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Benjamin Libet's argument against free will is being questioned
- rubbingalcohol 7y agoTo 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.
- NickM 7y agoIf 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.
- buboard 7y agoor, 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.
- nabla9 7y agoDebating on headline that are often chosen or changed by editors to be controversial or more dramatic is waste of time. Magazines do it routinely. HN sometimes changes headlines to be more correct. Propose one.
- pmoriarty 7y agoIt's not just in the headline. It's in the article's body as well: "The topic is immensely complicated, and Schurger's valiant debunking underscores the need for more precise and better-informed questions."
- PavlovsCat 7y agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?q=debunked https://hn.algolia.com/?q=debunked Seems to be used all the time for things that aren't a scam, a hoax, a lie or something like that. This is one of the example sentences Mirriam-Webster gives for the word debunk: > The results of the study debunk his theory.
- superkuh 7y agoYou're not wrong. Especially since, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2019/10/31/the-ghost-of-libet-returns/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2019/10/31/th... "The Ghost of Libet Returns"
- dang 7y agoOk, but what's a better word? Refuted? The article makes clear that Schurger's counterargument has been generally accepted. Edit: given the link in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21486117 I suppose we can say "questioned".
- empath75 7y agoI don't think it's even refuted. It's just redefining what 'decision' is and using that to somehow make the case for free will. Previously they were saying that the start of the neural activity was when a decision was made, and now they are saying that the decision is only made when a particular threshold is reached, but either way the decision is a result of neural activity that began before the person was consciously aware of it. They're just redefining terms to reach the result they wanted.
- naasking 7y agoThe assumption that conscious awareness is necessary for an exertion of free will is also a mistake. The original conclusion was chock full of assumptions. No one debated the specifics of the observed data, what is debatable is the meaning of that data.
- rpmisms 7y agoI don't see how the original experiment "debunked" free will. Wouldn't the decision-making process spark neural activity?
- NickM 7y agoYeah it always seemed like it a shaky argument to me too. Even if people were unable to accurately perceive the timing of their own decisions, that doesn't seem to preclude the idea that people are still consciously making those decisions themselves....
- excursionist 7y agoBut 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.
- whatshisface 7y ago>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.
- fattire 7y agoAny 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
- excursionist 7y agoThe only assumption I'm making is that you have no choice where and when you are born. Do you disagree with that?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoI 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.
- buboard 7y agoSure, if you are a dualist.
- pmoriarty 7y agoWhat's the "reverse averaging" that the article talks about?
- buboard 7y agoLet's say the question is not settled. There are experiments showing how one can predict a choice 7 seconds before. https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112 https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112
- kazinator 7y agoIf 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.
- wetpaws 7y ago>we would often disagree with the action that was taken It's not that uncommon
- bengy5959 7y agoCouldn't it be that the unconscious mind influences the conscious mind to make it seem like we agree with the action that was taken?
- kazinator 7y agoNot if the action was planned days in advance.
- empath75 7y agoPeople frequently do things that they don't want to do or didn't plan to do -- most notably drug addicts and alcoholics.
- kazinator 7y agoNote that regret isn't the same thing as "my hand moved without any intent from me, WTF?".
- skissane 7y agoHow 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.
- k2xl 7y agoWould love for someone to describe effectively what free will means. Because to me the concept itself doesn't make much sense to me and never has. I don't have free will over my breathing, in one definition (since it can be consider "involuntary"). In another definition I could say I have free will over my breathing because I could hold my breath. What is an example of free will? And what is hypothetical experiment that would actually prove or disprove it?
- benlivengood 7y agoFor me, free will is the feeling and belief that if I want my body to do something I have a pretty good chance of making it do that. Additionally, I can decide to train some reflexive behavior and tailor it to be more of what I want my automatic responses to be. It's a feeling of integration between my desires and my actions that doesn't feel like it's driven from outside my body. For example, if I get a muscle twitch or spasm or a limb falls asleep and I can't move my digits then my sense of free will is lessened. When I walk, talk, etc. then the feeling is reinforced.
- sixplusone 7y ago>integration between my desires and my actions how did you decide to have these desires? if it's a good feeling, then you didn't decide that such a desire will give you this feeling; if it's based on a computed most-advantageous outcome, then you didn't decide that either. If it's a choice between the two, then who decides and how (infinite regression)?
- cvshepherd 7y agothe whole concept makes zero sense. when did i decide to enjoy the things that i like? when did i decide how my parents should raise me, or what personality forming experiences i should have as a child? when did i decide to have adhd, which essentially makes me a slave to my impulses and desires (that i again never actively chose)? either our decisions and actions are based on a timeline of prior experiences (plus genetic preconditions), starting with birth, over which we have zero control, or they're totally random, which they are obviously not, otherwise our whole existence would be total chaotic randomness. on the other hand you have people claiming that some higher being instilled some moral code in all humans, and that it's up to us to make the best out of it. in that case, again, those moral standards were not of our choosing.
- lordnacho 7y ago> He repeated Kornhuber and Deecke’s experiment, but asked his participants to watch a clocklike apparatus so that they could remember the moment they made a decision. The results showed that while the Bereitschaftspotential started to rise about 500 milliseconds before the participants performed an action, they reported their decision to take that action only about 150 milliseconds beforehand. “The brain evidently ‘decides’ to initiate the act” before a person is even aware that decision has taken place, Libet concluded. I don't get how people came to the original position. Why is this surprising? A simple model would be that the decision causes both the awareness and the action. Like when your program decides to move the robot arm and logs it, the log arrives before the movement, but one is not the cause of the other. Also there's a fair chance that whatever is taking in the external clock is adding lag. So your eyes might have been in front of a clock that said a certain time, but due to processing in wetware your awareness circuit has an old value. Also it seems like a leap to say this is connected to free will. Whatever is causing the decision, how does the timing mean anything? It's only acausal if you thought that awareness is what causes movement.
- equanimitivity 7y ago“It’s only acausal if you thought that awareness is what causes movement” Exactly, people believed that the thoughts they are aware of when making a decision to move were actually how they decided to move.
- pharke 7y agoYes, I think the confusion of thoughts with the mind seems to be at the root of much of the controversy surrounding free will. Narrativized thought is not necessary for action although it often accompanies it. Too often we mistake the verbal part of our mind for our whole mind, it is only a part though it happens to be the loudest!
- toasterlovin 7y agoFree will is the non-religious version of believing in souls. When you examine what people actually mean when they use the term “free will” in the vernacular, they essentially mean something which affects the mind, but which is not the mind. It’s incoherent in light of the fact that the “it” that they’re referring to ceases to exist once the brain in question ceases to function.
- jknoepfler 7y agoAh, the hallmark of 20th century pseudo-intellectualism: operationalize an ill-defined concept (e.g. "free will," "rationality," "empathy"), produce a dubiously reproducible experiment, maybe write a controversial paperback making ridiculously hyperbolic claims, let the press go apeshit, $$$. Other flavors include: Pluck a plausible, edgy explanation out of a vast hypothesis space (e.g. evolutionary psychology), over-reductively apply a catchy theorem to a vastly complicated domain (looking at you, game theory). Take a thin, ecologically invalid model and claim "that's how the brain works!" (both neural networks and sybolic reasoning systems). I feel like in this century, we've realized that all of this was maybe useful as a reference point to formulate hypotheses, but become less stupid about the conclusions we're willing to draw (as a population). The wonderful reality is that we don't really have strong opinions about free will, because we're not sure we really know what that could mean or why precisely it seemed so important a century ago.
- tasty_freeze 7y agoYou seem to be saying people were idiots for relying on the results of one experiment -- how could they be so stupid? Yet here you are, completely buying into the results of one recent paper as it agrees with your own model of the world (apparently). As for being edgy, you are taking a condescending position using broad and vague claims that are impossible to refute ("looking at you game theory"). I agree that by itself "free will" is meaningless to talk about unless the term is defined. I'm sure most if not all authors on the subject do define what they mean by free will, eg, Dennett and Harris, but I'm sure there are many others who do.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago> why precisely it seemed so important a century ago. Free will is a proxy argument in the debate about physical determinism, which is a component when talking about metaphysical and spiritual reality, which comes up in discussions about the existence of God - whom the modern zeitgeist doesn't believe and/or wishes to disprove.
- Gibbon1 7y agoA good question to ask does the answer to any of these nebulous ill defined questions have any non socio-politcial consequences? If the answer is no, be very very dubious.
- lootsauce 7y agoOur 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 about when the patterns for these cache lookups fail and we must decide. But not only that, it is not exercised unless our desire and our will diverge. If I desire a second slice of pie, but my will is to not over-eat, it requires effort (will-power) to follow through with my will. That is the exercise of free will and does not actually happen as often as we might think.
- lootsauce 7y agoThis is basically a very simplified picture of free will described by Aquinas https://www.iep.utm.edu/freewi-m/#H4 https://www.iep.utm.edu/freewi-m/#H4
- theNJR 7y agoI’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.
- downerending 7y agoInteresting science, but it's not possible even principle that such experiments could determine the presence or absence of free will. It's kind of like a child trying to figure out how Big Bird walks by studying the guts of a TV.
- muzzletov 7y agoThere is no free will, but, there is free will. Easy.
- raindeer3 7y agoWould recommend everyone interested in the topic of Free will to listen to this episode of BBCs In our time: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z5y9z