Free-will: The brain's veto rights (ScienceNow)
Ahnimus
Posts: 10,560
This article http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/821/3?rss=1
Is interesting.
A few points about it;
"But he [Richard Passingham] and Brass agree that the experiments don't solve the old puzzle of so-called free will."
But on the contrary
"There's one more doughnut in the box. Do you reach for it or not? The answer may [size=+1]depend[/size] on a brain region just behind your eyes called the dorsal frontomedial cortex."
"Twenty-five years ago, the question got a bit stranger when psychologists found that electrical signals in the brain that direct movement of a finger or limb occur about a half a second before a person is aware of making a decision to move."
"Benjamin Libet, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who did the original experiments, suggested that perhaps our conscious mind has the ability to veto actions--to stop ourselves from doing things that our brains have sent a message to do."
Wait, hold on, "to stop ourselves from doing things that our brains have..." what besides the brain is the "self" and what does the brain belong to, to justify a posessive "our". If the brain is the source of "self" then "our" "we" "us" "me" "you" is a brain, and the brain can stop the brain, but the wording makes it sound like there is some other source of "self" that is in veto control over the brain, meanwhile that veto control relies on the dorsal frontomedial cortex of, guess what, the brain.
Anyway, interesting discovery. I figured all that junk was in the orbitofrontal cortex, the sense of "authorship" comes from a region in the interhemispherical fissure, called the ACC (anterior cingulate sulcus) I believe. I could be wrong about it's name, but it is there. Never-the-less, the brain is a causal system and these neuroscientists know it, this sounds like a serious case of denial. The same is true for the so-called puzzlement of philosopher's, it's called denial.
Is interesting.
A few points about it;
"But he [Richard Passingham] and Brass agree that the experiments don't solve the old puzzle of so-called free will."
But on the contrary
"There's one more doughnut in the box. Do you reach for it or not? The answer may [size=+1]depend[/size] on a brain region just behind your eyes called the dorsal frontomedial cortex."
"Twenty-five years ago, the question got a bit stranger when psychologists found that electrical signals in the brain that direct movement of a finger or limb occur about a half a second before a person is aware of making a decision to move."
"Benjamin Libet, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who did the original experiments, suggested that perhaps our conscious mind has the ability to veto actions--to stop ourselves from doing things that our brains have sent a message to do."
Wait, hold on, "to stop ourselves from doing things that our brains have..." what besides the brain is the "self" and what does the brain belong to, to justify a posessive "our". If the brain is the source of "self" then "our" "we" "us" "me" "you" is a brain, and the brain can stop the brain, but the wording makes it sound like there is some other source of "self" that is in veto control over the brain, meanwhile that veto control relies on the dorsal frontomedial cortex of, guess what, the brain.
Anyway, interesting discovery. I figured all that junk was in the orbitofrontal cortex, the sense of "authorship" comes from a region in the interhemispherical fissure, called the ACC (anterior cingulate sulcus) I believe. I could be wrong about it's name, but it is there. Never-the-less, the brain is a causal system and these neuroscientists know it, this sounds like a serious case of denial. The same is true for the so-called puzzlement of philosopher's, it's called denial.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
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But to me, it sounds like they located a place where things tend to happen when people do certain things. Clinically helpful I'm sure, but as you said yourself, that doesn't decide anything either way.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I think the wording on this is very important, because most of the people reading it are gonna pick up on those as being a loophole.
I don't see the paradox that you see, which is why you seem to some back to it. To me determinism is fine as a branch of science, but it can only utilize an individual's free will to express itself. It isn't a good argument against free will. I find it odd that it is at the paramount of debate of just that.
I guess one could argue brain surgergy cases where pieces of the brain are removed and so on and so forth, and the behavioral changes that ensue. Nazi Germany, anyone?
This isn't good philosophy.
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Determinism means that all events are caused by antecedent variables. Which is in conflict with the concept of free-will. It's also described by the conservation of mass-energy, which is also in conflict with the theory of free-will. There is literally no way of quantifying "Free-will" without simultaneously disproving it.
Intelligence is quantifiable, first. Hell, Einstein spoke of God.
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Yet... we had a discussion on intelligence and there was no unanimous agreement on what it is exactly. You aren't really saying that Einstein believed in a conscious God or Free-will, are you?
I believe Einstein knew what a human was.
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And what do you suppose he knew a human was?
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"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." - Albert Einstein
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." Upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark, Page 502.
This may be true, but what does it matter? We are aware of what we do, when we do it.
If were not aware of it in the conscious, it doesn't really exist figuratively speaking.
Could it just be the signals working their way through the brain tissue itself?
Still freaky though if it's true.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
And you've made Einstein your God.
He was brilliant, gentle, beautiful man, but he isn't my God.
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Nor is he mine. I didn't bring him up.
The thoery basically goes that decisions are made prior to conscious awareness. Yet, after we have conscious awareness there is a split second to veto the action.
Libet's experiments are challenged in-depth in DCD's book Freedom Evolves but I just peaked at it, I haven't read that far yet. It seemed like he has some good arguments. But besides that, even if Libet was wrong, nothing changes. The brain is still a causal system, and you still need to break the law of conservation mass-energy and defy all reason to account for free-will. Even, if you did though, you wouldn't be any closer to explaining how it works. The idea of "how" it works suggests a causal structure.
What's up Carl, your work didn't rot
You showed us what this is and what it's not
I wish you were here, so you can talk
to me and my boys on this pale blue dot
Clinging to the crust of this ball of dirt
dancing 'round the sun it seems to flirt
but we are not cosmic dessert
we're just here to live and work
You gotta listen to what I'm sayin', it's Sagan
He was talking some sense, not playin'
Just lay and watch, Cosmos, on it's TV spot
Cause your a microscopic speck of dust on this pale blue dot
It does mushroom outwards doesn't it? Far beyond the average intellect is willing to give time towards to reach some semblance of understanding in regards to.
Actual/real understanding is a rare animal indeed.
Makes me want to click channels endlessly on the idiot to tube to pacify my malcontent, and confusion, as a taught recourse the "no brainer" distraction method
Thanks for posting. Food for thought.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
(\__/)
( o.O)
(")_(")
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
"Libet finds room for free will in the interpretation of his results only in the form of 'the power of veto'; conscious acquiescence is required to allow the unconscious buildup of the readiness potential to be actualized as a movement. While consciousness plays no part in the instigation of volitional acts, it retains a part to play in the form of suppressing or withholding from certain acts instigated by the unconscious. Libet noted that everyone has experienced the withholding from performing an unconscious urge." (Wikipedia)
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
just for argument's sakes maybe, but that is a cool idea.
This is basically what Libet believes.
http://www.the-aps.org/publications/tphys/2005html/FebTPhys/bookreview.htm
If unconscious processes manifested by the electrical activities in the cerebral cortex precede the performance and the awareness of a voluntarily executed motor movement, is this evidence that the action is actually initiated by unconscious mechanisms and that the conscious awareness is only of the execution of an act initiated and executed unconsciously without control by free will? This raises again the age-old question of whether free will actually exists. Libet believes that it does. He raises the ingenious and provocative hypothesis that there is in the time lags between the onset of the unconscious cortical electrical activity, the conscious awareness of the intent to act, and the execution of the voluntary movement, adequate time for free will to intervene to restrain the completion of the act. In other words, free operates not to initiate but to interrupt and prevent the completion of an action already initiated and underway unconsciously.
Some very interesting papers on the matter:
http://cornea.berkeley.edu/pubs/160.pdf
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cogsci/libet.pdf
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
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Let's say for arguments sake that the frontomedial cortex as described in the experiment is the seat of consciousness and the source of the brain's veto actions. Let's even argue that 'we' are the consciousness that activates the veto action and the consciousness arises from activity in the frontomedial cortex.
It's still a cortical structure, it is still a pack of neurons firing in sequences based on the stimulus, it is still a causal structure and never defies the law of conservation mass-energy. It behaves with cause, and not without cause.
Free-will, as a concept, requires a lot more depth of thought than this.
You have to be able to describe what it is you mean by free-will. The philosophical definition in dispute in this article is not a complex causal system. Free-will is a contra-causal system, it has no causes, it spontaneously pops into existence with the parameters and attributes it wants to have without anything determining what it wants. It can't determine what it wants, because then it would already have attributes that gave rise to what it wants. The paradox is that free-will cannot be caused or determined by anything, including it's self.
If we argue that free-will exists without cause, then nothing explains the variation in the wills of humans. If humans have this kind of free-will the point is moot, because there should be no variation in their choices, and any such variation must be the result of a different cause than the will.
Consider it as a simple mathematical equation A + B = C. Let's add Free-will 'F'. A + B + F = C and D + E + F = Z. If A and D equal 3 and B and E equal 3 then both C and Z equal 6 in the absence of F (Free-will) if F equals 3, then both C and Z equal 9 and there is no variation in either sum, the difference is 0, a big fat ZERO. Free-will, if true, makes no difference anyway.
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http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147
Wow! Stunning, indeed. What a brilliant teaching tool.
However, something tells me you posted this for reasons other than the images.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
No, I just wanted to share, I didn't want to start a new thread. But in-part, this is what he calls "Truth and beauty" and I agree, truth and beauty exist without magic.
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I've got brain overload on American issues. What do you have in mind?
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This guy is good
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/155