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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)

#151

Post by kranner »

smeej wrote: post #133
cardanome wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true. Some dogs are famously picky eaters and will not touch the food even when hungry because they learned that their handler will then panic and provide better food. You might interpret that as the dog "choosing" not to eat. Of course it is just a learned response as with humans. You can absolutely train a dog to not eat food, to "fast" if you will. Of course it wont starve itself to death probably, at…

A dog can't starve itself to death in the presence of food. Mild hunger, sure, abstain in pursuit of preference. The instinct applies to the pursuit of the preference, and while it's stronger than the instinct to eat, can be overridden. But if the hunger gets bad enough, the dog will eat the food. There's no question about "if," only "when." Just because some humans have weaker wills than others, or would find it har…

This really reads like you are assuming that x == [no dog will choose to starve to death in the presence of food] is true and then the rest of the argument simply follows from x.

Is there any evidence for x?

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

#152

Post by ta988 »

coldtea wrote: post #127
pessimizer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if they slice your brain down the middle in put it in two different jars, would they both think of themselves as you? Then, if you keep carefully cutting small bits off of those hemispheres, when would they stop being you?

> would they both think of themselves as you? If they both continue to think, yes. > Then, if you keep carefully cutting small bits off of those hemispheres, when would they stop being you? When they lose consciousness?

If consciousness is a continous property (which is what I believe it is) and not a discrete one, a precise answer would be difficult. The same way you can loose some visual ability but not all.

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

#153

Post by analog31 »

gwd wrote: post #142
analog31 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>> Should we classify C the same way?

Probably not if you want to survive. ;-)

I'm certainly agreeing that it's an interesting puzzle. One particularly curious thing is that the classification scheme is not just descriptive, but is itself one of the sensory inputs that influences behavior. So it's both a puzzle of understanding human behavior, but also coupled to a social phenomenon.

I don't know of a society that doesn't classify C differently, so it may have some survival advantage.

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

#154

Post by ta988 »

taneq wrote: post #78
smeej wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out, some day in the far future when we actually understand the human body properly, that we're doing all sorts of interesting processing in the peripheral nervous system and even chemically outside of nerve cells.

We already have hormones and signaling coming from other organs, and those react to other hormones and signaling, so thats possible. I ahve the feeling focus has been put on fast communication of states (potential in the synapses, neurotransmitters) but we know also about slower processes (astrocytes energy management) that also impact brain function deeply, so I would clearly not rule peripheral impact out.

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

#155

Post by ta988 »

feanaro wrote: post #88
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?

The "you" is not simply your body. It is also the entirety of that body's physical interactions with the rest of the universe.

Thats because our language (english at least here, some other languages have distinctions) is limited and we use "me" and "you" and "them" to signify vastly different things (but that are cause or consequence of each other or cooccuring due to another cause).

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

#156

Post by joefourier »

gwd wrote: post #142
analog31 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why don't things add up? Your spouse's behaviour is governed by the same physical laws as the teacups and pans, but they are certainly not an inanimate objects incapable of choice.

The problem, I think, is that humans seem to believe that lower-level explanations invalidate higher-level ones. However, that doesn't mean that you should say there is no difference between "Hello world" and a web browser because both are "just" x86 instructions in the end, or "just" transistors being switched on and off. However, good look debugging a web browser by looking at the behavior of individual transistors, even though that is all there is in the end.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle - complex human behaviour isn't reduced to simple physical laws, but rather, simple physical laws add up to complex human behaviour.

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

#157

Post by RHSeeger »

croon wrote: post #136
coldtea wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your brain isn't "you" in some special way that the rest of your body isn't. Well, in some way it is, in that they can cut your hands and feet, and you'll still be you. And perhaps if they could just put your head/brain in a jar, and you were still coscious, you'd still consider yourself you...

If my brain was in a jar, but all my sensory perception linked to a robot body on the other face of the planet (without my brain knowing), I would probably consider that robot body me.

And if someone managed to build a model of the human brain and "uploaded" your brain into it such that it acted identically to your biological brain, would you also consider that "you"? Are there two of "you" now?

Note: I'm not disagreeing with you, just kind of following the road your comment lays out.

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

#158

Post by mannykannot »

finghin wrote: post #138
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware + software is a physicalist view. Dualist view is material hardware + astral hardware, ironically they don't quite believe in software.

There are plenty of property dualists around: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#ProDua

Hardware + software would not qualify as property dualism (at least as described in your link) unless one was asserting that the behavior of the software could not be completely accounted for in terms of hardware operations. In that article, the example of vitalism is apposite.

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

#159

Post by ineedasername »

The author is a theist who wrote a book called Spiritual Science. He might be coming by his opinions here with significant bias that takes a non-materialist viewpoint for granted at some fundamental level.

I agree that Libet's experiment is far from sufficient to conclude the lack of free will. However, a valid criticism of Libet is itself far from sufficient to prove that we do have free will.

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

#160

Post by PartiallyTyped »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #115
dragonwriter wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "you are within physics" necessarily bridges these two explanations. But, it doesn't. The reason dualism and free-will are so deeply tied up is because “you are within physics” does not provide a means by which “you” can be the root cause of anything; if you are merely within physics, then you are simply a product of material causes and can only be (to the extent physics is deterministic) a fully-externally-determi…

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.

That is if you assume the world is Markov, but in our granularity of thought and limited perception, the only way we can reconcile subsequent observations is through history.

In other words, you can't peer into the universe itself at any individual moment to observe all properties because you have access to partial information, the world could be markov, but the lack of your perceptive abilities requires that you treat it as non markov.

For example, given a moving object such as a ball, at any particular instant, you do not have access to enough information to estimate velocity, but if you have access to more frames, you can do some algebra and figure it out.

In the vein of cause of actions, since you have limited access to information, especially about you and your brain, you can not decide whether certain events such as having a good day affect your decision making abilities. Your state is part of the environment you do not really have access to it affects your behavior.

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