Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 257 posts

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

#91

Post by coldtea »

analog31 wrote: post #55
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.

Do you "wonder", or were you just mechanistically made to write this sentence, due to a deterministic chain of events?

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

Well, it's also a solution for the empirical experience we all share, that we're not just automata, but that we e.g. weight decisions, and so on.

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

#92

Post by coldtea »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #33
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 am also of the opinion that the concept is either incoherent or meaningless.

Are you really "of the opinion", or you were just made to write that as an automaton, due to a deterministic causual chain of events?

In which case, you don't really have an opinion, any more than the way a dead frog jerks his legs when we apply electricity.

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

#93

Post by montenegrohugo »

To me it seems like we should separate the notion of being conscious with the notion of having free will. Everyone is conscious and knows this; it is trivially easy to prove (at least for one self. I don't know if all you guys reading this are [1]).

However, how do we know if we have free will? Assuming we can even land on a common definition of free will, how do we prove it? I think the "intuitive" notion people seem to have of free will is that they themselves have agency on their own actions. Important here is the distinction most people seem to draw between themselves as decision-makers and themselves as action-takers. They do not see this as the same. Action-taking happens in meatspace, but decision-making is thought to be more nebulous and ethereal. If the suggestion is made that decision-making might be solely a result of a multitude of factors in meatspace (genetics, upbringing, mood, etc...), then that suggestion is emphatically rejected by many (if not most).

However, decision-making cannot be free from meatspace, because then it cannot be anything more than based on chance. I wrote about this in length a while ago here [2], but the basic concept is that if there is no causation, then the alternative can only be randomness. Which is deeply unsatisfying to everyone. Einstein's dice quote comes to mind (even if it was on a completely different topic).

Libet's flawed experiment is not really relevant to the conversation. Whether free will exists or not, it is more an experiment on the nature of consciousness than free will, and thus cannot really offer any meaningful answers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

[2] https://www.hugomontenegro.com/blog/the-absurdity-of-free-wi...

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

#94

Post by coldtea »

taneq wrote: post #59
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.

Well, if we don't have it, then it's not up to us to chose between providing a definition or merely arguing about having it or not...

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

#95

Post by esperent »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #15
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 modern dualist would view this as hardware vs software. If all were able to measure were voltage levels on a CPU, you would say all computing is inevitably bound to changing electrical voltages/currents. However, you would miss out on all the math and algorithms and the beauty and richness that is software. A dualist might see the “soul” as the software that the physical brain executes. Of course, if all yo…

> A dualist might see the “soul” as the software that the physical brain executes.

I don't think so (although there are multiple definitions of "dualist").

In the software/hardware analogy, the software still exists, physically. It's described directly in electrical impulses going though the hardware. For dualists, the soul is strictly non-physical.

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

#96

Post by fungiblecog »

I’m not sure why free will is considered such a mystery. In a completely deterministic universe my actions are determined unambiguously by a) the current state of my brain and b) the inputs I receive from my senses. Asking if I could do something other that what I actually chose to do makes no sense.

On the other hand, if I later find myself in a near identical situation I may choose a different action as a result of my brain now having a different state (that’s what learning is)

The opposite of determinism isn’t “free will” it’s random behaviour and who wants their decisions to be random?

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

#97

Post by Thorrez »

wruza wrote: post #12
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…

I’m interested in topic. Can you please expand a little or point to a book/idea that does? The “reason and truth” part specifically. Why truth would be invalid if there exist only complex finite automata? Can’t complex enough entities reason about this system while being a part of it, coincidentally being able to do that without contradiction?

Does it make sense for an automaton to say "I will search for truth. I am searching for truth. I have found truth." when that automaton has been preprogrammed to say that and had no choice in the matter?

Here's a version of this argument: https://youtu.be/BsAEj6UsrI0?t=297

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

#98

Post by colechristensen »

There are two issues not mentioned which I think are most important.

First, accuracy was bad. 60% or less. Barely better than a flipped coin, quite possibly just a null result or simply bad statistics (cherry picking data, retrospective search for a positive result).

Second, there is what you say you are testing with a study and the test you actually do. You have three things, the subject deciding to move, the subject having a brain activity pattern, and the subject interpreting the time on a clock.

For the same data collected you could write a different paper on the accuracy of a person’s visual preception of time when compared to their making a conscious choice to move. No connection at all with the free will business, just how well a person can report two separate mental phenomena in time.

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

#99

Post by finghin »

joefourier wrote: post #65
finghin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can define a decision: the outcome of a process that selects between multiple options. The process can be conscious, unconscious or a computer programme. Semantics can be tiresome but if you are unable to define a concept and must resort to “try asking a stranger” then how am I supposed to know what you are referring to? You could be referring to the legal definition of free will, the compatibilist one as espoused…

Once again there is simply no physical grounding for the term "option". That word doesn't pick up a referent in the material world; its meaning is accrued from social and behavioural human intuition.

I actually am quite interested in this topic so I don't find it tiresome. I just find it important to note that defining terms very rigidly at the outset of inquiry can often mean that you are the one diverging from the general meaning of the word, which makes the result of that inquiry a lot less beneficial.

There are many theories of meaning, but there are obvious problems with the definability criterion for meaning. Does it suffice for one speaker to be able to define their terms, or must all utterers have to be able to define them? If the former, this says nothing about the use of the word free of the definition's restrictions; if the former, someone who is perhaps intelligent enough to speak but not to define their terms cannot speak with meaning (which is absurd).

My own view coincides with (later) Wittgenstein. Meaning is determined by use, and there are too many ways to use a phrase in too many contexts to provide an exhaustive definition, perhaps ever. I suspect W. would tell you to imagine a primitive language with no concept of definition at all. Do their utterances have meaning?

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

#100

Post by gwd »

analog31 wrote: post #55
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.

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

I don't think it's a theological problem; I think it's the way we think about things every day.

Consider four situations:

1. You walk into the kitchen and a pan which you'd placed on top of the fridge at a precarious angle falls on your head.

2. You walk into the kitchen, and your spouse, who honestly thinks you're a burglar who has broken into the house, hits you on the head with a pan. When they realizes it's you, they apologize.

3. You're standing in the kitchen, having an argument with your spouse. They get very angry, grab a pan, and smack you in the head with it.

4. You're standing in the kitchen, having an argument with your spouse. They get very angry, and you see their eyes briefly flit to the pan; but instead they calm themselves down and refrain from hitting you with it.

Although the injury to your body may be the same in cases 1-3, our attitudes towards these things are completely different. In the case of #1, the pan indeed had no choice but to fall on your head; it cannot be blamed in the least. In the case of #2, a human being did it, but they had a good justification for it. In the case of #3, we say your spouse is at fault and blame them. In the case of #4, we recognize that your spouse resisted the temptation to hit you, and honor them for their restraint (or at least say they were doing what they should have).

And if that was you whose eyes flitted over to the pan, you are aware of a struggle, and of making a choice to lash out or show restraint.

But if the universe is a combination of determinism and randomness, then what's the actual difference between #1 and #3? All of them are physical processes which, given the circumstances, really couldn't have been any different.

In other words, free will is not some arcane theological concept: a description both of our daily experience of making moral choices ourselves, and our expectations and attitudes towards others.

Post reply on HN