechanics/effects could be the sole solution to the free will problem but they haven't been observed or proven to be the cause of the processes happening in our brains.
Wouldn't that still be outside the mystical control of 'free will' and just change the discussion from impossibly complex workings of deterministic clockwork into something salted with random chance?
I never understood the argument (Score:3)
Even if you accepted the conventional explanation of the experiment, and you allowed that we make decisions through some unconscious process before we are consciously aware of it, I never understood how that had any meaningful application to the question of free will. I thought it was understood by all that we process information and make decisions through both conscious and unconscious processes all the time.
Some people made it sound like your unconscious mind is some kind of vile demon that possesses you and secretly controls the "real", conscious you like a puppet on a string, and therefore prevents the "real" you from having free will. Well, that's just ludicrous. Your conscious and unconscious thought processes are all part of the same mind. How you make the decision shouldn't matter, only that you were able to make it.
Actually more like several minds (Score:2)
I think your brain is more like several minds all working away concurrently. Each with a conscious and subconscious part. Each one of them thinks it is the whole mind. Self talk is then how they actually communicate and coordinate at high level.
This became very obvious for split brain people. The left and right halves could only communicate through actual talk.
It has always surprised me that schizophrenia actually makes people hear the other voices. Like real sounds. They play music to stop it. Tho
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our conscious and unconscious thought processes are all part of the same mind. How you make the decision shouldn't matter, only that you were able to make it.
Ah, but that does matter, in fact, it's the whole debate. These conscious/unconscious factors may all be a part of "you" to a greater or lesser extent, but free will is commonly held to be something different than the sum of the decision making process. Where is that boundary between free will and not? Surely the "how" affects that.
Fucking Morons (Score:2)
Of course the brain does something before it makes the body do something.
Of course the brain has specific activity leading up to active thought.
Unless you posit that consciousness lies outside the brain, you're a fucking moron for thinking either of those two facts are anything but completely expected.
Good experiment, silly interpretations (Score:2)
Science has two parts - experiment and technique, then analysis and insight. This article is a good example of the limitations of the first, and the fallacies of the second.
The original study was in 1964, using the basic techniques of electroencephalography. The concept behind the study was wonderful, but the technology to observe was limited. Consider what those experimenters had to work with: all surface electrodes; all analog and discretes, some of the equipment possibly still using tubes; possibly
We must believe in free will (Score:2)
We have no choice but to believe in free will.
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psychology is a pseudo-science and not science
I knew it was Thetans all along!
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Right because nobody could actually believe conscious motivation and neuroscience. The only options are one of two systems designed to brainwash people. Either believe in psychology or believe in Scientology! Actual science is off the menu.
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I was trying to bring a little humor to the conversation, sorry.
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You don't have to apologize. You were compelled to do it.
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Re:Damning nail in the coffin (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. He dragged a thoroughly misguided field a long way in the right direction. Sure, he did not arrive there, but his contribution is still of extreme value.
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Freud thought there should be a science that studied the mind. That was a great idea. The problem is Freud himself was not a scientist and put psychology on the wrong track.
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No, he was a quack.
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Re:Damning nail in the coffin (Score:5, Funny)
Consider the parable Jesus told of The Good Samaritan.
A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. He was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes. Beat him. Left him half dead.
A priest going down the same road saw him and passed by on the other side of the road.
Similarly, a Levite saw him and passed by on the other side of the road.
Then two psychologists traveling on that road came upon the man.
The first psychologist said: This is terrible!
The second psychologist said: Yes, awful. Whoever did this needs our help!
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the concept of a subconscious which in turn is core to essentially all psychology.
Or at least all the psychology you know about from pop culture. In pop culture, "unconscious" and "subconscious" are used interchangeably, but what you are calling "subconscious" is in fact what a Freudian psychologists would call the "unconscious".
Subconscious -- happening without subject awareness;
Unconscious -- inaccessible to subject awareness.
All unconscious processes are by definition subconscious, but not the other way around. The existence of subconscious processes is completely uncontroversial.
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"Everybody experiences them every day -- how did I get in this room? Where did I leave my keys?"
The placement of your keys and yourself were conscious actions, you've merely forgotten them. No psychology needed.
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Exactly.
"Science is leading us back into a strange but wonderful spiritual dimension that was dismissed out of arrogance and as a result of failed imagination and bad scientific conclusions made long ago."
No... it's not some "spiritual dimension"... you gave a complete 180 description yourself just two sentences earlier:
"Biological consciousness and will or intent is an emergent quantum phenomena as described by physics and operating below a synaptic level."
No amount of essential oil blends smelled, applied
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Right, there's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. Somebody said that.
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You dodged the logical conclusion with an ad hoc "however."
If our decision making is deterministic then you're correct, we could in principle predict it. No free will. That *includes* your hypothetical decision to reverse your decision.
Our actual decision making is certainly highly sensitive to initial conditions, so is probably not predictable in detail. But that doesn't mean we have free will, any more than an asteroid's orbit has free will. It's just unpredictable on long enough time scales.
There's a ch
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Their definition of "free will" is that future actions (or events) are not necessarily a function of the past. They also point out that if humans have free will, so must elementary particles. The particles are, if placed in the right situation, "free" to act randomly.
I don't think that's exactly what most people have in mind when they talk about free will.
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Lack of free will means that given situation X you will always make decision Y, the only reason for !Y is that something about X changed. I disagree with this fatalistic view, I think that given situation X I have considered agency between Y and !Y.
Think of it this way. At any given time I have a choice to not shit my pants. However, if
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This does not mean that we have no free will.
Probably would be good for you to define what you mean by free will. If you mean something that's not explainable by a combination of deterministic physical law and maybe some quantum randomness, then you should also explain how that thing would happen. On the other hand, if all your choices ARE the result of deterministic physical law and maybe some quantum randomness then that's not what *I* would call free will.
I do agree that we enjoy the illusion of free will, and that something that approximates that
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If that's your definition of free will, then you're correct. Some randomness, or chaos, is more than enough to allow for it.
The conventional definition is stronger. It's not enough that your decisions be unpredictable, they are *free*. That is, there is an element that is not determined by mechanics, quantum or otherwise. An element that is not deterministic, nor random. If that sounds suspiciously like spirit or a soul, that's be
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You could always decide not to do it, and this is essentially what is free will.
I always found it weird that these "you could aways" arguments seem to ignore how it's applied to things you didn't actually do. It kind of sounds to me like one of them "I could always quit smoking" speeches.
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The electron / photon, etc goes through both slits, unless, it is possible for a human to know which slit it goes through, which forces it to go through only one slit.
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I have no issue with the concept of free will as a useful model in many cases, but I think it's important to keep in mind what it is and what it is not. I really think a lot of these arguments are due to poorly defined terms, and this feels like that. Free will in the classical sense means a person is making up their mind in some metaphysical sense, whereas if we look at it in the lens of known science there is nothing to explain any such thing.
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The problem with "free will" is that when you say it, everyone hearing you thinks they know what you mean, and they're all wrong.
I don't know if it's really possible to define "free will", but I do know that there's no generally agreed upon definition. It's probably not possible, because it's defined in terms of non-externally observable reactions. Unless, that is, you want to claim that whatever someone does they do if their own free will, whether or not, e.g., they have OCD or hysterical paralysis. But