Free will is not an illusion after all
newscientist.com
newscientist.com
It's hooey on top of hooey basically. From what I can tell by reading up on Libet's work (the 1983 guy) is that he established that when we're anticipating an action (in the experiments case it was pushing a button, but could for instance be catching a ball or anything) our brain is aware of it's decision ~2 seconds before the person actually states they've made the decision, when the action is in the pre-frontal cortex it can apparently be up to 10 seconds. However our consciousness can kick in to stop the action.
Libet's research doesn't claim we lack free will, it's actually evidence of the delay our consciousness receives compared to our subconscious. It's been shown that our subconscious will pick up on a pattern three-times faster than our conscious; one example of this was a card game where a player was rewarded for turning over a black-card and punished for a red-card, it took the subconscious 5 cards before it started anticipating the results where as it took roughly 18 cards before the actual player announced the pattern (IIRC this wasn't a timed experiment, the cards were dealt as fast as the human player wanted).
I wouldn't say any of these experiments show a lack of free will, I'd say it gives proof of the incredibly complex machine that our brains are and that our consciousness is actually an evolutionary advancement to conserve energy. Libet showed that our consciousness has a veto over an anticipatory action, our biggest anticipatory actions are fight and flight both of which consume massive amounts of energy that if we used every time they were called upon would be wasteful.
Readers attracted by realistic headline: 0
Indeed, a deterministic universe (or at least one that precludes libertarian freedom) is a necessary component for eliminative materialists. This is heady stuff. Hopefully more work is done to design an experiment that isn't so subjectively interpreted and lacks the self-reported element of the Libet test.
A deterministic universe is an okay working assumption for conducting most scientific experiments most of the time, but there's a big jump from that to using it as a fundamental basis for answering the big questions in a "scientific" manner. One might even calling it pseudo-philosophy since it attempts to paper over the hard philosophical issues by using some trite application of scientific reasoning applied to wholly unjustifiable foundations.
Science may eventually come to bear on certain philosophical issues, but it won't be by "scientists" who are simply uncomfortable with certain ideas and thus chase certain conclusions, it will be due to new discoveries that change our understanding in unforeseen ways.
Isn't it always the case that science is built on a matter of faith though? I have faith that I'm not in a matrix-like reality, and there's no real way to know if I was in one, so I just set it aside, and instead work within the model of reality I see.
And if you do assume that the this reality does hold consistently (you don't really have much choice to decide otherwise), surely you can learn and know about how stuff works within that reality. Or am I missing something?
(It's actually a deep question, if you take the time to really grapple with it.)
But when you think about it, under this reality, how could free will possibly exist? Everything I do is a direct consequence of the past, modulo some possible quantum randomness if you believe in that, but even the randomness wouldn't give me a free will.
The real philosophy doesn't get done until you dive into how ill-defined the concept of free will is. That way lies compatibilism.
I thought that cross-referencing two submissions to the same article would be of value, because it would help prevent duplication of discussion.
If I'm wrong, would someone explain why? Down-mod me as well if you choose, but help me to learn.
Thanks ...