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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)

#171

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #161
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.

> 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. How is it not relevant to the process of choice when it fully determines all aspects of it including the outcome? It is as relevant to the process of choice as the choice itself is to the action it produces.

AFAIK, in physics this property is called indempotence: the choice is determined by the state of mind at the time of the choice and not by history that led to that state. Theoretically many different histories can lead to this state, or the history may not exist at all, if mind was created in this state 5 minutes ago, in all these cases the subsequent behavior will be the same.

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

#172

Post by twodave »

benibela wrote: post #45
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 said that in a philosophy exam in school, and got a D- for it

There are probably more reasons you may have gotten a D- for it--I'd think a fair professor would have allowed such an argument assuming it was well-thought-out. There are of course plenty of professors (especially in philosophy) who give out grades based on how thoroughly they feel their egos have been stroked. Shame on them. Grades based on sycophancy are no different than any other kind of corruption.

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

#173

Post by staticman2 »

smeej wrote: post #66
cardanome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A deterministic machine is still able to react based on external stimulus and able to reason about the world and itself. And we don't even need to go the full determinism route to disprove free will. What can free will be other than an illusion? Am I really deciding to be hungry, to want companionship, and so on? Am I simply doing what needs to be done to fulfill my needs while my brain is inventing reasons? What am…

You may not decide to be hungry, but regardless of your hunger, you can choose not to eat. Incidentally I think that's also what separates us from other animals. Animals can't fast, for example. If the instinct is present, the animal acts on it. We don't have to. In fact, if it mattered enough to me, I could starve myself to death.

Animals have genetic diversity. You can't prove no animal can choose not to eat.

You also can't prove all humans can.

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

#175

Post by karaterobot »

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…

The thing I always want to know in discussions of free will or determinism is whether a determinist believes that the initial conditions of the universe lead to the creation of the world we live in, such that (to choose some absurd examples) the Lego movie, candy corn, and Youtube were all 100% inevitable and predetermined by physics, and could not have failed to have been created exactly as they are, at the exact moment they were created. That's what seems unbelievable to me. Maybe I don't get what determinism is?

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

#176

Post by deeeeplearning »

AgentME wrote: post #28
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.

If you believe you determine your actions in a literal sense you are saying you believe in magic because there is no mechanism that could make this possible in a deterministic universe.

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

#177

Post by deeeeplearning »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #102
coldtea wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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? I don’t think it deterministic, at the lowest levels the physics is probabilistic. But I’m sure you can imagine how to express “opinion” as a subjective experience of a brain state that is wholly determined by deterministic factors. > In which case, you don't really have an opinion,…

>xI don’t think it deterministic, at the lowest levels the physics is probabilistic.

Probability doesn't get you free will. Sorry.

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

#178

Post by deeeeplearning »

twodave wrote: post #167
gameswithgo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose an all powerful god controls everything that happens to us. Could not such a God give us the knowledge that we have no free will?

Yes, in my opinion the only way for reason and free will to exist are if some supernatural being were to grant it to us. That said, in order to truly have knowledge of anything we must first be able to assert free will. Otherwise even this God figure's interference in our natural lives may just be interpreted as an outside stimulus that we're dutifully responding to according to the laws of nature.

>That said, in order to truly have knowledge of anything we must first be able to assert free will.

This is not a coherent argument. You claim to have better insight than hundreds of years of Epistemology?

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

#179

Post by mcswell »

pdonis wrote: post #74
mcswell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...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." I can see why you wouldn't believe this, but why do you think it is illogical? Consider the contrast between a tape recorder + tape, vs. a radio. In the one, the sounds that come out of the speaker are purely internally produced (considering the tape…

> if you apply OR to the brain and the mind, then you ought to be able to apply it to the radio receiver and transmitter Only if you fail to take the obvious step of looking for the external influence --and finding it in the case of the radio receiver, but not in the case of the brain. Occam's Razor doesn't say the simplest explanation always wins. It only says the simplest explanation that covers all the facts wins.…

"Only if you fail to take the obvious step of looking for the external influence--and finding it in the case of the radio receiver, but not in the case of the brain." The neutrino was hypothesized back in the 1930s solely on the basis of missing mass/energy in beta decay. (One of the papers describing this was rejected by Nature on the grounds that it was too far from reality.) It was only decades later that the neutrino was found (in whatever sense a weakly interacting uncharged particle can be "found"). At any rate, I'm just saying that it's not illogical to hypothesize that the brain is more like a radio receiver than a tape player; whether it really is, is a different question.

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

#180

Post by mcswell »

lanternfish wrote: post #112
mcswell wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No; all observers see the speed of light as the same.

Do you see the speed of light?

You can measure it quite easily, in fact in a high school lab. So yes, in a non-pedantic sense, "see".
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