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Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned

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

#71

Post by mcguire »

jobigoud wrote: post #7
rpmisms wrote: post #3

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

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…

Are you assuming "consciousness" does not involve neural activity? How does that work?

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

#72

Post by mcguire »

armitron wrote: post #56
cortesoft wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this an inherent problem with looking at brain activity for this sort of thing? Suppose free will is real, and a person makes the decision and then takes the action. The brain waves marking that the decision was made HAVE to show up before the person is aware that they have made a decision, because both their awareness has to be 'signaled' by a brain wave coming from a decision. The deciding process, the decisi…

You are mixing up definitions. You use "you" to mean "brain". Under that model, of course you can't disprove free will. But the model you are using is not at all useful, as you illustrate in your confusion. The idea of free will is typically assigned to a "conscious self-model", not just a brain. The self-model generally accepted to be an emergent construct of the brain. Thus, in the "conscious free will" model, if t…

And if the "self-model" is "the brain" that makes the decision?

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

#73

Post by mcguire »

armitron wrote: post #66
cortesoft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I follow... even if we think of the "conscious free will" as being an emergent property of the brain, it would still be made up of brain waves within the brain. What else would free will be but an aspect of your brain? There is nothing else for it to be?

Think in terms of a layered system (subsumption architecture is useful [1]). Sure the substrate is the brain and is common to all layers, but the layers are functionally different. The self-model, "you" is a high-level circuit. The low-level circuits make all decisions and relay the results to the higher levels. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture [2] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=9000

The neat thing about layered systems is that they don't really exist. The sin of the "layering violation" is everywhere.

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

#74

Post by cortesoft »

armitron wrote: post #66
cortesoft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I follow... even if we think of the "conscious free will" as being an emergent property of the brain, it would still be made up of brain waves within the brain. What else would free will be but an aspect of your brain? There is nothing else for it to be?

Think in terms of a layered system (subsumption architecture is useful [1]). Sure the substrate is the brain and is common to all layers, but the layers are functionally different. The self-model, "you" is a high-level circuit. The low-level circuits make all decisions and relay the results to the higher levels. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture [2] https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=9000

From your second link: "Will and perception do not cause the firing of neurons; they result from it. By definition, everything we are conscious of has to be preceded by neuronal activity that we are not conscious of. That’s just cause/effect. That’s physics."

I guess that is the part that I have trouble with... especially the first sentence: ""Will and perception do not cause the firing of neurons; they result from it"

They don't cause it OR result from it... they ARE it. Everything that is us (including our free will) is made up of those neurons. Our thoughts are neurons firing. Everything we think and believe and experience and decide is contained in those neurons, their state, and their connections.

I always thought the question of free will (at least since I was a philosophy undergrad) was about whether our brains (and the universe) are deterministic or not. I feel like the more we learn about quantum mechanics and physics, the more it seems like the world is NOT deterministic. The uncertainty of the universe means the neuron behavior is NOT deterministic, and that non-determinism is where free will lies.

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

#75

Post by [deleted] »

kazinator wrote: post #28

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,…

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by chr1 »

NOGDP wrote: post #67
chr1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If universe is deterministic and computable, then it is possible to create a simulation of a part of the universe that would be complex enough to contain humans and would be simple enough to pause computation, make changes to the state, copy the state, etc. So for simplicity i will talk about this simulated universe. Separable here roughly means that to compute further states of a human you need to follow only partic…

> If universe is deterministic and computable, then it is possible to create a simulation of a part of the universe that would be complex enough to contain humans and would be simple enough to pause computation, make changes to the state, copy the state, etc. So for simplicity i will talk about this simulated universe. I don't see how the 'computable' part is relevant in regards to free will. You can write a program…

Using random numbers affects the condition about determinism not computability. If universe is not deterministic then the choice made does not depend only on the human making choice but also on the state of generator that creates random numbers. Of course even here it is possible that the state of human is organized in such a way to change probability distribution to not depend on randomness, but that becomes equivalent to deterministic universe with additional complications.

The computability is relevant to the argument because it allows us to create simulation, and to observe a universe from outside. If it was not computable, say required real numbers with infinite precision, and the finite approximations were not able to describe complex things such as humans, then we would not be able to complete our thought experiment.

> The very action of pausing or modifying the universe from without would make the universe non-deterministic.

There are two parts, the starting state and the evolution rule. Here the evolution rule is still deterministic, and the requirement is for it to be able to continue from different starting states.

> Who's choice? If the algorithm is making the choice then the humans simulated by such an algorithm would not have any more free will than a video game NPC.

If human is a part of universe, and does not have a soul, then he is equivalent to its starting state plus the algorithm. If the computation cannot be reduced to a simpler algorithm then no matter how you compute the future state you get that human thinking, feeling and making a choice. The difference with game NPC is that the algorithm doesn't have a hardcoded set of inputs and outcomes but can accept any inputs and produce outcomes that can't be predicted by anything other than that algorithm with that starting state.

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

#78

Post by theNJR »

lootsauce wrote: post #43

Our will power is like a muscle and can get tired. What if we have free will that is not actually "exercised" all that often. Say 85% or more of our actions are basically pre-ordained by decisions we have previously fully internalized and so are basically automatic, but which still alighn with our general will. Thats like an inexpensive (cached) result from the will banks. Then actual "exercise" of free will comes ab…

I’ve always thought of free will as something that happens in the past. Your “in the moment” response to anything will be based on your choices in the past. Those you have an opportunity to decide through overt habit and routine. Do you come home from work and drink some beers or work on a project? Wake up early and go to the gym or sleep in (because of those beers last night)? These casual chains can be broken in moments of free will. Or not.

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

#79

Post by NOGDP »

chr1 wrote: post #77
NOGDP wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If universe is deterministic and computable, then it is possible to create a simulation of a part of the universe that would be complex enough to contain humans and would be simple enough to pause computation, make changes to the state, copy the state, etc. So for simplicity i will talk about this simulated universe. I don't see how the 'computable' part is relevant in regards to free will. You can write a program…

Using random numbers affects the condition about determinism not computability. If universe is not deterministic then the choice made does not depend only on the human making choice but also on the state of generator that creates random numbers. Of course even here it is possible that the state of human is organized in such a way to change probability distribution to not depend on randomness, but that becomes equival…

> If the computation cannot be reduced to a simpler algorithm then no matter how you compute the future state you get that human thinking, feeling and making a choice.

What's the difference between the human thinking, feeling, making a choice and a trained neural network making a 'choice'? I would not say a neural network has free will.

> The difference with game NPC is that the algorithm doesn't have a hardcoded set of inputs and outcomes but can accept any inputs and produce outcomes that can't be predicted by anything other than that algorithm with that starting state.

You can have a program that could accept any inputs (say any binary sequence) and produce output based on that.

I think that if the universe is deterministic and computable then that implies no free will, since humans are part of the universe and therefore also deterministic and computable.

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

#80

Post by chr1 »

NOGDP wrote: post #79
chr1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using random numbers affects the condition about determinism not computability. If universe is not deterministic then the choice made does not depend only on the human making choice but also on the state of generator that creates random numbers. Of course even here it is possible that the state of human is organized in such a way to change probability distribution to not depend on randomness, but that becomes equival…

> If the computation cannot be reduced to a simpler algorithm then no matter how you compute the future state you get that human thinking, feeling and making a choice. What's the difference between the human thinking, feeling, making a choice and a trained neural network making a 'choice'? I would not say a neural network has free will. > The difference with game NPC is that the algorithm doesn't have a hardcoded set…

The difference is most likely the organization and the complexity of a network. Neural network doesn't have free will because it is too simple and can't even pass turing test.

> I think that if the universe is deterministic and computable then that implies no free will, since humans are part of the universe and therefore also deterministic and computable.

I agree that universe being deterministic and computable means that humans are deterministic and computable.

But what is the evidence for "deterministic and computable" implying "no free will"?

I think that computational irreducibility allows the exact opposite interpretation. Humans are deterministic and computable but the process of computation is equivalent to humans living, no matter what is used to perform the computation (moving atoms in the original universe, a computer program, or even many people with pen and paper).

So even if you can compute what the human will do, you can't predict, because the act of computing is the same as human doing. This provides the "will" part of the free will.

And if you do not stop the algorithm, and change the state to get a different outcome, then it is also free.

As a side-note, this interpretation is surprisingly consistent with the original formulation of the question of free will in religious setting, where some being outside the universe knows everything about the universe, can arbitrarily manipulate the state of the universe, but can't predict what the creatures in the universe are going to do and claims that they are free to chose.

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