Free Will and Determinism

[cadbrowser]

Ahhhh, I see what you are saying in reference to Humphy now. Ok...going to re-read thru that again with my "ahh" moment now.

Really? I make sense? Shut my mouth and call me dumb!

[Ziggy Stardust]

Shut my mouth and call me dumb!

Heh, I already did, actually.

[cadbrowser]

LOL...well, you actually called me stupid...but who's counting? Right?

[Scepticalguy]

THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF DETERRENCE ASSUMES THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CHOOSE. If people do not have the capacity to choose, THEN YOU CANNOT DETER THEIR ACTIONS, BECAUSE THEY ARE OUTSIDE OF THEIR CONTROL.

I would actually disagree with you here, while it is true the knowledge of a consequence (among other things) is going to be a factor in the decision making process it does not mean that that we have total control over that process (free will).

After so many lab tests* on this subject regarding a persons voluntary responses (like choosing to push a left button or right button for example) being detected half a second to sometimes seconds before they become consciously aware of the choice they are going to make.

So at a time you are consciously unaware of what you are going to choose your brain has already made the decision.

*Benjamin Libet.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/106/3/623

*Itzhak Fried.

http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii ... 7310010822

[Ziggy Stardust]

I would actually disagree with you here, while it is true the knowledge of a consequence (among other things) is going to be a factor in the decision making process it does not mean that that we have total control over that process (free will).

I actually agree with you, as free will is almost certainly not a dualistic "on/off" phenomenon. However, Humphraegal seemed to be operating under that presumption, so I was going off the internal logic of his own arguments.

After so many lab tests* on this subject regarding a persons voluntary responses (like choosing to push a left button or right button for example) being detected half a second to sometimes seconds before they become consciously aware of the choice they are going to make.

So at a time you are consciously unaware of what you are going to choose your brain has already made the decision.

This is patently false.

Libet's results have been pretty thoroughly refuted by almost 20 years of neuroscience research. They simply aren't accurate. See here, here, and here. In fact, I can even go on about how even Libet himself did not agree with the "pop sci" analysis of his research, but that's a story for another day. There really isn't a gap between consciousness of an action and the action itself; that said, there are ways to subconsciously manipulate the results of actions. For example, transcranial magnetic stimulation has been shown to "trick" people into using their non-dominant hand to perform a task without them realizing it. However, saying that this somehow violates the concept of free will is about as scientifically accurate as saying that people with Tourette's or epileptics lack free will, or that optical illusions are actual violations of the laws of physics. That is, there is a difference between "involuntary" and "unvoluntary" action, where would necessarily violate one's sense of agency while the other does not.

[Scepticalguy]

This is patently false.

It is disputed but not patently false.

Libet's results have been pretty thoroughly refuted by almost 20 years of neuroscience research. They simply aren't accurate. See here, here, and here. In fact, I can even go on about how even Libet himself did not agree with the "pop sci" analysis of his research, but that's a story for another day.

I would check out the tests done by Itzhak Fried

http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii ... 7310010822

and Masao Matsuhashi, Mark Hallett

http://www.mendeley.com/research/the-ti ... to-move-2/

As they deal with the timing issue and are pretty much up to date and Matsuhashi and Hallet concluded that the feeling of the conscious intention to move does not cause movement genesis; both the feeling of intention and the movement itself are the result of unconscious processing.

There really isn't a gap between consciousness of an action and the action itself; that said, there are ways to subconsciously manipulate the results of actions. For example, transcranial magnetic stimulation has been shown to "trick" people into using their non-dominant hand to perform a task without them realizing it. However, saying that this somehow violates the concept of free will is about as scientifically accurate as saying that people with Tourette's or epileptics lack free will, or that optical illusions are actual violations of the laws of physics. That is, there is a difference between "involuntary" and "unvoluntary" action, where would necessarily violate one's sense of agency while the other does not.

I suppose it depends of what you define as free will, however as for myself at this point while i find the study interesting i remain personally a compatibilist until i get more information via a lot more studies.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It is disputed but not patently false.

I know very few neuroscientists who buy into that interpretation of Libet's data. But it's not a point worth arguing, I guess.

I would check out the tests done by Itzhak Fried

http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii ... 7310010822

Yuck, what a terribly written paper. Anyway, I honestly would not put much faith into this publication. I read through it, and unless I missed something, there doesn't appear to be any control group, which is odd considering the test subjects were epileptics. In addition, this little line caught my attention:

Due to the differences in the number and location of electrodes, there is considerable variability across subjects.

which immediately puts a lot of the data into question. On top of that, looking at the authors and their institutions, this appear to be a purely clinical study. While clinical studies do have their place, often the methodology behind them is less than perfect. For the same reason that scientists aren't necessarily doctors, doctors aren't necessarily scientists.

and Masao Matsuhashi, Mark Hallett

http://www.mendeley.com/research/the-ti ... to-move-2/

As they deal with the timing issue and are pretty much up to date and Matsuhashi and Hallet concluded that the feeling of the conscious intention to move does not cause movement genesis; both the feeling of intention and the movement itself are the result of unconscious processing.

This is not quite their conclusion. As they state,

Intention, as examined here, is not a thought that is planned or
scheduled long before the action ... We think it best to understand movement genesis and intention as separate phenomena, both measurable. Movement genesis begins at a level beyond awareness and over time gradually becomes accessible to consciousness as the perception of intention.

It is their hypothesis that the perception of intention is simply the conscious manifestation of movement genesis.

However, it is worth nothing that the primary attention of their study was on the bereitschaftspotential (BP), or premotor potential, which is a manifestation of of cortical contribution to the pre-motor planning of volitional movement. As they note in that paper,

Our result showed that the onset of BP appears to be independent of the time when the intention to move becomes detectable. The temporal order suggests that the late BP starts after T time and is not responsible for the formation of intention. It is thought to be closely related to movement genesis (Shibasaki & Hallett, 2006) but it is not the final stage of execution as one can still cancel the forthcoming movement at the time of BP2.

In other words, their study pretty much just showed that there was a spike in electrical activity in the brain prior to a subject's self-reported intention to move. Most neuroscientists would disagree that this electrical activity is necessarily a sign of movement genesis. In fact, it may be nothing more than the spike in brain activity one gets when one starts "paying attention" to something, or it may be sensory input (it is a well known phenomenon that before you act to, say, pick up an object, there is a huge spike in activity in your brain in your visual processing fields ... it is actually a very complicated conceptual task to understand an object's size, shape, and placement relative to yourself, and to conform your hand to "use" the object in an appropriate manner). Here is a good review paper covering the inconsistencies in these findings.

[Scepticalguy]

In other words, their study pretty much just showed that there was a spike in electrical activity in the brain prior to a subject's self-reported intention to move. Most neuroscientists would disagree that this electrical activity is necessarily a sign of movement genesis. In fact, it may be nothing more than the spike in brain activity one gets when one starts "paying attention" to something, or it may be sensory input (it is a well known phenomenon that before you act to, say, pick up an object, there is a huge spike in activity in your brain in your visual processing fields ... it is actually a very complicated conceptual task to understand an object's size, shape, and placement relative to yourself, and to conform your hand to "use" the object in an appropriate manner). Here is a good review paper covering the inconsistencies in these findings.

I find this subject fascinating so thanks for the link i will take a look through it.