Brain Study Calls Free Will Into Question

siddster notes an account up at Wired of research indicating that brain scanners can see your decisions before you make them. "In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them... Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will... The experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions... Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

Comments

Horrible summery

[wizardforce]

" Brain Study Calls Free Will Into Question"
what utter nonsense. The ability to predict an action by looking at what your brain is doing has nothing to do with whether or not free will exists. From TFA:

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration.

sounds to me that the decision making is started before people think it is, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Horrible summery

[Lemmy Caution]

What the problem is partially that philosophy in the US withdrew from historical- or cultural-scaled problems, and started turning itself into the boundary between mathematics and cognitive science. The framing of the question of "free will" thus become wrapped up in the question of decision-making. Too many trivial examples ("whether I decide to wash the dishes", "freedom to decided whether to drop this glass," etc) displaced actual existential decisions (do I fight against an occupying army and risk death, or do I keep a low profile, collaborate possibly, and survive? Do I pursue a career over family, over vice-versa) which are the places where "will" and "choice" really matter.

Re:Study doesn't define free will

[Oligonicella]

Pre-determination by self is free will.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[BungaDunga]

Conscious parts. Your muscles can't pull a trigger at the right moment without having input from your eyes. It may bypass conscious "areas" of the brain entirely, but something has to happen in the brain for you to do anything (even breathe).

Re:Predict the prediction.

[ceoyoyo]

Your point is correct, but there are some muscle actions that don't require the brain's intervention. The heart beats on its own for example. There are also some local loop reflexes that are managed by the spinal cord. By the time your brain finds out about it your leg has already kicked the doctor in the crotch.

A lot of other reflexes, including breathing, are managed by the brain stem. Technically it's usually classified as part of the brain. A lot of very well learned muscle coordination tasks are believed to be managed by the cerebellum. You don't need to think about walking, your conscious brain can just say "walk" and the cerebellum takes care of the details.

The other problem with the parent's (grandparent's?) observation is that direct brain stimulation is an unexpected stimulus. When you play tennis you see the racket swing, see it hit the ball, then see the ball come toward you. If someone just whacks a ball at you and you don't start watching until its on its way then you probably WON'T be able to hit it.

Re:How does this eliminate Free Will?

[Anguirel]

Actually, you do. Free Will must be a conscious act for it to matter in all the senses that philosophy cares about -- if agency is to exist, it must exist in a conscious form. If some subconscious process is "making" your decisions prior to your "self" (where "self" is your conscious and self-conscious awareness), you don't really have Free Will, since conscious deliberation on possible actions has no effect on the resulting action you take.

If you haven't, I suggest looking into some Philosophy of Self and Philosophy of Mind books and essays, since I certainly don't have the time right now to get into it as deeply as a subject like this deserves.

Original research abstract

[FleaPlus]

For the curious, here's the research abstract for the original article the Wired news bit is based on (unfortunately the article itself is behind a pay/subscription-wall):

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2112.html

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

Chun Siong Soon1,2, Marcel Brass1,3, Hans-Jochen Heinze4 & John-Dylan Haynes

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

Re:"Free will" is not part of the Christian faith.

[susano_otter]

Actually, the Christian faith, taken as a whole is much more complicated than that. It consistently asserts opposite and contradictory truths, often in its core doctrines: A god of infinite justice and infinite mercy. Total predetermination and total free will. Absolute obedience to the Law, and absolute freedom from the Law. Etc.