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Nice article. I don’t believe in free will, but I never liked that Libet experiment. So many tenuous connections had to be made to connect electrical signals wi

Nice article. I don’t believe in free will, but I never liked that Libet experiment. So many tenuous connections had to be made to connect electrical signals with free will, and most of the time people didn’t even bother trying - they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to me.

PixelOfDeath 7y ago
I prefer Hitchens answer to the question: "We have free will, we have no choice."
- richk449 7y ago
  Sounds like sophistry to me.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  Try choosing to not be yourself or like the things you like or do the things you do. We're not so free. I've always worked off a model of "constrained will". We have will, it is just subject to a large number of constraints with a few degrees of freedom.
  - apocalypstyx 7y ago
    "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." --Arthur Schopenhauer
    - hprotagonist 7y ago
      so much for propaganda, then!
raverbashing 7y ago
> they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to me. I feel the exact same way. It's like saying because a pain signal takes some time to come from your foot to your bran that then the pain is not real, when it is merely delayed. It seems to me it's only natural that there's a delay between the decision being made and the perception of the decision happening. Doesn't absolutely mean the decision was "illegitimate" and certainly that can't be deduced from the delay.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Free will is, in common parlance, a mechanism which produces decisions which stems from that consciousness and perception. If the decision precedes it, then free will does not exist (and in my opinion cannot). Humans are still demonstrably able to perform decisions which vary based on input, of course, so in that sense, "free" will is indisputable.
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    > which stems from that consciousness and perception. If the decision precedes it The decision being made before that result is perceived is certainly not the way to prove the decision doesn't come from consciousness and perception (biases and heuristics aside, thanks to millions of years of animal brains). And it might be that, for most decisions, perceptions and heuristics do play a part. That again doesn't mean all decisions are pure automatons.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      > The decision being made before that result is perceived is certainly not the way to prove the decision doesn't come from consciousness and perception (biases and heuristics aside, thanks to millions of years of animal brains). Why not? Surely if consciousness and perception are creating the decision, they should be the first which contain information about it. > And it might be that, for most decisions, perceptions and heuristics do play a part. Certainly. It seems highly unlikely to me that perceptions and heuristic do not play a part: as an additional input into the decision-making system, derived from physical sensory input and memory. > That again doesn't mean all decisions are pure automatons. How does it not? I presume the distinction lies in the exact definition of "pure automaton", but it sounds to me like the term's intent is to try to divorce human decision-making from pure, causal (or, in the worst case, random) reaction to input. I don't see how this would be possible. How would the non-"pure automaton" part look like?
  - zuminator 7y ago
    > If the decision precedes it, then free will does not exist (and in my opinion cannot). One of the problems I have with the Libet experiment is that the subject-reported awareness of conscious thought time is assumed to be accurate. But how can it be? The subject is being asked to move their hand. That takes a conscious effort. But the subject is also being asked to monitor thinking about moving their hand. That's a whole new task. Then they're being asked to report on their memory of thinking about moving their hand. Yet another task. Normally when you move your hand, you just move it without the additional perceptions of "I am now thinking about moving my hand. I am now going to tell someone of the moment that I became aware of thinking about my hand." We don't normally reflect upon our motor movements in such a fashion. If you stopped to reflect upon each step before you took it, you'd be tripping on yourself all the time. So the reporting task is an unnatural and artificial burden above and beyond our normal mode of thought. I would contend that the extra tasks introduce a delay in the subject's self-awareness because the subject has to now additionally wait for the constructive thought "observing myself in the act of thinking about moving my hand" to rise to the threshold wherein that thought becomes part of the internal monologue of the conscious mind. On top of that, perhaps the mind plays a trick on itself regarding conscious thought. When your eyes quickly saccade from one spot to another, there is motion blur, but you don't perceive it; your mind edits it out since it conveys no useful information about the world. Similarly, when you are contemplating taking an action, your brain has to make certain calculations before it can execute that action. Your motor cortex needs to communicate with the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. You need to refer to past calculations of similar movements so that you don't overshoot or miss the mark. All of that takes time. Perhaps the brain edits out that time because it would be wasteful and non-productive to monitor the experience of "thought delays."
acqq 7y ago
> I don’t believe in free will OK. > So many tenuous connections had to be made to connect electrical signals with free will Wait... I thought you don't believe in free will? > they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to me. To me it really appears you do believe in free will. When one doesn't believe, one would need a proof that the phenomenon which many people (especially philosophers and the religious apologetics) call "free will" even exists. Not the vice versa. Only a believer, by definition, believes in something without a proof.
- richk449 7y ago
  > Wait... I thought you don't believe in free will? I don’t. I also don’t find the libet experiment to provide convincing evidence either for or against the existence of free will.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > I also don’t find You're doing it again!
    - richk449 7y ago
      It’s not worth worrying about. If there is no such thing as free will, there is no point in trying to do anything (such as carefully choosing words to be consistent with the non-existence of free will). For simplicity, might as well live my life and post on internet forums as if there is free will.
      - acqq 7y ago
        There's no god, thank god. It nicely fits the title of the article.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
Free will may or may not exist, but certainly there is no "I" that has it. Our cognition is so distributed and situated that we can't really ever say that "I" decided anything.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  But aren't you just the amalgamation of all those distributed processes?
  - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
    In the same vein: whatever "external" influences you think undo the possibility that your will is free -- the chemicals in your blood, your experiences from childhood -- aren't you that system in its entirety?
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      The problem with the concept of free will isn’t in how we define the self, it’s in how we define free will. What do you actually mean by ‘free will’? I would put forward that, if you really start examining things, most people’s idea of free will is equivalent to the popular notion of a soul. That is, it’s something which exists separately from the body, yet which can somehow think and feel and decide. This conception of free will is not really coherent, since free will ceases to function when the body dies or loses functionality when certain parts of the brain are damaged. You can redefine free will to just be the collection of algorithms and processes that play out as your brain decides how to respond to environmental stimuli, but then I think you have departed far enough from most people’s conception of what free will is to essentially just be redefining terms to suit your argument. FWIW, I think the best explanation of free will is that it doesn’t exist, but instead that it’s an explanatory framework we impose upon each other as a way of regulating people’s behavior.
      - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
        That's really interesting. If that's what people mean, I agree with you. When I hear someone deny the existence of free will, it sounds to me like they're saying a person's decisions are not really their own. If that's what they mean, I think it's preposterous -- of course your decisions are yours, that's definitional.

PixelOfDeath 7y ago

I prefer Hitchens answer to the question: "We have free will, we have no choice."

richk449 7y ago
Sounds like sophistry to me.
james_s_tayler 7y ago
Try choosing to not be yourself or like the things you like or do the things you do. We're not so free. I've always worked off a model of "constrained will". We have will, it is just subject to a large number of constraints with a few degrees of freedom.
- apocalypstyx 7y ago
  "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." --Arthur Schopenhauer
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    so much for propaganda, then!

raverbashing 7y ago

> they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to me. I feel the exact same way. It's like saying because a pain signal takes some time to come from your foot to your bran that then the pain is not real, when it is merely delayed. It seems to me it's only natural that there's a delay between the decision being made and the perception of the decision happening. Doesn't absolutely mean the decision was "illegitimate" and certainly that can't be deduced from the delay.

feanaro 7y ago
Free will is, in common parlance, a mechanism which produces decisions which stems from that consciousness and perception. If the decision precedes it, then free will does not exist (and in my opinion cannot). Humans are still demonstrably able to perform decisions which vary based on input, of course, so in that sense, "free" will is indisputable.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  > which stems from that consciousness and perception. If the decision precedes it The decision being made before that result is perceived is certainly not the way to prove the decision doesn't come from consciousness and perception (biases and heuristics aside, thanks to millions of years of animal brains). And it might be that, for most decisions, perceptions and heuristics do play a part. That again doesn't mean all decisions are pure automatons.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    > The decision being made before that result is perceived is certainly not the way to prove the decision doesn't come from consciousness and perception (biases and heuristics aside, thanks to millions of years of animal brains). Why not? Surely if consciousness and perception are creating the decision, they should be the first which contain information about it. > And it might be that, for most decisions, perceptions and heuristics do play a part. Certainly. It seems highly unlikely to me that perceptions and heuristic do not play a part: as an additional input into the decision-making system, derived from physical sensory input and memory. > That again doesn't mean all decisions are pure automatons. How does it not? I presume the distinction lies in the exact definition of "pure automaton", but it sounds to me like the term's intent is to try to divorce human decision-making from pure, causal (or, in the worst case, random) reaction to input. I don't see how this would be possible. How would the non-"pure automaton" part look like?
- zuminator 7y ago
  > If the decision precedes it, then free will does not exist (and in my opinion cannot). One of the problems I have with the Libet experiment is that the subject-reported awareness of conscious thought time is assumed to be accurate. But how can it be? The subject is being asked to move their hand. That takes a conscious effort. But the subject is also being asked to monitor thinking about moving their hand. That's a whole new task. Then they're being asked to report on their memory of thinking about moving their hand. Yet another task. Normally when you move your hand, you just move it without the additional perceptions of "I am now thinking about moving my hand. I am now going to tell someone of the moment that I became aware of thinking about my hand." We don't normally reflect upon our motor movements in such a fashion. If you stopped to reflect upon each step before you took it, you'd be tripping on yourself all the time. So the reporting task is an unnatural and artificial burden above and beyond our normal mode of thought. I would contend that the extra tasks introduce a delay in the subject's self-awareness because the subject has to now additionally wait for the constructive thought "observing myself in the act of thinking about moving my hand" to rise to the threshold wherein that thought becomes part of the internal monologue of the conscious mind. On top of that, perhaps the mind plays a trick on itself regarding conscious thought. When your eyes quickly saccade from one spot to another, there is motion blur, but you don't perceive it; your mind edits it out since it conveys no useful information about the world. Similarly, when you are contemplating taking an action, your brain has to make certain calculations before it can execute that action. Your motor cortex needs to communicate with the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe. You need to refer to past calculations of similar movements so that you don't overshoot or miss the mark. All of that takes time. Perhaps the brain edits out that time because it would be wasteful and non-productive to monitor the experience of "thought delays."

acqq 7y ago

> I don’t believe in free will OK. > So many tenuous connections had to be made to connect electrical signals with free will Wait... I thought you don't believe in free will? > they just asserted that because the impulse starts before you remember making a decision, you have no free will. That sounds like a non sequitur to me. To me it really appears you do believe in free will. When one doesn't believe, one would need a proof that the phenomenon which many people (especially philosophers and the religious apologetics) call "free will" even exists. Not the vice versa. Only a believer, by definition, believes in something without a proof.

richk449 7y ago
> Wait... I thought you don't believe in free will? I don’t. I also don’t find the libet experiment to provide convincing evidence either for or against the existence of free will.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > I also don’t find You're doing it again!
  - richk449 7y ago
    It’s not worth worrying about. If there is no such thing as free will, there is no point in trying to do anything (such as carefully choosing words to be consistent with the non-existence of free will). For simplicity, might as well live my life and post on internet forums as if there is free will.
    - acqq 7y ago
      There's no god, thank god. It nicely fits the title of the article.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

Free will may or may not exist, but certainly there is no "I" that has it. Our cognition is so distributed and situated that we can't really ever say that "I" decided anything.

Mirioron 7y ago
But aren't you just the amalgamation of all those distributed processes?
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  In the same vein: whatever "external" influences you think undo the possibility that your will is free -- the chemicals in your blood, your experiences from childhood -- aren't you that system in its entirety?
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    The problem with the concept of free will isn’t in how we define the self, it’s in how we define free will. What do you actually mean by ‘free will’? I would put forward that, if you really start examining things, most people’s idea of free will is equivalent to the popular notion of a soul. That is, it’s something which exists separately from the body, yet which can somehow think and feel and decide. This conception of free will is not really coherent, since free will ceases to function when the body dies or loses functionality when certain parts of the brain are damaged. You can redefine free will to just be the collection of algorithms and processes that play out as your brain decides how to respond to environmental stimuli, but then I think you have departed far enough from most people’s conception of what free will is to essentially just be redefining terms to suit your argument. FWIW, I think the best explanation of free will is that it doesn’t exist, but instead that it’s an explanatory framework we impose upon each other as a way of regulating people’s behavior.
    - Jeff_Brown 7y ago
      That's really interesting. If that's what people mean, I agree with you. When I hear someone deny the existence of free will, it sounds to me like they're saying a person's decisions are not really their own. If that's what they mean, I think it's preposterous -- of course your decisions are yours, that's definitional.