Free-will: The brain's veto rights (ScienceNow)

It's interesting that people tend to equate conscious decisions with free-will. Conscious awareness, or even a consciously triggered act - which I highly doubt is possible - does not constitute free-will.

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.

These are some stunning images by medical illustrator David Bolinsky

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147

baraka wrote:

Wow! Stunning, indeed. What a brilliant teaching tool.

However, something tells me you posted this for reasons other than the images.

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.

Should check out the TED talks on Africa, good stuff.

gue_barium wrote:

I've got brain overload on American issues. What do you have in mind?

This guy is good

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/155

In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. In his book The Unconscious Quantum (Prometheus Books, 1995), University of Colorado physicist Victor Stenger demonstrates that for a system to be described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed (v) and distance (d) must be on the order of Planck's constant (h). "If mvd is much greater than h, then the system probably can be treated classically." Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Then what the #$*! is going on here?

Physics envy. The lure of reducing complex problems to basic physical principles has dominated the philosophy of science since Descartes's failed attempt some four centuries ago to explain cognition by the actions of swirling vortices of atoms dancing their way to consciousness. Such Cartesian dreams provide a sense of certainty, but they quickly fade in the face of the complexities of biology. We should be exploring consciousness at the neural level and higher, where the arrow of causal analysis points up toward such principles as emergence and self-organization. Biology envy.

By Michael Shermer
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=0006F4CB-F090-11BE-AD0683414B7F0000

OutOfBreath wrote:

You are the one insisting that free will must be something of that magnitude. I cannot speak for the others here, but to me, free will doesn't have to mean anything more than adding a random element which would mean that the world is not entirely predetermined and fixed in stone forever and ever. Free will don't have to contradict causality by definition. Furthermore, the causality you claim, implicitly states that we know all the causes, or at least where all causes can come from. Which is a pretty bold statement. It is not reduced to simply determinism = cause and effect and free will = no cause and no effect. Free will may be nothing more than focus of attention, or us focusing on some influences more than others.

Hard determinism is an equally untenable position as the complete free will (which btw is not what I'm advocating here). Determinism then requires that everything happens in the only way it possibly could, and everything that comes later was determined precisely and irrevocably at the beginning of time. To claim it demands that we know everything, or enough of it to make no difference.

Peace
Dan

Even if you add a random element as Kane suggests. You are not the randomizer, the randomizer is an external factor to your deliberation. Your deliberation as a contained system, with or without truly random variables behaves the same. By your definition of Free-will, a computer chess program has freedom of the will.