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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)

#51

Post by kbelder »

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?

Possibly it's a chaotic deterministic system, which means it can't be precisely predicted by any means short of a full simulation.

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

#52

Post by laszlokorte »

kbelder wrote: post #51
netizen-936824 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Possibly it's a chaotic deterministic system, which means it can't be precisely predicted by any means short of a full simulation.

As I wrote in a comment below I guess the feeling of a free will is just the observation that nobody else and not even oneself kan predict ones decision until it is made even because the decision process is chaotic.

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

#53

Post by dstroot »

1. There is a processing delay whereby sensed data reaches the brain and the brain interprets it and creates “reality”. Thus your brain projects the future and is actually telling you what reality might be x msec in the future. This may relate to an experiment like this. 2. There is a view that way back when we very early in development (think early life) that if you ate things around you and they moved perhaps you would be more successful if you interpolate your position and their position/trajectory and thus could move towards them to consume them. Scale that idea up and perhaps it’s what led to a consciousness and a sense of “I”. If “I” move towards “you” I can eat you. This line of thought actually links consciousness and free will.

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

#54

Post by finghin »

dvt wrote: post #25
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.

The commenter's point isn't that philosophers generally endorse dualism, it's that even those who claim to be monist materialists, etc. tend to possess latently dualist assumptions or conceptions of what consciousness is. Chalmers in particular pokes at this issues and challenges physicalists to either totally reimagine their understanding of the mind (cf. Dennett among others), which is mired in semantic and other difficulties, or perish.

Moreover, dualism is certainly no longer dying (or dead)—this is confirmed both by reading the literature and surveying departments. It's certainly not as unusual as it once was.

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

#55

Post by analog31 »

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 wonder if the notion of free will owes itself to theology, notably the question of God's responsibility for evil, and similar puzzles.

Maybe philosophical free will is a solution in search of a non-theological problem.

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

#56

Post by finghin »

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 never understood this line of argument. It is difficult to see why something being hard to define makes it nebulous. The use of the concept of free will (which is incredibly intuitive—try asking a stranger if they have it, and they will certainly be able to answer) is only in this rather useless discussion associated with physical determinism (which is certainly not being thought of by the mentioned stranger).

Can you define a "decision" either? That is a word you use effortlessly and apparently without irony in the same breath as free will, which shows you really do understand what we are talking about when we talk about it. It is hard to pin down but that doesn't stop it from being at least linguistically related to other, more grounded and—I must emphasise—_extremely_ basic concepts of human life and behaviour, let alone psychology.

Of course, some people in a particularly zealous "scientific" mood feign ignorance about folk-psychology ideas, even basic ones like "decisions". But this is as self-defeating, really, as solipsism (at least, I have never known anyone who simply did not make decisions ever).

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

#57

Post by myWindoonn »

chr1 wrote: post #50
peterburkimsher wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The late John H Conway deduced a consistency proof that if people have free will, so do elementary particles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem He discusses it more in the following lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmx2tpcdKZY&feature=youtu.be... Free will doesn't mean "I can do anything." I'm not good at singing, so I can't ever be a famous rock star. Free will is to make a choice between a fin…

> If numbers cannot have infinite strings of digits, then the future can never be perfectly preordained. Why? A simple cellular automaton like Rule 30 doesn't use any infinite data but it's future is perfectly preordained. But being preordained doesn't mean that there can't be free will. Because having the initial state, and being able to predict later state are very different. Even simplest cellular automata are com…

Nobody in the simulation you've described would actually make any choices; the choices are predetermined, baked into the heap of the CA/TM being used to drive the computation. Conway's Free Will concerns situations where the choices cannot be predetermined, as a consequence of the Kochen-Specker lemma.

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

#58

Post by taneq »

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…

Exactly! All of the "YOU don't actually choose to move your hand, it's THIS PART OF YOUR BRAIN" stuff makes no sense. What do you think 'you' are if not your brain plus your body?

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

#59

Post by taneq »

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…

> Can someone actually provide a definition of free will?

No, never! We must just argue endlessly whether we do or don't have it.

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

#60

Post by voxl »

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…

Given any decision, you have t amount of time to consider how to decide it. Suppose everything the same, if you were given `t + k` time but with no other external input, could you choose something different?

If you could, you have free will (internal inputs _only_ can augment your decision).

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