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

Predict the prediction.

[0100010001010011]

So there's a 7 second 'thought to action' lag. When they start predicting what the scanner is going to say call me.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Simon Simian]

I was going to call you, but then I didn't.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[infonography]

I was going to call you, but then I didn't. I knew you were going to say that.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Simon Simian]

Shingle Donkeys

Re:Predict the prediction.

[siddster]

Actually the lag can vary. In another one of Benjamin Libet's experiments (not mentioned in the article) he stimulated different areas of the human brain (he had a neursurgeon friend that he worked with during surgeries) and asked the subject to press a button when he perceived the stimulus.

It turned out that no one pressed the button until 500 milliseconds after the stimulus. So, there appeared to be at least a 500ms lag between stimulation and conscious acknowledgement of the stimulus.

Here's the funny bit: a 500ms lag time to perception is incompatible with a whole bunch of human activities. Take tennis for example; if there's a 500ms lag between watching the ball getting hit and actually perceiving it as getting hit the ball has already flown past you. (assuming a ball hit at 200km/h=55 meters/sec)

Yet we play tennis.... Intriguing eh?

Re:Predict the prediction.

[RockoTDF]

Most great athletes say that they rarely, if ever, "think" about what they are doing. They just do it. Ever play an FPS (or paintball, or whatever) and get off a really good shot because it seemed like your finger had a mind of its own? That is basically what happens. The nervous system in your body can do (and learn to do) a lot without any input from the brain whatsoever.

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.

[zappepcs]

This is decision making through trained thought processes. We hit the ball with some expectation of where the opponent will return the ball, or at least most professional tennis players do. Given that we have already predicted the likely return path of the ball, reacting to visual signals based on the other players body actions gives us quite a large lead time in terms of milliseconds in that process. By the time the other players racket hits the ball we are already headed toward the most likely direction of the return of the ball. You will see in pro games where a player totally fucks up that process and just lets the ball go. It is the high tension precision of play/guess/play/guess that makes sports the exciting thing that brings fans. The ability to mentally guess based on available knowledge where to be and when is what amazes us, though to the players it's as much reaction as it is a trained instinctual movement.

I write code, and some of it relies on the predictable processes of other code. That is how things work. We all use the best information we have to make decisions of free will. What was painful decision making process becomes trained reactive processes after time and practice. Some people seem to have a 'knack' for some things... they usually become professionals. This happens in every walk of life. Sales people are different than engineers and both are different from sports players. Each has a set of decision making processes that are honed to a certain group of tasks. There is a reason that sports players don't generally retire to become insurance sales people.

Free will is the ability to use available information to arrive at good outcomes of any decision. This, at it's most basic, is seen in survival situations. This, survival situations, is what I like to call failure-mode analysis. It works for code, it works for anything. Break it down to failure mode and see what happens, how each component reacts. In sports we see failure mode use repeatedly. Tennis is basically run that way the entire match. Each mistake is a failure. Each failure leads to one of two outcomes: further failure or success. This is survival mode.

In that mode, we have to use free will as simply repeating what we have done before leads to failure. We have to learn and use free will to assert that learning to gain success... unless you simply wish to surrender, and that is free will also.

I choose not to replace main bearing seals on my car's engine... I surrender. If I had to, I could learn how and do it, but I CHOOSE not to.

In most cases in life where there seems to be no free will, we simply have chosen to surrender or not learn what is needed to complete the task or defeat the puzzle.

500ms is a long time in some respects, yet it is a very short time. It has been scientifically proven that when adrenaline is pumping, our body clocks (sense of time) is sped up. That is, 500ms under physical duress seems like it was 3-4 seconds, giving our brains time to react faster than what we normally perceive.

The measurements of 500ms are common in vehicle safety parlance. Seldom does anyone speak of that 1/2 second lag under duress. In sports, it's all under duress. Predictive analysis of the current events gives us the ability to see and react faster than the 500ms being discussed.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[eno2001]

I'm reading a great book that addresses this. Julian Jaynes' book entitled, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind works through a lot of examples to prove that nearly all human activities are done in the absence of conscious thought. 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. 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.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Gibbs-Duhem]

First, I want to compliment the GP of this thread. He hit the nail on the head -- seven second lag between a decision and realizing you've made a decision is very different from not having free will. I can very easily imagine people subconsciously (or even consciously) knowing what their decision will be well before they "decide". I find personally that most of my "decision making" is trying to understand why I feel a particular choice is correct, not deciding which choice is correct.

Secondarily, to comment on the parent. I teach karate, and in fighting matches I have observed this in quite a bit of detail. If you try to decide what to do, you are invariably ~100ms too slow in reacting (varies from person to person and experience level).

One of the most critical elements of training is to move intellectual responses into the automatic response regime, which gradually reduces the reaction time while simultaneously freeing conscious brain-power for higher level guidance. For example, at a low level, your body is handling blocking and striking without your conscious intervention while at a high level, you're observing the rhythm of the fight and observing your opponent's posture and techniques.

Then, you set up a "trigger" in your reactions so that as soon as a particular opening appears again, you immediately capitalize. Usually you do this by repeating a motion many, many times, but it eventually happens. That capitalization definitely happens in under 100ms (I can punch about 6 times in one second, and in order to break the rhythm you need to get at least a factor of four faster than that).

To see this (maybe), imagine that your opponent does a quick punch. If you notice that he's a bit slow to recover, a good option is to sidestep and punch before his punch is over -- but a punch is over in 200ms, tops. You have to start your punch in at most 50ms after she starts hers (switching genders for the sake of the female karateka in my club). Of course, I might be convinced that this is more a matter of picking up on a rhythm and predicting a punch... but if you do this then you're screwed by a fake, and it wouldn't explain quick responses to the very first attack of a sequence, so I'm fairly sure it's a real reaction time.

p.s. Can you tell I teach at an engineering school? It's always entertaining when the class is completely at a loss to understand a move until I draw a force diagram.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Cassius Corodes]

Furthering what you are saying, there are some interesting experiments referenced in steven pinkers book "The blank slate", which are done on patients that had the connections between the two brain hemispheres removed (due to crippling epilepsy) - they instruct one side of the brain to do something (ie go out of the room) and then ask the other side of the brain why they did it. The other side never says "I don't know" it always makes up a reason, and the patients can get quite heated insisting that they had a reason. This would suggest that consciousness is a story telling device to explain our actions rather than the source of our decision making.

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:Predict the prediction.

[infonography]

Shingle Donkeys ok, thats as far as I am going to go with you.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Anonymous Coward]

when closing the car door you see your keys in the ignition, your brain says STOP but your hand continues to close the door. ignisecond, n:
The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Elad Alon]

"We wanted to include a chapter on free will, but then decided not to - so here it is."

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:Predict the prediction.

[zmollusc]

I would see that as a 500ms lag between wanting to press a button and your muscles pressing it(if that is the way the experiment recorded when the person felt the stimulus). Like when you play a game and see imminent disaster, you want to press shield or hyperspace or whatever (and may have a finger over that button throughout the game) but cannot press it in time. Apologies if it was done differently.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Weedlekin]

"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."

I also have a theory which says that pissing and crapping didn't happen in ancient times because the texts that we have don't say things like "And the Pharoah Ramses said unto the Hittites, Lo, I have marched many a day eating of dried dates and figs, so hold ye the battle, for my bottom runneth over."

Only a tiny fraction of the documents written in the remote past have survived, and many of the ones we have are both fragmentary and difficult to decipher due to the fact that the people writing them didn't bother to waste space on stuff that they reckoned was obvious to the rather small number of people who were educated enough to read it. Building a theory about the emergence of consciousness in our species around such sparse and possibly non-representative evidence is akin to judging the consciousness of modern man from a couple of worm-eaten pages from a scientology text, a 17th century recipe for making bread, a nearly complete version of "Hansel And Gretal", and some bricks with fragments of graffiti on them.

Re:Predict the prediction.

[pbhj]

it's definitely in the Bible Code!

Re:Predict the prediction.

[Orgasmatron]

You might want to read the book, rather than that very short summary of it. You are right that it is essentially unfalsifiable, making it not-science. (Note that most history and anthropology are similarly not-science).

To quickly address some of the issues you mentioned:

There are essentially no groups left on the earth where the split mind is "normal", but there are isolated cases. Some forms of schizophrenia, for example, can be considered as very similar to the split mind. One big reason they are gone today is that the societies they could survive in are gone, replaced with our familiar conscious societies. Another reason is that they were regularly hunted down and killed (many examples in the old testament).

I think you underestimate the quantity and quality of very ancient literature. Take a look at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/ Some of it is quite good, and most of it is very, very alien to modern readers. There are plenty of examples from other cultures, I just use that as an example because of my interest in cuneiform writings.

The hallucinations involved weren't like the impression of a drug trip that you see on TV, and they weren't random. Think of it like your intuition having a personality and shouting commands in your "ear". More like Baltar's visitors (from the new Battlestar Galactica series) than like Reefer Madness.

In that context, the hallucinations can be a good thing. What if the voice tells you the right time to strike? Or if it tells you to duck because it noticed a sabretooth tiger hunting you while you hunted the mammoth? But even that is misleading, because it assumes someone with our modern narritive/conscious mind with the addition of voices from the reasoning/analyzing portion of our brain.

7 seconds

[iamhigh]

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 ... a bunch of stuff about brain activity...

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand Who the hell takes 7 seconds to decide left or right? I hope they all took the bus... or maybe the shortbus?

Re:7 seconds

[The MAZZTer]

If you had read your first quote more carefully the second one would have made more sense. What it's saying is the scanner picked up on unconscious decisions people made. In this case the decision was trivial with no (known) consequences either way so the subjects likely didn't hesitate and just picked one consciously. What this is saying is that they had actually subconsciously decided which one they were going to pick seconds in advance and the scanner was able to see that.

Re:7 seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory is (and it's not a new one) that your conscious mind merely interprets and rationalises decisions that your subconscious mind already made in a non-free-will manner. You fondly imagine that your conscious mind is doing the decision making - when in fact it's merely organising those decisions into a consistent result.

Our conscious minds have been shown to reorder events in order to 'edit out' the effects of prolonged reaction delays and other processing artifacts.

The brain does this kind of thing all the time - for example, if you look off to your left - then very quickly look off to the right - your conscious mind makes it appear as though you saw continuous 'video' as your eyes traversed the intervening distance. In truth, once the rate of motion gets more than some certain amount, your eyes turn off and your brain fills in the intervening imagery from memory or imagination.

(Actually - that's an over-simplification - this effect is called 'Saccadic Masking' and there is a great Wikipedia page that describes an experiment you can do with no more equipment than a mirror and a friend.)

Re:7 seconds

[TheRealMindChild]

I took a research study doing tests like this at UPMC. A lot of it was horrible tests such as:

A green or red square will appear every 15 seconds, along with an arrow that points right or left. If the square is green, you press the mouse button that corresponds with the direction of the arrow (if it points left hit the left button. If it points right, click the right button). If the square is red, you press the button opposite the direction the arrow is pointing.

Now, imagine doing this for an hour or more straight, with wet electrodes attached to your head. After about 10 minutes (at most), you can't help but completely wander off mentally and stop paying attention to what you are doing. Maybe that is the intention. Your goal is to do your best, because this is a "worth while" study after all on how the brain operates. Things start to flash up and you consciously don't pick up what just flashed, so you spend a good part of those 15 seconds trying to dig up any memory of the past 15 seconds. Maybe you had to be there. You don't even want to know the torture of doing these kinds of tests for HOURS inside an MRI machine.

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:7 seconds

[mrbluze]

Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision. Maybe, but it's far more likely that decision modification at the last moment is due to something smaller and less easy to detect. Truly free will (in the philosophical sense) has to depend on something that cannot be physically manipulated (and isn't something that science can prove the existence of). Basically, free will is a religious concept, and a threatened one. Science has not left many shadows here.

Re:7 seconds

[jimmux]

We often think we are making a conscious decision which is in fact unconscious. I have been studying and practicing hypnosis lately, and the reason it is effective (in some people) is that the subconscious mind acts before the conscious. If we program the subconscious mind to behave a certain way, the conscious mind will go along with it unquestioningly (unless it conflicts with the will of the subject).

It's like the old schoolyard trick:

A: "Milk, milk, milk, milk,..."

B: "What do cows drink?"

A: "Milk. No, wait..."

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:7 seconds

[kae_verens]

yeah, and I bet that at about minute 40, someone in a gorilla suit walked straight in front of the MRI machine and you didn't even see it.

seriously, though - I think you've answered yourself. If you are studying the subconscious mind, then you need to somehow get the conscious mind out of the way - the best way being to bore the mind into reacting instead of thinking.

Re:7 seconds

[Omestes]

I don't think of the brain this way. Therefore your argument collapses. :)

Seriously though, I don't like the I/O models that so many people run around with. Its a model, only a model, and more often than not when we confuse models with reality we are led astray. A model is only useful as long as we realize that we're dealing with only an abstraction.

My brain is not a computer, it is not even like a computer. My brain is like a brain. Its like comparing a horse to a car, and trying to get useful information, all we get are analogies, but not real answers.

I have issues with people who put too much stock in reductionism. Its useful, but I don't know if it is a good way of getting meaningful data.

If we must run with the computer analogy (and I will not bring up Searle's chinese box), then we must accept that the brain has almost unlimited inputs, since it mirrors its own functioning internally, and mirrors external systems internally as well, meaning more than half its inputs are internal. Also we must then realize that half of these internal inputs are NOT logical inputs, but creative factors. This starts making the computer model not at all computer like.

There is no neuron or group of neurons that is "you."

Again, I disagree. The gestalt of neurons (the full set) is "you". Obviously there is a difference between "you" and "~you", and as you say we are all brain, and no mind, this difference must exist in the neurons, or more precisely, the arrangement of them. Or in a smaller sense, the connection of groups to other groups, and the connections within each group.

And, as an interesting mind game, try to live a day of your life as if you did not have free will. The idea (if not the thing itself) is innate.

Re:7 seconds

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

You present it as fact, but that assertion is in fact only your opinion.

Some (if not most) decision are made subconsciously. The 'free' part may only consist of an ability to override subconscious decisions.

And then again, the conscious/subconscious terms (AFAIK) originate with Freud and are only a model, and not a very usefull one at that, in my opinion.

Re:7 seconds

[node 3]

You present it as fact, but that assertion is in fact only your opinion. Close. I present it as a definition, because that's what it is. The idea of free will is that you get to make a conscious choice.

To illustrate what I mean, imagine our will exists entirely in the subconscious, and that by the time we're aware of our choices, we cannot alter them. In such a case, we'd still have a will (after all, we still make choices and act upon them), but that will is not free, because we are not free to consciously control it. The notion of freedom (in this context) is meaningless if it exists entirely outside the realm of the conscious mind.

Some (if not most) decision are made subconsciously. The 'free' part may only consist of an ability to override subconscious decisions. I suspect that you're quite right. But still, it's the ability to consciously alter our choices that constitutes free will.

And then again, the conscious/subconscious terms (AFAIK) originate with Freud and are only a model, and not a very usefull one at that, in my opinion. You're probably thinking more about the id, ego, super-ego, which constitute a psychological model which is of questionable validity. The idea of conscious and subconscious (while originating around the time of Freud, and being critical to his psychological theory) is fairly well established.

In order to discard the notion of a conscious vs subconscious would seem to require either showing that we are either consciously aware of everything that goes on in our minds, or that we are not consciously aware of anything that goes on in our minds. Neither of which seem even remotely defensible.

I have free will

[Lucas123]

I've chosen not to comment on this story. There's my free will. Wait, I mean, I'll comment but I'm not leaving an opinion, except for the one that states that I have free will. Hold on. OK. I'm not leaving an opinion as much as statement. Oh, forget it. You're right. I have no free will.

Re:I have free will

[MightyYar]

Forget it - that line of reasoning didn't work for me in front of the judge after the whole girl scout thing, either.

Will or Wii?

[blantonl]

For a second or two there... I thought for sure the study called my Wii into question.

My "will" is rock solid... my "Wii" challenges me evey day.

Re:Will or Wii?

[Mastadex]

Thats alright, I thought it was calling into question a movie that was made some 15 years ago.

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?

[Admiral Ag]

No. There is a real problem here. Our ordinary conception of personal decision making is that it is conscious and occurs at the time the decider is aware of making the decision. This experiment goes a long way to proving that conscious experience of making a decision is epiphenomenal.

Let's conduct a simple thought experiment. We'll hook you up to a machine that replicates the experiment and which predicts pretty much everything you choose before you are aware of it. How long is it going to take you, personally, to become convinced that you, as a conscious being, have no free will? Not long, I'd wager.

The only reason people believe in free will is that much of religion makes no sense without it, and some people believe that libertarian politics makes no sense without it. The first is true, the latter is not, since political freedom and metaphysical freedom are distinct.

This is another in the series of nails being driven into the coffin of the religious conception of humanity. Evolution was the first major one. Brain science threatens to complete the project.

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.

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.

Re:How does this eliminate Free Will?

[khallow]

This is opinion. I notice lines such as:

Minimally, to say that an agent has free will is to say that the agent has the capacity to choose his or her course of action. But animals seem to satisfy this criterion, and we typically think that only persons, and not animals, have free will. Let us then understand free will as the capacity unique to persons that allows them to control their actions.

Unfounded assumptions, artificial distinctions between "animals" and "persons". And we haven't even started discussing free will.

Re:How does this eliminate Free Will?

[Martian_Kyo]

I disagree with that definition of free will.

I think the problem here isn't the existence of 'free will' but with out definition and our perception of it. Just because a definition exists it doesn't mean it can't redefined or proclaimed as invalid.

So maybe the title should be 'Brain Study Calls current definition of Free will into question.', but that's not as sensational.

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.

Re:Um, not so much of a newsflash

[idiotwithastick]

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. Actually there's an argument (by St. Augustine, I think) that says that there is no contradiction between an omniscient God and free will. The idea is that God is just an "observer"; every decision we make in our lives are still our own, even though God knows how the result will turn out. Essentially, God is just "watching a replay" of what actually happened, so although God knows what happens God does not know it in "advance" because our notions of time do not apply to God.

Re:Um, not so much of a newsflash

[93 Escort Wagon]

During the early 1600s there was an argument amongst various protestant faiths about whether there was free will or not, particularly in England. Whether free will exists, or not - why would that fact differ in England as compared to the rest of the world?

Sincerely,
Mr. Pedantic

Re:Um, not so much of a newsflash

[CodyRazor]

I'm god. You just cant tell because your notions of what god is dont apply to me.

Re:Um, not so much of a newsflash

[focoma]

Let me get this straight: our actions can be predicted beforehand (by other people), and is in fact known beforehand (by an omniscient Creator), ergo we do not have control (i.e. free will) over our actions?

I think there is some sort of confusion going on here, caused by the fact that people are using a useless definition of free will, one that is either overly ambiguous or obviously contradictory (making the "refutation" of free will a piece of cake). Let me explain:

Suppose there is a person Bob who actually does have free will according to your definition. (Go on, think of your definition of free will right now, and assume that Bob has it.) So he goes on with his life deciding things for himself. Now suppose you recorded every action he made in his life, then time-traveled back to when he was born. At that point, if your time-traveling self does not actually interact with Bob, you could certainly observe all his actions being played out as you recorded them. So, for example, you'll know that he will punch a school bully in the face at exactly 12:30PM, three days after his 10th birthday. You'll know that he will decide to marry his least favorite female co-worker after a particularly productive team-building exercise. You'll even know what his last words will be.

Now you have to ask yourself: since you know what Bob is going to do next, are you contradicting your previous assumption that he has free will? If so, your definition of free will is flawed.

In other words, I would like to ask: is there really a valid reason to doubt free will just because we can know with certainty what someone will do a few seconds from now? Or is it possible that, while others can predict my decisions, my decisions are still my own because I still made them? God knows what we will do, yes...but does that make him a Puppeteer, or could we see him as a wise Father, giving his children instructions, but letting them explore and discover what lies ahead on their own, sad that some of them will fall on the wrong path due to their own unfortunate flaws, yet happy to see those who will triumph?

Free will is simply someone's ability to decide what to do. That others can see in advance what he'll decide does absolutely nothing to question the ability.

Re:Um, not so much of a newsflash

[NIckGorton]

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. I knew you were gonna say that. And I knew you were going to say that.

But what if you choose not to decide?

[sticks_us]

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path thats clear
I will choose free will!

--oblig.

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:Rigged

[monoqlith]

Not at all. 'Conscious rationality' is the deterministic(or if you wish, probabilistic) process of the biochemical reactions of your brain. Why would your brain be exempt from the physical laws of the universe? Having had a neurological disorder myself, which has affected the workings of my frontal cortex at times(thankfully not permanently), I have become acutely aware of this. I have come to the opinion a priori that even my most conscious thoughts merely feel spontaneous - but my apprehension of them is no different than my apprehension of my sense perceptions, and I have very little control over my sense perceptions. Even though qualitatively my thoughts are diffferent than, say, my vision, in the end, everything I see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and think is a mere representation of my mind - and I cannot locate the origin of these representations no matter how hard I try. My best hypothesis(since I take my sense representations to originate in empirical reality - that is something that we must assume, for philosophical proofs of this fact have been scandalously weak) is that they are the workings of my brain. Thus even my concept of myself is an elaborate orchestration of my brain's physical functioning. The sentence "I will choose by own free will to open the bathroom window" is not incorrect because there is no "will" - it's meaningless because there is no intelligible "I" that we can locate as separate from physical reality. Now, I know this admission opens me up to criticisms - most problematically, how can you rely on the word of someone who admits to having had a brain disease? To this I answer: how can you rely on the word of anybody? You can't. You have to reason from first principles yourself.

Most decisions are automatic

[3arwax]

I am a person who believes very strongly that God gives us agency and that agency is essential to our progression through life. I also believe that most decisions are made automatically. Our brain acts just like a muscle. We train it and it has reflex like decisions. But there are many times when we exercise a higher consciousness to make decisions. But who would ever accuse Slashdot of having over-sensationalized headlines?

Re:Jedoc

[NIckGorton]

Except that since I know free will is an illusion, when the kid last night took a swing at me in a drunken stupor, I understood that as no more his decision than my decision was to treat him decently, and make sure he didn't injure himself or others as he metabolized himself to freedom in the morning.

Its more of a Buddhist concept of suffering and the necessity of working to end the suffering of others (or at least think you are doing so) that motivates moral action in people who don't believe in free will. How much better of a world would it be if when someone broke into your car to steal, you saw that person as someone less fortunate than you and felt it was your responsibility to, instead of punishing him, make his life better?

Though lucky for us, people who have the insight to understand a world without free will are also people who are more often endowed with that kind of sentiment.

+5 Predetermined

[Shaitan Apistos]

If you don't mod me according to my post's title I'll understand, you didn't have a choice.

Obliq Matrix reference

[phreakincool]

The Matrix has you. There is no spoon. You think that's your free will?

Define god and free will again, I missed that part

[moteyalpha]

If you can define free will, then you could prove it or disprove it. It is such an open ended concept that it cannot be considered until all facts about the process is known and it is premature to study the psychological effects of using a tele-port until you have one. --Absolute stupidity, disrupts absolutely--PLM

Please define free will.

[Vellmont]

If you actually wanted to answer that question, you'd have to define what "free will" is, in a concrete, scientific way. That means defining what choice is, likely what "you" are, and other things that are essentially undefinable except using other non-concrete definitions you can't nail down.

This experiment raises some interesting questions about the nature of existence, consciousness, and being. I don't think it's going to give us any answers on whether we have "free will" though, whatever that means.

Re:Please define free will.

[CokeJunky]

Total agreement here. I suspect that the whole free-will angle is just a great way to get press. Sure it might have been the goal of the experiment to study decision making and the impact of will, but the conclusion drawn is pure sensationalism and has nothing to do with science.

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.

Criminal Court :)

[davidwr]

High Priced Trial Lawyer: Your honor, my client pleads not guilty by reason of no free will.

Judge: I sentence him to life in prison.

High Priced Trial Lawyer: But...

Judge: Don't look at me, I don't have free will either.

Determinism does not invalidate free will.

[Repossessed]

The idea that physical forces control us is silly unless you believe in dualism, we *are* those physical forces.

WHAT is exactly free will ?

[aepervius]

On the lowest physical level there are only individual atoms the link they form with their neighbors, or not, forming molecules and electrodynamic interaction. A level higher we have molecule interacting each other forming protein, and various substance. A level higher we have neuron which discharge their neurotransmitter if they reach a certain level, neuro-transmitter which lead to lower or higher the level of other neurons. Up to now I described only physical process which don't per see have any "free will". Then comes a level higher with even more complexity where neuron form complex path and mass, and that is the brain. Show me an ounce of free will. All I see is a very complex system, which accept information from outside, and using chemical pathway, send output to the outside. There is no reason to imagine that for the same input, at the same state, the system would react otherwise , except if some physical phenomenon change subtely the potential of some neuron : aka brownian motion make more or less neurotransmitter reach their target site. Again a physical phenomenon. I contend that free will is an illusion. I contend that it should be called non-deterministic will. Or chaotic will. Or anything. But we aren't really "free" to chose. All those neuron with their potential and physical reaction do it.

Re:Jedoc

[MightyYar]

How much better of a world would it be if when someone broke into your car to steal, you saw that person as someone less fortunate than you and felt it was your responsibility to, instead of punishing him, make his life better? It makes for a nice platitude, but your question (which is rhetorical) makes a lot of assumptions.

The major assumption is that the thief is indeed less fortunate than the victim by some measure. He may very well be stealing a Honda Civic from a recently divorced single mother living out of a Super 8 motel and working the night shift at Arby's.

Free will is an incoherent concept

[Ardeaem]

Free will is not a coherent concept. It is rooted in the idea of dualism, that something is "controlling" our body/brain, that is somehow separate from our body/brain. It used to be called a soul, now it is called a mind. The "mind" has free will to somehow control the body. This makes no sense.

The brain is a complex physical system like any other, and is subject to the same rules as any other physical system, like weather. There is no free will. There is only the interaction between our bodies/brains and the environment. Free will is just an illusion caused by the fact that humans are self-aware and that the brain is an extremely complex, dynamical system.

Re:Jedoc

[wellingj]

Just because he is less fortunate does not automatically grant him the moral right to what I have done for myself. Being less fortunate does not automatically grant him any moral authority whatsoever to commit crimes against any one. Letting is slide does not make his life better, it only makes mine worse. Only him choosing to make his life better of his own accord will truly set him free from the life he now leads. Until he does so, he will be a parasite to those like you that allow yourself to be the willing victim. The only thing I ask of you is that when you are victimized, do not come to me and try to forcefully take away from me what was taken from you, I have no sympathy for any one who finds it proper and good to allow the theft of their property and uses that as moral justification to steal from me in turn.

The free will debate is pointless

[Tetrad_of_doom]

If we don't have free will, then what's the point? If all of our decisions are predetermined, why debate the origins? Without free will our lives are meaningless. I take the existence of free will as an axiom, because the alternative is stupid.

Its pretty simple, really

[Anonymous Coward]

When you model human behavior in terms of deterministic principles (i.e. the laws of physics and the metaphysical assumptions that underlie them), you shouldn't be surprised to find no room for the expression of free will.

If your first premise is "not A" then any subsequent premise which affirms "A" will be seen as the logical contradiction that it is.

So long as reduction is king, we shouldn't expect to find "free will" lurking among the emergent phenomena either...wherever it emerges it will just again be reduced to deterministic expressions, and hence seem to be deterministic (and hence profoundly unfree).

Our analysis of the brain doesn't disprove free will anymore than the English language disproves that nouns have tenses. Nor, by the same token, does any mystical tradition prove it.

The key is in how you model it, and whether or not your model is useful. That is all.

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: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.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[professionalfurryele]

That is a little nieve, what if you are a dualist and believe every 'soul' gets a say in the initial conditions of the universe, enough that it affects what decisions they make while they are bound to thier mortal coil?

Besides unpredictability doesn't imply free will. Random events do not seem to me to offer any more opertunity for free will than non-random ones, that is if I cant influence either. What is necessary for free will is the ability to change events. If the universe always follows some prescribed rule over which I have no say, and I cant pick the initial conditions of the universe, then I have no free will.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[it0]

You could be more open minded.
Any discussion about anything seems sensible to me.

The free will debate or if god exists debate both seem to be though provoking. since a lot of people have a hard time understanding there own existence, doesn't mean it's food for amateurs only.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[Sobrique]

Ah, but if it's deterministic but unpredictable, then where does that leave us? If the universe is entirely set on it's course, from Event One, and given identical starting conditions would end the same way, why does this matter if we can't predict the pattern? I mean, you need something more complex to analyse a system, which means it's quite possible that we'll never be able to model the universe accurately, even if it was entirely deterministic.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[jotok]

Here's some questions for you since you seem to know what you're talking about...

One, I have a friend, an aero engineer, who believes wholeheartedly that any kind of free will can be boiled down to the deterministic movement of particles. However, there are two problems with this--first, it seems like he is making the philosophical mistake you pointed out: if you assume that free will does not exist, you will not find it (I think we're talking way beyond simple "null hypothesis" caution here). Second, while chemistry might be reducible to atomic interactions, is it useful or meaningful to discuss chemistry in this manner? Is it useful to reduce biology to Newtonian motion? Useful meaning, "Does it help us understand what's going on?" What's your take?

Second, I have noticed more and more lately people attacking the concept of "free will." Noted feminist and "Battlestar Galactica" fan Amanda Marcotte has been pushing this idea that free will is a meaningless concept, or at least not useful, and probably doesn't exist. Where is this coming from? Has there been an ongoing debate about this, or is this something new--something riding along with the scientific backlash against the religious conservatives, perhaps? If you can suggest any reading on the history of the debate, I would like to read it.

Finally...why so often do we see people dedicated to science who are completely unfamiliar with its philosophical underpinnings? I don't know how many researchers I know who don't really know what "empiricism" is, but who will deride religion as "magical thinking" when they themselves maintain question-begging tautologies all the time. It bothers me when I meet people who have their PhD, and so have supposedly been taught experimental design and have contributed to the body of knowledge, but who turn out to be glorified technicians :\

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[oliverthered]

I've been having this argument with my friend for a few months now. Free will is the ability to change the course of the universe through without that choice being the result of the inputs.

And just like God it doesn't exists. Everything we know about the brain shows that it's deterministic, the results of it's inputs and structure. everything that we know about the universe shows that it's probabilistic based on true randomness, based on it's inputs. There's no room for free will there either. It's not that there isn't any evidence for free will, it's that there's a large body of evidence against it. By saying that it's unscientific you are showing that you don't know what science is (the study of things that are true) you are saying it is not truth and therefore should be something left to fiction

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[Eivind]

It's not that easy.

If the events are truly genuinely RANDOM, then they also aren't influenced by your "will" whatever the hell THAT means.

"free will" requires events to be NOT pre-determined, but also NOT random. It's a tricky one.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[Devin Jeanpierre]

Actually, only some scientists believe that. Others believe that science is based on skepticism -- even if it possible to discover the truth, we would not be able to know if what we know was the truth, or something that just looks like it. As an example, what if we're all dreaming? More popularly, what if there is something similar to The Matrix going on? It's completely possible, and completely infalsifiable, and yet also a part of that philosophy of science. How fortunate that the philosophy of science isn't science, huh? These scientists believe that the purpose of science is to model what we observe, which may have absolutely no indication as to the truth of things, or may actually be the model of the truth of things. But there's no way to tell.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[mrogers]

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.

OK, now define "truly random". :-)

Here's my definition of free will: behaviour that cannot be predicted far in advance by anyone (including the actor), but that can be recognised as the outcome of a decision-making process (which allows the actor to learn). The first clause excludes non-chaotic deterministic processes; the second clause excludes non-cognitive chaotic processes such as the Brownian motion in a nice hot cup of tea.

I like this definition because it doesn't rely on "true randomness" (which as far as I can tell is just a way of saying "effects that originate outside the current level of description") or a "central executive" that gives orders to the rest of the brain; it allows the brain to be what it clearly is - a decentralised, modular, subsumptive system with chaotic (i.e. deterministic but unpredictable) dynamics.

Re:Its pretty simple, really

[cromar]

Not really. There're plenty of things we don't understand to be deterministic. At least not yet. (E.g. the collapse of wave functions.) That's not to say they are deterministic, but don't go jumping to conclusions.

Re:Jedoc

[crashfrog]

Besides, I feel a lot smarter as an an atheist, taking comfort in the fact that the greatest minds agree with me.

Really? As an atheist, I feel a lot smarter simply being right. (In all likelihood.)

What is "free will" anyway?

[Rui del-Negro]

The article is sketchy (to say the least) about the details of this test. Were people told they were going to have to press a button? How long were they told to wait before pressing it? Did they start thinking about pressing it before they were even asked to do it? Was any of the test subjects a Jedi?

Just because you start thinking about making a "random" decision a few seconds in advance, that does not mean you cannot change your mind a fraction of a second before, if something else happens (ex., a sudden external stimulus). In fact, the article points this out:

"Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."

I think it's pretty obvious that people can react to external stimuli in less than seven seconds, including stimuli that they had no way of predicting.

Anyway, unless our brains have some sort of mystical particles, they are essentially very complex and highly parallel (but still fundamentally deterministic) electro-chemical computers, with an insane amount of inputs. So this really boils down to consciousness and a concept of present.

What this study shows is that decision-making isn't an instant process (did anyone think it was?), that we are not conscious of the early stages of that process (did anyone think we were?) and that there is a significant subconscious stage to random decisions, possibly because our brain tries to "validate" its decisions before submitting them to the "conscious" mind, and random ones have a low confidence level, making them go through extra sanity checks.

Subconscious: Tell Mr. Conscious to hit the left button!
Mr. Conscious's P.A.: Did you say something or was that just random noise?
Sub.: I said "tell Mr. Conscious to hit the left button"!
P.A.: Why should I tell him that?
Sub.: Because he asked me to make a random decision.
P.A.: Not good enough. Mr. Conscious will need assurance that that is the ideal course of action. Please produce the complete paper trail that led you to that decision.
Sub.: What paper trail? This is a *random* decision, you idiot.
P.A.: I'm afraid you will at least have to find some evidence that hitting the left button will not have any negative effects. If Mr. Conscious simply followed every random advice he got, how would he justify his salary?
Sub.: Look, the guy conducting the study hit the button just now and nothing happened to him, right? It's safe. Just hit it.
P.A.: Well, alright. The left button, you said?
Sub.: Yes!
P.A.: I'll transmit that to Mr. Conscious.
Sub.: About bloody time, too. Wasted seven seconds of my life.

P.S. - Several studies have shown that top athletes don't have particularly faster reflexes than other people; they just do the "Jedi trick" of starting to react before something happens. How can they react to something that hasn't happened? Experience. Their brain knows what are the 5 or 6 most likely developments, and it starts to plan ahead for all of them. When the times comes to send the decision to the body, the actual action is already buffered. On top of that, frequently we react to indicators rather than to the event itself (ex., in tennis the other player's body position will generally allow you to guess how he's going to serve before he hits the ball; if you wait for the ball to be hit, you won't get to it on time). To put it in computer terms: speculative execution and intelligent branch prediction.

P.P.S. - In Stanislaw Lem's short story "137 seconds" a news-gathering computer develops the ability to predict reality 137 seconds in advance, so this brain scanner still has a long way to go. ;-)

That's not what free will is

[SourGrapes]

No article I've ever seen on here relating to "Free will" has seemed to really understand anything about what the concept actually means. Probably the scientists involved in the studies or the journalists writing the articles didn't take enough philosophy in university. Nobody thinks that free will means that some of our actions are uncaused. Nobody asserts that free will requires that all our actions be fundamentally unpredictable; behaving in a way that follows no rational pattern is actually known as insanity, which generally is understood to mean the person behaving that way has something interfering with his or her ability to make free will decisions. It's also important to realize that not every decision we make is considered to be a free will decision, even by proponents of free will. Choosing vanilla ice cream over chocolate is not a matter of free will if I just like vanilla better -- that's freedom of preference, and I suspect that's closer to what this experiment was actually measuring. Making an arbitrary decision between one button and another has nothing to do with free will. A free will decision is one where we cause ourselves to do something that we may or may not prefer, as a result of ascribing a superior value to following the principle that would command such a decision. So (continuing with the ice cream example) choosing vanilla over chocolate is not a free will decision; choosing not to get ice cream at all, even though you want to, but because you're a vegan for moral reasons and that principle overrides your strong natural preference -- that's a free will decision. They should try measuring that.

Re:Determinism and Free Will

[msuarezalvarez]

The only chance we have of any free will at all is in quantum weirdness which is not much free will to speak of Here's a thought experiment I've had in the past - I'd be interested in more mathematically inclined folks chiming in on whether it is valid or not. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem states that any sufficiently complex formal system cannot be both consistant and complete. Now if we were to assume a deterministic world, like Einstein and Newton believed in, then our universe is a consistant formal system, where the state of the universe is a statement in system, and the laws of physics are the rules for deriving other valid statements.

Where did you get this "the universe is a consistent formal system" from? Do you know what a formal system is, in the context of GÃdel's theorem?

Between the Mind and the Monkey. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

As I understand things. . .

The human monkey is a vehicle for the soul. Left to its own devices, it is an automatic, albeit complex machine which is a sort of bridge between states of existence. --That is, souls grow and need work to develop, and the human monkey is the vehicle for this process.

If there is no exertion of the Will, then the human monkey basically is just a reaction machine, responding to stimulus and being generally predictable in its behavior as demonstrated by the neurologists in the article. The Spirit sits between the mind and the body. If the spirit is not exercised, then the monkey is happy to run on autopilot, usually being selfish in nature, seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and thinking of no other individual other than itself unless in a manner to better attain pleasure and avoid pain. The psychopath is just a broken monkey which has learned how to feed on others but with a failure of its own survival circuits. (Psychopaths are very good at feeding, but their actions are ultimately self-destructive. Regular monkeys are more balanced and know how to survive better).

With the introduction of the soul, which as it grows learns how to care and feel for others, the whole equation becomes more complex and more interesting.

When you, as a soul, choose to be aware of the flow of instructions between mind and body, and decide to act in a manner different than that which would be automatic, then you are exercising your Will. This takes effort and the monkey and mind push back because it is no longer acting along the path of least resistance, as it were. But the monkey will obey, (that's what it's there to do), and through continued exertion, the spirit and soul grow and become strong and increasingly self-aware.

A note of interest. . . The point of alchemy is not, as I see it, about turning lead into gold; I think those are just metaphors for the creation and purification of the soul; the effort and resistance of exerting the Will creates 'heat'. In the various alchemical texts, repeated heating of the 'crucible' are described. With repeated heating, the soul is purified until enlightenment comes within reach.

Anyway, it seems to me that if one pays attention, then one can become ever more aware of the mind/body communication, (during the seven seconds indicated by the experiment under discussion?) Perhaps I am fooling myself in this, but that's the sensation I seem to experience when I observe my own mind in its workings.

-FL

Re:that's not really true in philosophy

[Lemmy Caution]

I'm a former student of Searle. I'm pretty familiar with the state of Anglo-American philosophy. I've simply come to the conclusion that, while certain thinkers such as Putnam, Austin, Strawson, Ayers, Feyeraband and such have produced interesting work, that the analytical tradition is not really the mainstream of philosophy, and that it is increasingly consigned to a "god of the gaps" position by its ahistoricism and positivist posture (even when its content isn't positivist, its rhetoric is.)

Too often there are claims made that should be made empirically, such as Dreyfus' insistence that computers could never become competent chess players, or accounts of choice that assume rationality (that is, the conscious or symbolic representation of possible outcomes before choice.) There is a profound reluctance to do real metaphysics, and so much of the analytic work strikes me as moving chairs around the desk of the Titanic.

Why aren't there thinkers of the scope and profundity of Hegel, Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty? Why is Deleuze's reading of Hume so much more compelling than those of any of the anglo critics? When did philosophy become so timid and twee?

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:Jedoc

[Weedlekin]

"It was by my free will that I avoided the situation that he is in"

This is only true if every human in a society is born in identical circumstances, all are biologically similar enough to be considered equivalent according to the standards of that society, and there is no possibility of random events favouring some individuals over others.

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

[Adaptux]

The only reason people believe in free will is that much of religion makes no sense without it.

I don't know what precisely you mean when you refer to "much of religion", but it can't be the Christian faith as described in the Bible, which makes very clear that belief in "free will" is not part of the Christian faith, see e.g. Exodus 9:16 and Romans 9:17ff.

However moral responsibility for one's actions is an essential part of what the Bible teaches. You can be morally responsible for what you do even if your will isn't totally, entirely free. Such moral responsibility requires only the ability to consciously veto proposed actions that the unconscious part of the mind is proposing, and this veto ability has in fact been experimentally observed, See Benjamin Libet: "Do We Have Free Will?", Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 8--9, 1999, pp. 47--57.

Therefore, free will and moral responsibilty are not the same thing. It is true that some people have been preaching a version of Chrstian religion which is based more on philosophical assertions like "free will" than on what the Bible actually says, but that is not a valid argument against religion. It only demonstrates the foolishness of listening to people who try to base religion on human philosophy instead of focusing on what the Bible says.

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.

Uh, what?

[pclminion]

First, just because there is an inherent lag between the action of the brain and our conscious awareness of that action, doesn't mean the action is not willful. Second, even if the action was being planned by the unconscious brain, again, how does that make the action unwillful? I am not conscious of every calculation my brain performs when I decide to lift my coffee cup to my lips, but this does not mean I did not consciously decide to do it.

Our brains are chemical devices. Our sense of self has evolved to mask the fact that we are actually "lagging behind reality" by a little bit, because being aware of the lag would serve no purpose except to distract us. That a scientist could leap from this to the "insight" that we are not in control of our own actions is ludicrous.