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Scientists Find Brain Cells Linked to Choice
An anonymous reader writes "Scotsman.com is reporting that Harvard Medical researchers may have found the neurons, or brain cells, that play a role in a persons ability to choose between different items. From the article: 'Scientists have known that cells in different parts of the brain react to attributes such as color, taste or quantity. Dr Camillo Padaoa-Schioppa and John Assad, an associate professor of neurobiology, found neurons involved in assigning values that help people to make choices.'"
Are these the same guys that linked a study of sounds to your ears? Simply Amazing.
Forgive me for saying so, but it seems like you had a preordained conclusion and you're just, well, twisting the article just so to support it. Actually, saying your twisting it is overstating the case, because you're really just stating it supports your case without demonstrating how.
If I'm wrong and you actually have some connection aside from what looks to be personal prejudice against people with disabilities, feel free to post it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
"Thanks to the notion of dysfunction, every zipperhead in this country can tap himself with a Freudian wand and go from failed frog to misunderstood prince."
- Dennis Miller
That's the thing. Being "average" has become almost a crime in Western society. But by having some sort of "disorder", being average becomes OK because "look at all you have had to overcome just to live a 'normal' life!" Also, you can get the sympathy from others - the "aaawwwwwe" factor. A LOT of folks confuse pity with "love".
We worship the outstanding soo much, that everyone tries to become outstanding in some way - even if it means eating bull anuses on TV to become famous. I mean, why the fuck is Paris Hilton, Kato Katlin, etc... famous? These people are nothings (maybe nothing with money). At least your Joe Average-Sixpack who raise a decent family has contributed more to society than all of those people combined.
Unfortunately, we can never measure anything exactly, and chaos makes it impossible to predict a given result further into the future, so within that vague uncertainty, choice would remain.
Likewise, gravity doesn't force us to fall, it just feels that way.
Seriously dude, there is a reason the above mentioned disorders are classified as as such -because something is wrong (ie out of order; or if you prefer disordered) with the workings of the brain. For you to just jump up and say, "you know, I think these people really do have a choice." Is not just enlightened (nor does it follow from the article in any coherent way) but it is also insensitive and maybe even mean -it serves only to shift responsibility to people who should rightly be considered victims.
Every day of my life I want to fall back on these things as an excuse of why not to try to hard, to just take it easy. But I know if I do that, things always just get worse. Imagine having a headache EVERY day of your life and wanting to live one adrenaline rush to another to ease the pain. It destroys your life...
When I treat compulsions as choices, I become more able to fight them. The article just made me feel like had a choice, even if one of the choices was not as easy... I guess people could take it however they want, though.
Funnypics
It seems to me that, for the average person, this would play a small part in actually making choices...most incorrect choices tend to be made due to incomplete information, selfishness (including refusing to hear others opinions or accept advice), or denial of what is known or true.
Sure, these neurons may be involved in the process of making judgements, but if the person does not understand or refuses to accept the choice, he is setting himself up for failure before the brain even gets to this step.
I agree with some of the other posters that this discovery may be misused as an excuse for poor choices and behaviors that the individual has an inkling may be incorrect. But, I hope we come to our senses and start taking personal responsibility for our lives, instead of making biological and societal excuses for everything that "goes wrong".
He doesn't HAVE TO wash his hands 5 times, but he thinks he does.
I'm not sure that you can quantify the difference between 'have to' and 'thinks he has to'.
That would be like saying there is a difference between thinking something is true and it actually being true. Truth exists only as a relative matter.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Reading some of the /. comments on this story, I have to say that it's always interesting to see religious men trying too hard to associate Man with the divine as though we stand above and seperate from the natural world, but equally it's interesting to watch atheists try to find mankind wholly within nature as well. For as much as we want to call Man an animal (subject to an animal's exigencies and vicissitudes) we must admit that he is a curious sort of animal able to escape those forms of nature and create new configurations of need and choice.
I don't really have a point. I just find the whole matter of human will and spirit interesting.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
The fallancy here is that the word "choice" hasn't been defined sufficiently. Your post gives me the impression that you are assuming that to make a "choice" cannot be a physical phenomena. This will force those who believe in reductionism to come to a, possibly incorrect, conclusion that none of our actions are a matter of "choice".
I think would be possible to find a good definition of "choice" which does not assuming it must be a non-physical phenomena, a definition that would be much more useful.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The mere existence of the paradox described by the Halting Problem shows clearly that there will always exist possible future events whose actual outcome cannot be predicted beforehand, regardless of how much is known about the system in which these events occur.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You might have two monkeys with the exact same brain configuration (considering how mind-bogglingly complex a mind is, this will probably never occur) and exact same kidneys (see parentheses but s/mind/kidney/g), etc, Replacing: (considering how kidney-bogglingly complex a kidney is, this will probably never occur)
>1. Why do you consciously try to deliberate over any choices? If you are not free, that effort you're putting >forth - to the extent, you know, that you have decided to try to deliberate, is at best an epiphenomenal >waste. So why not save the effort? On the one hand, that epiphenomenal sense of your own agency can't really >do anything in the physical world, right? On the other, for the epiphenomenal to exist it must be draining >energy from the actually useful parts of the brain, which might be able to run their deterministic algorithm >better if you weren't shunting that energy into the appearance of phenomenal consciousness, with its illusion >of free agency and all that. So why not just give it up? Who says that the 'epiphenomenal sense of your own agency' is not a direct consequence of the physical workings of the brain? Perhaps an inevitable or necessary one? If this is the case, the act of deliberating over a decision is really just what it feels like when the brain is physically 'making a decision'. Maybe the brain is just like a very complex logic gate - it takes in a situation and outputs a desired action. If this is the case, you could argue that it is making a decision because it discriminates between situations and 'decides' which output to produce. The same input always produces the same output, but it could still be described as a 'decision'. In response to the 'why not give it up' questions, they are a little meaningless if we don't have free will because we don't really have a choice about whether to give it up or not... Personally, I am happy with the idea of no real 'free will' (although compatibilism provides a partial answer) and intend to stick with it until somebody can convice me otherwise.
Do monkeys with brain pattern X always choose apple juice? But monkeys with brain pattern Y always choose grape juice? And monkeys with brain pattern Z always choose orange juice?
Eh, not quite. Perhaps in a theoretical situation where the entire environment is identical, then yes, I (personally) would think that the same choice would be made. But consider what the brain computes upon - results of past 'choices' surely must be a huge key to future decisions.
I'd think indirectly-linked past experiences have a strong bearing on future decisions if outcomes are more random (which may explain picking ponies over blackjack). If somebody grew up around horses, they may feel more comfortable in computing odds or recognising key traits that help them to pick a likely winner (and tweak future decisions based on the results).
I'm far from an expert, but cognitive science appeals to me because a great deal of it makes perfect sense, especially in this context.
--
onedotzero
thedigitalfeed.co.uk
Thus if we reduce all of our actions and decisions to physical phenomena, we're probably going to find that none of our actions are a matter of "choice."
I can't believe modern people have a difficulty grasping this.
How the heck our ability to make "choice" is prevented by it being dictated by the state of our own brain. Apparently most people contribute "choice" to our "ghost/soul" and thus the moment they find that (shocking) we're thinking with our brain, they automatically assume that our brain dictates to our soul what choices to make (therefore "we can't make anything on our own, we can't change, we're not responsible" and other nonsense).
Shocking news people - you ARE that brain. And other shocking news, you see with your eyes, you hear with your ears and smell with your nose. You are what your body is, and your body can make its own free choices which are predisposed by the state it's in.
If we couldn't base our choices on our body/brain state, then we'd simply have no information or mechanism to make any choices whatsoever.
Currently, some scientists do think that some events are non-deterministic: high energy, double-pendulum motion and photon transitions are two good examples.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
For neurobiologist the debate is long over. IF they are scientific worth their salt they won't presuppose the existence of a "supplemental entity" like soul to explain our "selves", that is unless somebody bring the data which can't be explained without this so called "soul".
This is like saying the debate about determinism was over when they discovered Newton's laws, and figured out that the entire universe was deterministic. Oh wait, that's right, that was just an assumption and they had a few things to learn about quantum mechanics.
The debate may be over within the models used by neurobiologists, but that does not mean very much for assessing whether or not their is a soul. What you have missed, is that it is not debated much by neurobiologists because an intrinsic ASSUMPTION of neurobiology is that our behavior is entirely determined by our neurobiology.
Now since we're being scientific, lets discuss the issue of falsifiability. You have proposed that this assumption is valid, and that our behavior is entirely determined by our neurobiology. You should be prepared to present an experimental result which you would consider falsification of this. You said "data that can't be explained within the current frame", but I think that's probably broader than what you mean. There are lots of behaviors at the macroscopic level of human existence we don't have concrete explanations for, but you would probably consider them all "eventually explainable" by virtue of the assumption used.
So where then is your falsifiability? What is the SPECIFIC experimental result that you would take as evidence that there exists behavior determined by a soul?
If no such potential experimental result exists, then you have no falsifiability. And if you have no falsifiability, then you are not talking about science, you are talking about your faith.
The question is not whether we have free will, the question is does free will matter.
Mere uncertainty or chaos doesn't imply choice. Nobody knows exactly how many stars are in the Milky Way (uncertainty) or whether the stock market will be up or down tomorrow, but that doesn't mean we have any choice in those matters.
In any matter of choice, what is it that is doing the choosing? Choices may well be "mere" physical phenomena, but can we identify with that physical state, or not?
When asked if I believe in free will, my response is, "Free from what?"
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
You seem to assume we only have two options: a cartesian style dualism of body and soul, and this very strong reductionism where we are only chemical reactions. There is a lot of middle ground. For example, chess is a game played with only a collection of atoms, but arguably physics and chemistry can't describe all the subtleties of chess. Similarly, while our brain may be a collection of chemical reactions, that doesn't mean that we will ever be able to talk very effectively about our behavior using the language of chemical reactions, and that in some ontological sense chemical reactions may not be enough to define consciousness. In other words, the chemical reactions certainly make our consciousness possible, but that doesn't mean they completely define our consciousness. If they did, then I wouldn't think we should be able to have any hope of creating artificial intillegence that we could describe as conscious, since silicon transistors are chemically different from neurons in so many ways that are very important as far as chemists and physicists are concerned. I think there could be room there for scientific concepts that are similar to or are connected with the traditional ideas of a "soul" and "free will." Of course, traditionally the soul and especially free will are metaphysical concepts, so its difficult to imagine how science could ever address the concepts, one way or the other, directly.