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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)

#141

Post by red75prime »

smeej wrote: post #67
taneq wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Or for that matter, what existence do you imagine "you" have apart from your body? Even the distinction between brain and body is artificial. Your brain isn't "you" in some special way that the rest of your body isn't. The whole unity is "you."

> The whole unity is "you."

Why don't you aware of each and every neuronal spike, movement of neurotransmitters and so on?

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

#142

Post by gwd »

analog31 wrote: post #137
gwd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

In cases 1-3, the outputs are all the same (getting hit wit a pan) but the inputs are different. So it still could be that my spouse's behavior is a function of the surrounding circumstances. Another analogy is two primitive societies that are both experiencing repeated episodes where gum is found on the floor of buses. In one society, a person is found to be likely to have done it, and is forced to make a speech at…

But you haven't said what is qualitatively different about them. Consider instead a teacup which falls off the table when I bump it while trying to pick up something underneath the table instead. So we have three different "setups" and "triggers:

A. Setup: Pan it precarious position on fridge. Trigger: My footsteps walking into the kitchen vibrating the floor, vibrating the fridge, loosening the pan and causing it to fall.

B. Setup: Teacup in precarious position on the edge of the table. Trigger: Me bumping the table leg, loosening the teacup and causing it to fall.

C. Setup: The entire life history of my spouse (including perhaps things I've said and done). Trigger: Something I said, triggering various thoughts and responses in my spouse's brain, causing them to want to hit me.

We class A and B as the same thing (inanimate objects with no choice). Should we classify C the same way?

Free will to me is a bit like "dark matter" or "dark energy": I don't know exactly what it is, but when I try to "do the math" without it, things don't add up.

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

#143

Post by GoblinSlayer »

blue_potato wrote: post #75
joefourier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the outcome of a process that selects between multiple options Doesn't this just kick the can down the road? Can you define it without "select", "choose", and other synonyms?

Reduction of the number of options to one.

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

#144

Post by GoblinSlayer »

finghin wrote: post #99
joefourier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Option is an idea, a referent is the state of the brain, like for any other idea.

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

#145

Post by byecomputer »

amelius wrote: post #128
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? Can someone provide a definition of a "individual"? Aren't we all just a big soup of atoms, where the boundary between two individuals is made arbitrarily based on convenience? Perhaps we should solve this problem first before we start talking about free will. Because when viewed like this, a bunch of atoms could have more than one free will.

Yeah, but we're a bunch of unionized atoms. They all vote on what I should do and then I execute their will by going in the kitchen and making spaghetti or whatever.

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

#147

Post by WhompingWindows »

taneq wrote: post #58
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?

There is no "you" or "self", that's the illusion. The "self" which exercises "free will", that's just another psychologically constructed phenomenon, just like thoughts and ideas and images. If "you" choose to move your hand, it's really just the environment, your senses, and your brain dictating that movement, your sense of self is there as a feeling. Meditation reveals that this is not necessary, this sense of self can be dispelled if you simply investigate it with focused attention.

The above example is not a good one, it's a bit of a straw man actually. The better one is this: pick a film and think of it in your mind...which did you select? Monsters Inc? Animal House? There is no "you" selecting these films, its just your memory module skimming through films you've heard of and seen, then some "preference" circuit is acting to decide which film to "pick" for this exercise.

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

#148

Post by GoblinSlayer »

pessimizer wrote: post #117
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still means you are the proper cause of your actions. The preceding history exists too, but isn't very relevant to the process of choice.

No, it makes it very difficult to locate any boundary between "you" and the preceding history. Dualism is when you simply declare a border. edit: If everything is "within physics," saying that the preceding history isn't relevant to the process of choice is a declaration that cause isn't relevant to effect. It's an arbitrary assignment for culpability's sake, which is a moral judgment, not a physical or logical argum…

If you don't assign different relevance to different causes, you can't say that you are a less relevant cause than the preceding history. Relevance is a practical requirement, without it you, say, can't improve Tesla autopilot, because the cause of the crashes is big bang, and you can't do anything to fix that cause indeed.

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

#149

Post by WhompingWindows »

amelius wrote: post #128
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? Can someone provide a definition of a "individual"? Aren't we all just a big soup of atoms, where the boundary between two individuals is made arbitrarily based on convenience? Perhaps we should solve this problem first before we start talking about free will. Because when viewed like this, a bunch of atoms could have more than one free will.

I'll provide some definitions, from Oxford:

individual: "single; separate"; "of or for a particular person"; "a single human being as distinct from a group, class, or family"

free will: "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion"

From these definitions, we must question whether a single human, Homo Sapiens, can possibly act at their own discretion, without fate or necessity as the cause.

The history of studying free-will is extremely lengthy, everything non-biological that can be said has likely been said. We've been blessed by modern science to have a lot more understanding of organisms and neurology, so we know the "inner workings" better than Descartes or Locke or any of the old Christian theorists.

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

#150

Post by WhompingWindows »

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…

You claim this "thread" leads to all reason and truth being invalid, which is overreaching, to put it plainly. How do you reckon that all mathematics, the periodic table of elements, the planetary bodies in our solar system, are suddenly invalidated because humans weren't deciding to study them, but were merely following natural behavioral patterns? If we don't have free will, does that invalidate all aliens' civilizations study of universal laws too?

In my view, humans are curious creatures whose natural inclination to study their surroundings led them to discover scientific truths, which exist on a higher plane than our mere thought. Combine this with societal support of scientific activity, and we have a burst of discovery of truth and reason which was hitherto un-revealed to us. Our "free will" and "decision" has nothing to do with 2+2=4 or that Mars is red due to rusty iron, these are simply factual scientific observations which have stood the test of time in science: no theories have invalidated them.

So, our free will is not necessary for the physical laws of the universe to exist. They existed before us and will exist after us. So where do we lose all reason and truth by being merely curious, as opposed to having a homunculous man in our heads telling us what to do at each moment?

Look into meditation practice if you still believe in the switchboard operator pulling all the strings in your mind. I challenge you to find free will in yourself, find something you're actually genuinely choosing. Can you explain why free will allows the random thoughts that crop up in your mind constantly? Those random thoughts dictate our behaviors, the actions of humans; but where are they from? They're random nervous firings that our physical body, physical tongue, physical fingers, are all acting upon, there is no "switchboard operator" choosing anything at any time.

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