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

How does this eliminate Free Will?

[mudetroit]

Just because there is a delay in the person being able to be cognizant of making the decision doesn't eliminate the potential that there was free will in making it. To put this in terms the programmers among us can relate to. This is the difference between generating a result and outputting the result. They aren't necessarily directly tied together.

Re:How does this eliminate Free Will?

[Anguirel]

In programming terms, it's exactly that difference. However, the person thinks their conscious decision is 1 second before the press. Consider that an I/O interrupt request after the output has been generated but before it can be displayed. The conscious mind (the OS in the metaphor) thinks it is making the decision to output something specific, but that decision was made by the subroutine well before the OS got involved. In flow chart terms...

(unconscious decision is made in background processes) -> (person thinks they make a conscious decision using their own Free Will) -> (action occurs which matches the unconscious decision)

Under that model, Free Will is "eliminated" because the final result matches activity that occurs before they consciously deliberate on it and can utilize conscious Free Will. Essentially, Free Will becomes an unconscious process of some sort.

Re:How does this eliminate Free Will?

[bug1]

My subconscious is still a part of "me", if _my_ subconscious exercises free will, then i exercise free will.

I dont have to know i have free will to have free will.

Um, not so much of a newsflash

[NIckGorton]

Um, not much of a newsflash. Hell the major monotheistic religions figured this out way back. If God is omniscient, then he knows what I am about to do and everything I will do in my life. If he knows that, than I can't truly have free will. (Even if you try to weasel out that God decides to blind himself to my future, if it is knowable then its pre-ordained.) So unless you are willing to say God isn't omniscient, then there is no free will, kids.

The only chance we have of any free will at all is in quantum weirdness which is not much free will to speak of, and certainly not enough to be palatable to the average American who thinks his success or failure is a product of his own decisions rather than the sum total of a very complicated system that he has little control over and basically just experiences as the phenomena of his mind. We think we are in control, but largely we are along for the ride.

Used to freak me out, and it was hard to swallow since I have that Horatio Algeirs kind of narrative: Grew up on welfare in a house without indoor plumbing and now have a doctorate and am typing this on the toilet I picked (the best... I loves me a good quality toilet) in the house I just remodeled. It would feel very nice to think that I did all of this and deserve this wonderful throne. And to be honest my experience is that I think I have free will in my day to day life. But that's probably because the sum of my experiences also made me, after gaining understand that I don't have free will, accept that I live my life with that illusion and navigate life in such a way that I feel comfortable with the 'moral decisions' I think I make. So I pretend I have free will, and think I make moral choices based on that understanding.

Now I've given myself a headache. No. Wait, I was destined to have this headache as long as that electron spun to the left last Tuesday in Portugal. I'm going to go pretend to decide to take an ibuprofen.

Rigged

[yomology]

Personally, I don't see how this experiment can even remotely call into question "free will." You see, free will and conscious rationality are very nearly the same. Now, when choosing between using the left or right button, there is little to no information to be considered rationally, or consciously, and so this experiment is only testing a choice that is already devoid of free will. The choice is, in effect, subconsciously decided making it easy to predict.

Re:7 seconds

[Metasquares]

But who says the unconscious decision process isn't an exercise of free will? The big assumption in the article is that free will cannot exist in the subconscious. I think that free will is a property of the whole mind, and all they're doing is demonstrating that they can predict decisions by reading the choices already made within the brain.

Oh, and since this is a binary classification problem (left/right), 50% accuracy means you're not doing any better than guessing - 60% isn't very good in that light.

Re:7 seconds

[Belial6]

That's what I was thinking. The news article should read. "People subconsciously think ahead" I'm not sure that this should be a big surprise, and I don't see what it has to do with free will.

Well, really it should read "Sometimes people subconsciously think ahead"

Re:Predict the prediction.

[ultranova]

The general theory he puts forth in the book is that human consciousness only happened 3,000-3,500 years ago. He suggests that before this change (over a great deal of time, not instantly) humans had split minds where one half would communicate it's type of information to the other half via auditory and visual hallucinations.

Well, that's one theory which is absolutely impossible to prove either way. It is, after all, impossible for anyone to prove that they have subjective consciousness, rather than being puppets being guided by hallucinations - which, I presume, would still originate from a consciousness of sorts, but whatever.

Then again, it might be easy to disprove: if it happened so recently, long after the current main groups of humanity split from each other, there should still be plenty of people in this split-mind state today. So make predictions about the difference between us and them, and go find them.

To support his theories he uses early written language examples which lack the concept of free will, let alone will at all. He argues that it was much more than just a literary device, but was in fact an accurate representation of human thinking in that time.

Of course, it could simply be that writing at that time was mainly used for bookkeeping, not to mention philosophy hadn't yet developed to the point of making this a problem... And besides, as far as I can tell, my dog has free will, and stubborn one at that.

Anyway, this theory is very likely rubbish, because plenty of old kingdoms - such as ancient Egypt - already existed far before 3000 years ago, and it's hard to imagine how merely following hallucinations without conscious forethought could build and upkeep large and complex societies; for that matter, it is hard to imagine just how the heck such a double-mind could develop. Getting sudden hallucinations while you're hunting woolly mammoths is not a good thing.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[colmore]

Give me a scientifically meaningful definition of "free will."

Something that could be tested as present or not in a defined experiment.

If such a definition cannot be found, then questions about "free will" are unscientific and better left to philosophy and religion.

The mystical associations people have regarding the very words surrounding the study of cognition is a great hindrance to meaningful research.

Marvin Minksy has a great deal to say about this.

Re:7 seconds

[node 3]

But who says the unconscious decision process isn't an exercise of free will? The big assumption in the article is that free will cannot exist in the subconscious. If it happens in the subconscious, then it *can't* be free will, it's merely will.

The *free* means you are making a conscious decision.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[rprins]

No ofcourse not. I don't know why this isn't general knowledge, but something like will can only be 2 things:

- Completely determined process, action -> reaction.
- Completely random process, governed by random quantum effects.

Our brain ofcourse is somewhere in between. I don't know how you define free will, but it can not be different from these 2 things.
If it were..
Then there would somehow be a reaction without an action, but it would NOT be random!
This is obviously impossible.

Everybody should know there is no such thing as free will.
One of the most interesting corollaries is the responsibility paradox:
- You have no free will.
- Thus you are not responsible for your actions; All your actions are the result of the total sum of your past, surroundings and genes.
- You could do whatever you like, because you are not responsible.

People say, "If I can not control what I do, I'm not responsible, so I can do anything."
They forget that 'they' are part of the action-reaction process. There is a part where you are conscious of the choices you make.
What this simply means is that you know you choose. But how you make that choice is determined but all kinds of factors you do not control.
"Will I eat this?"
-yes, because it looks tasty (instinctive)
-no, because it will make me fat (logic, cultural knowledge)
-etc..
Your choice process is then thinking of and weighing the factors, but again these weights are not controlled by anything like free will.
It's controlled by randomness, (neural) logic and cultural influences.

The "I can do anything" phrase is simply a loopback to the choice process, however as you consider the consequenses of this new factor, you realize you are bound by external factors in everything you do.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[fbjon]

I think the definition is very simple. If the universe is entirely predictable, then there cannot be free will. If truly random events can occur, then "free will" is possible, though not necessary.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[Omestes]

Thank you.

I always hated the cog-sci cultists (Dennet, mostly) attacking free will, as if it was his personal calling to do so. I think the very discussion is rather dumb.

If freewill isn't real, it doesn't matter, we subjectively must still act as if it is true. If free will is real, we must still act as if it is true. We must, too, in any case, also treat others as if they have free will (as it is the basis of law, society, and most human empathy and ethics). The idea of free will, if not it-itself, is built into our head, and all of our actions.

I think the freewill/not-freewill debate is just like the "God doesn't exist" debate, trite, and the grounds for amateur philosophers. It makes a good argument, but not much truth value. For one it isn't falsifiable.

In the current result (which isn't new), we could claim that the act of free-will happens with a seven second lag, or that certain potential centers are activated before the act of choosing a branch. Etc... I think, also, there is a large cultural element to the debate, the current trends in cultural interpretation is towards removing all individual culpability and responsibility (as we can see in the rise of psychotropic drug prescriptions, and "Twinkie" defenses).

As a philosophy buff, lets leave it to religion. It doesn't add to any argument.