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Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

theatlantic.com

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Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#21

Post by excursionist »

codeulike wrote: post #14
excursionist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how any kind of scientific experiment could possibly support the concept of free will. If the universe is deterministic, then obviously there is no free will - since humans are part of the universe. If it is non-deterministic then all we can say about events we identify as non-deterministic is that we don't understand them.

Or, its deterministic, but so complex that its literally impossible to exploit the determinism to 'look ahead' in any way ... you'd need to simulate every subatomic particle, therefore needing something bigger than the universe to 'look ahead'. So perhaps the universe is like a deterministic computer that is calculating its own future. The determinism in that case just doesn't really mean anything - it can't be repea…

It's possible to predict local events with a certain degree of accuracy. The better our models/knowledge and computational capacity the greater the accuracy. We can see patterns on a macro level and exploit them without looking at electrons.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#22

Post by codeulike »

excursionist wrote: post #21
codeulike wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, its deterministic, but so complex that its literally impossible to exploit the determinism to 'look ahead' in any way ... you'd need to simulate every subatomic particle, therefore needing something bigger than the universe to 'look ahead'. So perhaps the universe is like a deterministic computer that is calculating its own future. The determinism in that case just doesn't really mean anything - it can't be repea…

It's possible to predict local events with a certain degree of accuracy. The better our models/knowledge and computational capacity the greater the accuracy. We can see patterns on a macro level and exploit them without looking at electrons.

Sure yep, thats like the whole of science. But we can't predict things at the level that people worrying about Free Will worry about. i.e. what people are going to do next. Or what they will be doing in 15 years time. Or going further, the nightmre of determinism is the idea that someones whole life is determined before they are born and so on. That sort of thing is forever beyond the reach of all computation.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#23

Post by chr1 »

excursionist wrote: post #8
rpmisms wrote: post #3

I don't see how the original experiment "debunked" free will. Wouldn't the decision-making process spark neural activity?

I don't see how any kind of scientific experiment could possibly support the concept of free will. If the universe is deterministic, then obviously there is no free will - since humans are part of the universe. If it is non-deterministic then all we can say about events we identify as non-deterministic is that we don't understand them.

This is not obvious at all, even with deterministic and computable universe there is a good analog of free will.

The first thing that is needed or this to work, is for the part of universe representing the human to be separable from the rest of the universe (this is not true with superdeterminism, which requires choices that experimenters make to be correlated with the quantum states of particles they are studying, but then almost no one takes superdeterminism seriously).

This separability would allow to talk about choice, as it allows to modify or swap the human in question and recompute the future in the same universe where the human may make another choice.

The second thing is the conjecture of computational irreducibility: that is for sufficiently complex systems like humans and for sufficiently long timeframes, the only way to predict future state is to evaluate the system. This conjecture seems plausible because even cellular automata in chaotic state, do not appear to have any simplified method of evaluation

If this is true, you may be able to easily predict some of the choices human will make based on his state several seconds before that, but for longer time intervals the only way is to let the human live and make the choice (even if it lives in your computer simulation).

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#24

Post by fattire »

whatshisface wrote: post #20
excursionist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But humans don't exist in a vacuum, your decision process was programmed into your brain by nature & nurture, and you had no control over either - the decision process for any control you think you might have had was previously programmed into you brain without your choice.

> your decision process was programmed into your brain by nature & nurture, But that's asserting the absence of free will, which you can't do in an argument meant to prove the absence of free will. Your interpretation of a free will experiment can't involve assuming a-priori that there is no free will.

Any discussion about free will should probably start with an agreed-upon definition of what "free will" is and what might be needed to confirm that it does or doesn't exist.

I think that's pretty much the issue right there.

h/t Wittgenstein

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#26

Post by buboard »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

I think basically you can disregard any study or article that purports to say that "science" has found why humans behave in a certain manner or that attempts to answer philosophical or social questions using fMRI or EEG.

Sure, if you are a dualist.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#27

Post by buboard »

NickM wrote: post #5
rubbingalcohol wrote: post #2

To say an argument has been "debunked" implies that the argument holds no credibility, or the rhetorical equivalent of "I'm right, you're wrong." It is an attempt to shut down a discussion and provide fodder for ad-hominem attacks against those who dare to disagree. In other words, The Atlantic should be ashamed to run a headline like this because it is antithetical to rational discussion.

If the whole argument was based on an experimental result, and that experiment has now been found to be fundamentally flawed and the results of the experiment invalidated, then it seems entirely fine and rational to say that the argument has been debunked.

or, the argument is against the evidence of one experiment. similar protocols using other techniques have provided evidence against the idea that behavioral decisions can be unpredictable.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#28

Post by kazinator »

If your brain made decisions outside of your free will which you become conscious of after the fact, then that would manifest itself as a frequent conflict: we would often disagree with the action that was taken. Because we don't disagree, it must be something that is integrated with will.

Concretely, we are not surprised that our finger moved; we believe we wanted to do that and we agree with that action.

Moreover, this readiness potential phenomenon works on short time scales. The will operates on long time scales. I can plan at 11:55 that I will move my finger at 12:00, five minutes ahead. And then when the time comes, do just that. Still, the readiness potential will play out the same way: the commands to move the finger precede the conscious awareness of the finger moving.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#29

Post by skissane »

How can you discuss free will and completely ignore the most basic philosophy on the topic, the distinction between compatibilist and incompatibilist definitions of it? Libet’s argument is an argument against incompatibilist free will (aka metaphysical libertarianism), not compatibilist free will. Whether or not it succeeds at that, it doesn’t disprove compatibilist free will in any way, it doesn’t even try to.

Re: Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

#30

Post by rpmisms »

mcphage wrote: post #15
jobigoud wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thesis was that taking the action or not taking the action resulted in different EEG patterns, Bereitschaftspotential or not, and that the spike was visible before the person was consciously taking the decision. So it's not just the neural activity from the decision-making process, it's the neural activity from taking a specific decision, seen before the decision is taken by the person. As if the decision was tak…

> and that the spike was visible before the person was consciously taking the decision Or does that just mean that our ability to measure when a decision is made is flawed?

That's the point of the article. It shows that the spike is irrelevant.
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