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The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#21

Post by cortesoft »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #9
cortesoft wrote: post #8

The idea that this experiment would disprove free will seems to rely on thinking that the 'conscious' mind is somehow separate from your physical brain, and free will is the act of your non-physical consciousness telling your body to move. This seems like nonsense to me. Your brain waves are the not caused by thoughts, they ARE your thoughts. Of course they are present before you are conscious of your decision to mov…

This article seems kind of like noting that a web server returns a response to the caller before logging it.

I would say it is more like “we noticed the data was present in memory before the server started sending its response”

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#22

Post by dvt »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

I find attempts to disprove free will incredibly boring. If there is no free will, then everything the investigators wrote and did is the result of some deterministic (or random) process which doesn’t have anything to do with logic or evidence and whether or not people accept the conclusion is also independent of reason and logic. Without at least the illusion of free will, there cannot be any discussion or argument,…

> Without at least the illusion of free will, there cannot be any discussion or argument, as that presupposes free will and an ability to change one’s mind in response to evidence.

I don't think this follows, as logic (i.e. the "rules" of argument) aren't predicated on any notion of free will. You can still have good arguments, bad arguments, right arguments, and wrong arguments, in a perfectly deterministic universe.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#23

Post by rslonik »

How one can prove a choice? Once you acted on this or that you simply cannot go back in time and choose something else.

If you cannot change what you choose, there was never a choice. There was only one path (previously defined OR randomly defined), the one that you “chose”.

“I’ve could chose different” is only fiction at this point.

Choice would be so hard to describe. All animals have can choose? (what brain function makes choice available for a being?) Are we “special” animals? (even worse)

Free will is an ilusion and I think believing otherwise is like believing in god. An attempt to justify our lives.

But yes, the experiment in question seems totally flawed.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#24

Post by netizen-936824 »

cortesoft wrote: post #8

The idea that this experiment would disprove free will seems to rely on thinking that the 'conscious' mind is somehow separate from your physical brain, and free will is the act of your non-physical consciousness telling your body to move. This seems like nonsense to me. Your brain waves are the not caused by thoughts, they ARE your thoughts. Of course they are present before you are conscious of your decision to mov…

That may be true, but I think our current conception of free will necessitates some sort of nondeterministic mechanism. Our brains, being physical systems, appear to be entirely deterministic.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#25

Post by dvt »

mcguire wrote: post #11

This kind of research shows how deeply dualism is ingrained in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Picture this: You decide to move your hand, then you move your hand. An observer using fMRI or somesuch notes that they observe neural activity before you report making the decision, and they can even predict where and how you are going to move from observations of neural behavior. If you are a materialist, how is th…

> how deeply dualism is ingrained in philosophy and the cognitive sciences.

It's not, though. Dualism has been a dying breed for at least a century now. Academics like Chalmers are rare outliers.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#26

Post by netizen-936824 »

twodave wrote: post #4

This sort of debate always struck me as nonsense. If our actions are not derived of our own free will, but just exist as a small part of nature, then if you follow that thread far enough you’ll understand that all reason and truth would also be invalid, being just the effect to some coincidental cause. This incidentally would render theories about the subject of free will invalid as well. Thus if there is no free wil…

The brain is a deterministic system. We understand the dynamics of deterministic systems from the study of physics, so what is free will in terms of a system with an already decided outcome?

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#27

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

joefourier wrote: post #10

Can someone actually provide a definition of free will? Apart from the legalistic definition - the ability to make decisions without being coerced by third parties or external factors - any other meaning seems to require dualism, the existence of some external force that can affect the brain and make decisions with some magical non-causal mechanism, which is to me a rather illogical concept. It seems it is just a neb…

I think there's quite a bit of historical philosophical, and theological, debate on the topic.

Boils down to "there is an immutable, foreordained destiny" vs. "each actor chooses freely and history is the sum of those vectors".

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#28

Post by AgentME »

mcguire wrote: post #11

This kind of research shows how deeply dualism is ingrained in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Picture this: You decide to move your hand, then you move your hand. An observer using fMRI or somesuch notes that they observe neural activity before you report making the decision, and they can even predict where and how you are going to move from observations of neural behavior. If you are a materialist, how is th…

I think a lot of people get mixed up by the idea that "physics determines your actions", as if that's contradictory to "you determine your actions". I love the way https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NEeW7eSXThPz7o4Ne/thou-art-p... puts it, that "you are within physics" necessarily bridges these two explanations.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#29

Post by maest »

joefourier wrote: post #10

Can someone actually provide a definition of free will? Apart from the legalistic definition - the ability to make decisions without being coerced by third parties or external factors - any other meaning seems to require dualism, the existence of some external force that can affect the brain and make decisions with some magical non-causal mechanism, which is to me a rather illogical concept. It seems it is just a neb…

I don't think you can define free-will in the absence of a definition for causality, and I have yet to see that.

Re: The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)

#30

Post by kanzenryu2 »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #26
twodave wrote: post #4

This sort of debate always struck me as nonsense. If our actions are not derived of our own free will, but just exist as a small part of nature, then if you follow that thread far enough you’ll understand that all reason and truth would also be invalid, being just the effect to some coincidental cause. This incidentally would render theories about the subject of free will invalid as well. Thus if there is no free wil…

The brain is a deterministic system. We understand the dynamics of deterministic systems from the study of physics, so what is free will in terms of a system with an already decided outcome?

Quantum Physics has perfectly random outcomes
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