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

NickM 7y ago
Yeah 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 ago
  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.
  - 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 ago
      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
    - excursionist 7y ago
      The only assumption I'm making is that you have no choice where and when you are born. Do you disagree with that?
jobigoud 7y ago
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 taken by a deeper sub-system.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > 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?
  - rpmisms 7y ago
    That's the point of the article. It shows that the spike is irrelevant.
    - mcphage 7y ago
      Right... I just never got why the experiment was significant in the first place.
- cortesoft 7y ago
  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 decision, the awareness of the decision, and the actual brain signal to move the muscle ALL come from the brain, and will all feedback to each other. Any awareness that you have made a decision would show up in brainwaves BEFORE you are able to articulate it, since you can't articulate something that hasn't been experienced by your brain yet. The only thing this sort of experiment could disprove is the idea that free will comes from something OUTSIDE your brain. If we believe your brain represents everything that you are (in terms of thoughts and consciousness), then anything the brain signals can't come BEFORE you have exercised free will, since the signal IS your free will. I am very confused as to how anyone could think your brain waves could disprove free will.
excursionist 7y ago
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.
- codeulike 7y ago
  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 repeated, it can't be predicted or exploited. And so the whole problem goes away.
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    How does the problem go away? If you can prove your thesis then even though you can't exploit the determinism you've proven that you can't influence the future. Doesn't that mean that free will doesn't exit and is thus an extremely important result?
    - codeulike 7y ago
      The future is unknowable and you're part of the mechanism that is unfolding it microsecond by microsecond. The question of whether or not you can 'influence' it doesn't make any sense. That is, Free Will as a concept doesn't really make any sense. Does Free Will mean if exactly the same situation happened twice, the person might choose different things? But its somehow different to just being random? And when does exactly the same situation every happen twice anyway? Its an incoherent concept. In my head, I have sortof redefined 'free will' like this: The world is a mass of cause-and-effect chains. For a given object/being, if you were to 'trace' those cause-and-effect chains, would most of the proximate links in the chain be within the object/being, or outside of it? e.g. a rock can fall and roll around if pushed, those chains of cause-and-effect are mostly outside it. Us, as humans, choose to do things using our brains, so the chains of cause-and-effect (or the first bits of the chain at least) are within our brains. Naturally if you trace the cause-and-effect far enough you will get to some external cause (memories of previous events, learning etc). But if you look at the proximate cause-and-effect chains, they're mostly in our brains. That - for me - is roughly what I take Free Will to mean. The center-of-gravity of recent cause-and-effect chains reside within us. We have it, most animals have it to varying degrees. Rocks dont have it.
etbebl 7y ago
For me it more lays plain the inherent contradictions of (this version of) free will than directly disproves it. What would it mean if the conscious decision to do something came before any neural activity reflecting that? (Dualism!)

NickM 7y ago

Yeah 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 ago
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.
- 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 ago
    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
  - excursionist 7y ago
    The only assumption I'm making is that you have no choice where and when you are born. Do you disagree with that?

jobigoud 7y ago

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 taken by a deeper sub-system.

mcphage 7y ago
> 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?
- rpmisms 7y ago
  That's the point of the article. It shows that the spike is irrelevant.
  - mcphage 7y ago
    Right... I just never got why the experiment was significant in the first place.
cortesoft 7y ago
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 decision, the awareness of the decision, and the actual brain signal to move the muscle ALL come from the brain, and will all feedback to each other. Any awareness that you have made a decision would show up in brainwaves BEFORE you are able to articulate it, since you can't articulate something that hasn't been experienced by your brain yet. The only thing this sort of experiment could disprove is the idea that free will comes from something OUTSIDE your brain. If we believe your brain represents everything that you are (in terms of thoughts and consciousness), then anything the brain signals can't come BEFORE you have exercised free will, since the signal IS your free will. I am very confused as to how anyone could think your brain waves could disprove free will.

excursionist 7y ago

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.

codeulike 7y ago
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 repeated, it can't be predicted or exploited. And so the whole problem goes away.
- pedrocr 7y ago
  How does the problem go away? If you can prove your thesis then even though you can't exploit the determinism you've proven that you can't influence the future. Doesn't that mean that free will doesn't exit and is thus an extremely important result?
  - codeulike 7y ago
    The future is unknowable and you're part of the mechanism that is unfolding it microsecond by microsecond. The question of whether or not you can 'influence' it doesn't make any sense. That is, Free Will as a concept doesn't really make any sense. Does Free Will mean if exactly the same situation happened twice, the person might choose different things? But its somehow different to just being random? And when does exactly the same situation every happen twice anyway? Its an incoherent concept. In my head, I have sortof redefined 'free will' like this: The world is a mass of cause-and-effect chains. For a given object/being, if you were to 'trace' those cause-and-effect chains, would most of the proximate links in the chain be within the object/being, or outside of it? e.g. a rock can fall and roll around if pushed, those chains of cause-and-effect are mostly outside it. Us, as humans, choose to do things using our brains, so the chains of cause-and-effect (or the first bits of the chain at least) are within our brains. Naturally if you trace the cause-and-effect far enough you will get to some external cause (memories of previous events, learning etc). But if you look at the proximate cause-and-effect chains, they're mostly in our brains. That - for me - is roughly what I take Free Will to mean. The center-of-gravity of recent cause-and-effect chains reside within us. We have it, most animals have it to varying degrees. Rocks dont have it.

etbebl 7y ago

For me it more lays plain the inherent contradictions of (this version of) free will than directly disproves it. What would it mean if the conscious decision to do something came before any neural activity reflecting that? (Dualism!)