The Libet Experiment: Is Free Will Just an Illusion?
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- Опубліковано 6 лис 2014
- Are our 'conscious decisions' just reports on what is already happening? Narrated by Harry Shearer. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.
From the BBC Radio 4 series - A History of Ideas. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bwydw
This project is made in partnership with The Open University www.open.edu/openlearn/history...
and the animations were created by Cognitive. - Фільми й анімація
You cannot choose your thoughts, as it would require that you think them before you think them.
+Jonas Hermans So, what do we do now ?
Are rays from Mars controlling your mind? Quick, a lead-lined hat!
- Sam Harris
You might not be able to choose every thought you have but you can certainly CHOOSE from most of your thoughts to either SERVE or to NOT serve.
We cannot "choose" anything because the process of choosing already happens before we are aware of it. Also our perception of our thoughts is not something you choose. You just believe that you choose something over something else. Benjamin Libet's experiment shows that we are not aware of whethever to move our hand or not, before the act has been initiated outside of the conscious brain. Så there is no "choosing" going on. We are just aware or not.
That's some amazing art.
Looks like Scott McCloud!!
Two points:
1. Your unconsciousness is still you, it's still in the same brain as your consciousness. Furthermore part of the brain's processing has to be in the consciousness. cogito ergo sum. Those particular signals are physical phenomenon as well and would then influence the unconscious part of the brain, thus changing how that effects decisions in the future. So the most this might mean is that in order to exercise free will you need to plan ahead, that we have no free will in our reactions to things that are complete surprises. But even then the things we describe as "surprises" usually still have some familiar elements and our reactions to them will be determined at least in part by how we have thought in the past about similar scenarios, so there's still some free will.
2. How do we know when the research subjects are actually aware? To measure their awareness requires we either communicate with the research subjects or use instruments to somehow measure their awareness. In either case we are assuming that there is no lag between when the awareness actually happens and when we receive physical evidence (either in the form of a talking person declaring they are aware of something or in the form of a brain scan readout) of the awareness's occurrence. What if the awareness actually happens before the signs of awareness come about?
When you look at something off in the distance you're actually looking into the past because of the speed of light. Since neural impulses also have to travel it makes sense that the time a person appears to be aware would occur after the person was actually aware.
The last point is good
point 1 is very important imo
The last sentence actually do make sense. What if we were actually already aware at the particular instant that that thought to act was created? The lag might only be a cause of the time it took for the neural impulses to travel and thus be recorded into the instrument.
But I still have some doubts regarding free will. I believe that everything has a cause. The way we act and feel is always predetermined by events that happened before. I really hope that I would find an argument or an experiment that proves otherwise because this thought is really depressing and makes everything utterly meaningless.
Wait, no. I got it all wrong apparently. The lag was actually the time it took for the neural impulses to manifest into bodily motions. So doesn't the experiment just demonstrates how the brain is where our actions and thoughts originate and it doesn't have anything to do with the topic of free will?
Is the guy voicing his principle skinner?
Yes, Harry Shearer.
It's "Principal" Skinner
I thought not was harry shearer?
ua-cam.com/video/G6jhG5Lxb-k/v-deo.html
I was too dumb to understand that
you are not alone
LOL.... We must ALL be!! Otherwise, someone would have proven it either way by now
@@jonsnowknowsnothing5290 i am here with you
@A Wise Idiot no that's not it. It's like first the brain spike then the hand motion or the conscious thought occurs. If it is not conscious thought that is making that decision then who is
@A Wise Idiot I agree with you that this experiment does NOT conclusively prove that we have no free will. In my opinion the concept of free will that is used here is not the actual concept of free will. And in the real scenario, on a whole, free will does not exist. Unless the theory of quantum physics and multiple worlds is possible...where we split into different realities with every decision we make.
I've got free can't. I'm special like that.
When I get to work I hardly remember my drive...but I do remember what I thought about during the ride and the decisions I made during it. Clearly these two activities, both requiring complex decisions, function at two very different levels. One is engrained from experience of driving and is done automatically and in many cases (such as steering to avoid a collision) realized consciously after the decision. The other is forward-thinking and hardly a task relayed to autonomous portions of the brain. I think Ian McGilchrist has explained these differences in better depth.
The Sam Harrises of the world like to say it's my past experiences that determine ultimately what choice I'll make in the latter case, but I don't believe neuroscience supports this. My understanding is the brain brings up considering points: one part reminds you of past things, another brings fear of uncertain events, yet another may remind how your social image may change, etc. It's like a meeting of executives and the CEO, your consciousness decides. It's true that genetics and upbringing shape which executive is loudest in each person, but we are still able to ignore the loudest one...case in point letting a counselor, family, or friend's voice drown out some internal thoughts you are trying to reject.
A CEO cannot be bothered with small tasks, like which arm to move. Even though that become problematic at times: CEO says diet, underlings binge. It's like we are sentient beings that have to steer a resistant primitive animal.
know thyself.....i think what the experiment is saying is that a big part of ourselves we are still unaware of.....i think just but focusing on physical sensation you become aware of patterns of holding and tension.....so if you self observe you go deeper within and start knowing thyself more
My thoughts (or maybe my brain's thoughts): If the brain seems to make the decision before we're consciously aware of making a choice, why and how does it make that selection? On what criteria? It depends on the person we've grown up to be. Our brain 'decides' based on those prior causes, those foundations of our unconscious motives. So if someone tells you to flex your wrist, you might sit there and refuse to do it or you might follow the instruction, depending on what kind of person you are. But if we're made to reflect on it, we tell ourselves we made a conscious decision to do it because it flatters the ego to believe that we're in charge and free from prior causes. But the brain, in a sense, knows us better than we know ourselves. We're only ever aware of part of what motivates our 'choices'.
Your brain is your buddy, you can be sleep or awake but your brain is still gonna fire because he gave you a command and your brain is thing which processes everything, it's your basis in reality. I don't think this proves experiment of freewill at all though and we are most likely unable to measure our own freewill at all.
I think of myself is trying it's best not to be drowned out by societies bullshit.
^Thought experiment, damn English very loosely worded.
Your brain is you, if brain is doing something, it is you doing something. Your unconscious decision making is still yours. Your unconsciousness is not an alien in your body. Our consciousness is not designed to command our everyday locomotion. That would be insanely slow.
If you base your "free will illusion" argument on the notion that most of our existence is executed unconsciously then it is fault, because that is not excluding the free will, it is just defining it as planning and long term decision making.
If you base your "free will illusion" argument on the notion, that every decision can be predicted at some level, then it means there is no free will but also there is no randomness and the whole universe is predictable. For example: Evolution was not random selection, but predictable selection. Everything in the universe could be predicted at some level. You could calculate causes of anything in the universe until its end.
But then, so far we are not able to predict everything and observe everything, so it is free will and random behavior to us. And well it would collide with Quantum physics, where things may be happening randomly, in the real sense of randomness which excludes the 100% predictability.
You might define 'you' as your entire brain, but what free will truly pertains to is consciousness. Free will in any meaningful sense says that if you had two options and you chose one, reflecting back on that choice, you could have chose the other one by consciously willing yourself. So, if we are talking about free will and how we define 'you', 'you' should best be defined as: the conscious being. .
Jakub Tyl
If you are simply your brain then you don't exist after death. You are simply a self conscious organism.
Yeah but I imply that you also shape your unconsciousness by your consciousness. Our unconsciousness is usually acting upon reflexes and decisions that we previously put in to our unconsciousness. So basically our unconsciousness is partly product of our consciousness and thus it is part of our free will. And anyway, as I said before, it would be very unintelligent to expect our consciousness to carry every task and let alone reflexes. If I would have to consciously decide my every move from all possible options than I would be the slowest person in the world. Our consciousness is making general decisions and our unconsciousness carries those decisions based on our previous experience that we shaped through our consciousness. For example soldier consciously decides to train combat reflexes and when they encounter danger their trigger these reflexes unconsciously, but their decision to train those reflexes in certain way was conscious decision. It is like our consciousness is telling to our unconsciousness ”If you ever encounter situation X, then perform action Y”. That is why, when you do something first time, it usually takes a lot of effort and you have to consciously think about it. When you do it 10 (or more), you already use your unconsciousness to act which brings faster results. Also If two people are encountered with the same set of actions, they tend to find their own method of dealing with it. So they consciously find method how to do something and then they carve it in to their unconsciousness. It is like you and your colleague have to work together and you are like "I do it THIS way" and your colleague is like "yeah but I do it THIS way, it suits me better". You both consciously developed different method to deal with the same problem and because you both do it long time enough, you both perform it almost unconsciously, but the decision to develop certain method was conscious. It is like unconsciousness is secondary free will, it is not direct but it is product of free will.
Mind is always 100-steps ahead of you.
Back there, Benjamin Libet had an all joyful camaraderie.
Libet experimenting delay
You're an odd man Skinner, but you make a great description of a psychological experiment.
The sixth stage is without description.
caretaker fans stfu challenge
One thing I dont understand is that the clock used in the experiment doen't show time in mili seconds meankng that participants would need to make esrimation to what the time is when they decided to push the button. It would be better if there was a running digital counter instead of a clock.
Or measure any time descrepencies between the firing of motorneurons in the brain against areas known to be linked with decision making (prefrontal cortex)
Too many assumptions of the correctness of timing, and our very subjective ideas of exactly what is being measured and what it means. In addition, free will has been limited in its definition. This is an interesting experiment with some interesting things to follow up on, but alone it does not prove anything. Still too much unknown. Very interesting stuff though.
I just learned about the idea of vetoing during a back and forth, and have been trying to find more info on it.
Mans power to focus or evade focusing his mind is directly, immediately experienced, the context of all other actions of the mind. Your post is the product of an unfocused mind.
Looked at from outside(objectively) the will is causally determined, and that looked at from inside(subjectively)it is free.
Idk about anyone else, but if someone told me to do this, i would either randomly move my arm/hand/fingers in any way that didn't go against the instructions, meaning i didn't think of the action itself, or i would sit there and think for a bit, then perform a routine i planned in my head according to the question, but not moving at all until a couple seconds later.
I also think it might be due to the fact that we are so in sync with our body's movement capabilities that when told an instruction, such as hold out your arm and make a fist, that we don't have to think of the action, but just comprehend what was said...
*This makes me wonder... what if the person was given an instruction in a language that they only know well enough to understand simple instructions. They would then have to mentally translate it to there native language to act on the instructions. (because they aren't fluent enough in the foreign language for it to be intuitive) My guess is that this could result in them possibly thinking about the action before doing it, maybe no matter what? i don't know*
Very helpful, thanks.
Thanks Principal Skinner.
Always nice to get science narrated by the bass player for Spinal Tap.
Dennet's free will is not the free will that people have in mind when talking about it. He rephrased it and made it possible that way. I find it that id does not solve the problem - just proves that we cannot prove it exists.
What if this "preparatory" brain activity is actually because of a "premonition" of the conscious act, we know, like borrowing energy from the future in order to acheive an outcome that would not have been possible without it, as in quantum burrowing.
You have a fine future selling people new age nonsense.
@@shawn6669 He wrote "What if"
The experiments claims to know so much about what is happening in the brain when all the equipment tells us is when brain activity is happening. The brain activity happening before the subject claims to have chosen to perform the task could be the mind checking on the arm and preparing the muscles for movement. How can we know for sure with such crude brain reading equipment?
Love this, and yea it’s so absurd to attempt to destroy the basis of the human spirit with an antiquated and narrow minded experiment. Our brains can’t even comprehend a fourth dimension or even consciousness, yet determinists have the audacity to claim the lack of free will based on this? My only explanation is: maybe an excuse to endorse a nihilist perspective since our societies are becoming more amoral.
@@Anaxandros Our lack of ability to experience another dimension doesn't seem to be good argument for assuming free will, as it shows a lack of consciousness rather than the existence of a higher powered, free consciousness? Nobody tries to destroy anything here, people just fail to realize that even if claims like determinism were true, it should not change in any way how we we would behave, think etc, as we would then allways have been in this state and still had the perception of a free self? We would never be able to be conscious of our unconscious determination and had no other chance than to go on as allways. Ironically, just the resulting fear of the detachement of their "Independent" identity would upset people so much that they would chose through their "free will" to be totally depressed ...
@@Anaxandros Some of very spiritual people will tell the same - there is no free will. They conside on this
@Troll Mctrollerson where does it start, then?
@Troll Mctrollerson well i still couldn't get it. Does it start in soul?
Hi Ethik Kurs 😂 morgen die KA 😬
Ich in 40 Minuten.
The wave off décision comme from THE SOLAR PLEXUS Yes sûre
in the experiment, how was determined the time of the decision to move ?
awareness and/or conscious action is by logic delayed since neuroprocesses have to happen in the brain first to form a thought. Thoughts are holistic paintings where the color drops it contains resemble a neurological activity of some sort
Of course I have free will...How else could I ever make an unprompted choice of any kind? but the idea that all of my free will is CONSCIOUS is a fallacy. Subconscious thinking is an important and integral part of any thought process...
Good thought
Why do you assume any choice is unprompted? There could be a queued past action or an additional delay that later stimulates.
I am curious if anyone thought this was a surprising finding? Like, did anyone of scholarship expect a different result would occur? I feel like we have known our brain Is tied to our conscious, And that our Brain would act before we carry out an action- maybe I am missing something
What about the late time between making a conscious decision, notifying the visual system to check what time it is, and then getting the report back from the visual system to register in consciousness the time to be reported?
That's exactly what I was thinking about.
Brief precognition in order to prevent video lag in the simulation.
Could the wave particle duality of light and matter in the form of electrons be forming a blank canvas for us to create a future relative to the energy and momentum of our actions? The future is unfolding photon by photon with each new photon electron coupling or dipole moment.
I noticed it took me around a second to utilize 'free won't ' and to not move my hand when prompted at rhe beginning. I think?
It takes a discernible amount of time to communicate between your eyes (or any other part of your body) and your brain. So the explanation of this experiment might just be the delay between what your brain sees and when it makes a decision...
Samuel Clayton that delay is only 80 milliseconds
The neuron to move the finger fires before the decision is reported? That makes sense. Presumable the sequence of events goes something like this: decide to move the finger-finger neuron fires-decide to report it-mouth neuron fires. You can't report a decision before that decision is made.
The seasons come every year at the same time
Wow! I took me 2 minutes to understand this experiment! "free will is an ilusion" it's very complicate to digest a concept like this.
We just become aware of the decision much later, but it's still us who made the decision.
Why would anyone jump to the conclusion that free will doesn't exist? There's just a time lag in the conscious awareness of our free will.
Interestingly, what is a reflex action?
The boxer's eyes saw the shoulder move. He then blocks the incoming punch in milliseconds. Did he consciously, make all the required calculations and the final decision to move his arm ?
Or, more problematic, to pull the trigger ?
By your logic you are claiming responsibility for sparking the neurons that created the thought. Funny, I bet you don't claim responsibility for digesting your food or growing your hair and nails. Those things just happen. If someone told you you are in charge of beating your heart you would think they were crazy. That's the same thing you're claiming with thoughts formed by your brain.
Everyone approaches this philosophical conumdrum wrong. The interesting question isn't whether or not we have free will. What is interesting is the question "what is free will?". The former question isn't that interesting, there are three popular philosophical doctrines to choose from. Everyone pretty much agrees the answer has to be one of those three doctrines (i.e., determinism, compatibilism, or indeterminism. The latter question, however, no one agrees on. I have read endless definitions proposed by philosophers and yet seems that no one really has a clue what they mean when they say freedom of will. Ask 10 people, you get 10 different answers. And most of those answers likely won't even make sense to you.
So yeah, it doesn't matter if we have it or not when no one can agree on what the hell it means.
What I know for sure about free will is that most people got it all WRONG. Most people would define free will as the ability to choose your actions. But this surely can't be correct.... For example, I can certainly choose to continue typing this sentence, but I cannot choose to be suddenly fishing in Alaska. In fact, 99.9999% of all possible actions I could think of are not actually available for me to choose from.
As I sit here in my chair, I am capable of choosing between very few options. Surely I could PLAN for the future (e.g., I have decided that I will go to the store tomorrow), but is planning for something that can't yet happen really what we want to call free will? When I plan my day, am I exercising freedom of will or am I just thinking? Is there a difference?
Do you have to think to have free will? When someone asks me to shout out a number between 1 and 10 "without thinking", did I exercise free will?
It just illustrates how very Little ANY humans really understand thing like the Brain and Intent etc!! The ONLY thing I know for certain in this world is that Nobody knows anything for certain!!!
I don't think the average persons conception of free will is as varied as you think it is. Most people have two simultaneous conceptions of free will, actually.
The first is "legal" free will. If I sign a contract without being coerced by another then I can say that I signed the contract of my own free will.
Second is "philosophical" free will. If I make a decision, say, to get the snickers instead of the granola bar I have the powerful (but probably wrong) intuition that if the universe could be set back to that moment I could choose the granola bar instead this time.
I think that if you encounter any other definitions then they are likely to be incoherent and weren't the result of clear thinking on the matter. Some people are just bullshitting because they need you to think they have a strong, well thought out opinion on the matter.
BTW, thinking itself is also an action. It's just not immediately externalized as a behavior in the world. Planning for the future is no different than making a choice in a store because we still have the intuition that if we could roll back the universe to that exact state we could come up with a different plan.
Libet experiment is not to be taken seriously as there is too much asked of the subject of the experiment. Also because there are numbers on the dial. The preliminary brain activity could surely be the conscious mind deciding on a number. The subject makes a mental note only of when the decision was made to make a hand gesture within hundredth of a second. The unconscious reaction in brain waves could simply be the neural mechanics involved in manipulating the hand. Not one bit of those observations and movements could tell Libet anything with any accuracy for he could not discriminate what decision was made and when it was made, especially relying on subject feedback and within hundredths of seconds.
The whole experiment is beyond my understanding. How can we know the movements on the EEG correspond just to mental activity concerning the designated task(here button pressing)? Subject can think anything: cakes, cats, robots.
Oh cmon! Stop with your materialistic philosophy! Our decision are NOT made by our brain! We only think with our brain what to do, but we do NOT decide with our brain! The waves before the decision shows his brain activity, BEFORE he made a decision! Our decisions come from an immaterial mind! From our soul! And that soul can NOT evolve from molecules to man! So evolution is BULLSHIT!
'Chinny reckon' gave me a massive flush of nostalgia.
There is a TL;DR: for my comment since this was an essay.
I'm frustrated seeing constantly that the scientific arguments against dis-proving free-will are rarely actual criticisms of the methodology and experiments, thus bringing about the need to modify and create new ones in the pursuit of finding out, but rather the social implication that if someone thinks they aren't in control, that they act like an asshole, as it's suddenly justified to be a dick.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a lack of free-will means and how the brain makes decisions.
If you make ANY movement, thought, action etc, it is because of varying calculated factors, including anything from memory, current environment, hunger levels, chemical addictions, genes, hormonal balance, time and place etc. It is a LOT of factors, not a single one is a free-choice one, all are predetermined. The brain is a possibility machine that focuses on preparing for the worst as well as the easiest way to do something. It weighs and evaluates everything all the time. This is EXACTLY why our brains think of CONSTANT what-if scenarios, good and bad.
Every new piece of information and variables changes the outcome. This it is deterministic not fatalistic. No cosmic ending, but cause and effect at play all of the time. This is why small changes can also make bigger impacts.
Every mili-second brings new information, which could re-calibrate the determined outcome. However non of that is in your control. Neither the decision weighing itself, nor the information available.
Bad people are bad, including when you are a dick because your brain saw that as the best possible outcome, or something is wrong with it (take personality disorders for instance). What would need to happen to prevent this is more education. Empathy for instance works because we perceive someone we care about as part of us. But even if that's selfish, it works in both parties favors, because the other person does this quid pro quo. The problem is when it is selective empathy, IE that human bad because a or b. But this one good, so I care about them. Generally we care mostly about others who seem like ourselves.
That's absolutely no coincidence given the that true altruism seems impossible, but also counter-productive if not damaging for a species. You have to care about yourself if you are to survive and your survival actually helps (generally) the survival of others. We're a social species, more so than most with an empathy capacity that exceeds every other living being. We can name a pen Bob, break it and genuinely feel bad for a moment. The concept for abstract thought and empathy for those thoughts is insane. This is why you can actually care about the whole world, even if your brain is boggled by just how big it is and how many beings that entails. It can still understand that concept.
If someone is taught that other people matter because it has to do with their own survival and quality of life, they will naturally care. If a person can realize and is informed that others matter, not because it's nice or ethical, but because others doing well makes you do well, we will want to treat others with the same reverence as we want to be treated.
For most, this happens automatically and instinctually. This is also why psychopaths and other empathy related disorders are so troublesome. They do not see that hand being burned as their own. Their brains truly sees it as separate from them. They have to focus on the idea that "what if that was me" and react in that manner.
I want everyone to do well, because productive happy people want to naturally give back, because they want more productive happy people. That kid in school could discover a cure for cancer. And even if they don't, I get a moral/social satisfaction that I wanted the best and helped another member of my species. It's a win win evolutionarily speaking. I help another, even if I don't get the grand benefit of helping a person discover amazing things and they are just a typical person, I still feel good because I experience their happiness as my own.
The implication of free-will or lack thereof is actually really massive. If affects our entire social structure, justice systems, economic models, pretty much everything. We need to find out what the answer is because no matter which one it is, we're not doing things correctly for either scenario.
Humans can not do a damn thing unless it rewards them. Empathy offers an ability to get a different kind of reward than the standard material goods/safety. Instead, we have emotional fulfillment, social currency, moral high ground, personal satisfaction, all which can tie in with many other humans in both intimate and abstract concepts.
You do the dishes not because you have to and can do it anyway, but because your brain has a system in place that rewards you for doing something. Both the physical movement, the satisfaction of accomplishing something, the then vs now system of delayed reward etc. Someone with depression for instance doesn't have this. Their brain at best gives no reward and at worst, actively tries to sabotage it by sending out negative responses and minimal dopamine towards delayed reward.
IE you getting sweet sweet chemicals and happy response for doing things you don't want to do. You're not special or strong for doing them, your brain is working as it should in that situation. It doesn't want to put in effort because it wants to ALWAYS conserve energy. But, it has a reward system in place so that enough things are done to ensure minimal effort vs maximum reward. The ends justify the means in your brain, so you go to work, do laundry, do your homework. A person who does not do those things isn't getting enough reward to justify the actions of doing so.
Everyone has chemical dependency from the naturally produced systems in our brains. This is what drives EVERY SINGLE ACTION. I wrote this entire thing because I want to feel heard. I want to feel like my words make a difference. I ultimately hope that I reach someone, but it's also because I want attention. Mine is long because I fear not being understood, like something will get misread or misunderstood, so I repeat a lot of things a and reiterate. Ultimately I write this because I get some reward for doing so. Even if it's bad attention, that's STILL attention. As social beings, we want attention, even if it's to say "ugh, I hate people who do things for attention".
TL:DR; You do what you do because you get reward from it. Someone who is doing something bad, wrong or self-harm is someone who's brain either has incorrect information or something wrong with it. No one does anything unless they get reward, be it material, social, ego etc
Bad people are people who's brains aren't working correctly. If there is no free-will, then a focus should be made on understanding why someones brain went wrong, rather than punishing them and hoping that negative reinforcement works (which free-will or not, we've generally learned that ultimately it doesn't. It either generates fear, which leads to irrational angry people, or it generates resentment in anyone who had to do with the punishment.) If there is free-will, then evil exists and bad people should be ostracized from society. However, it also means that if you do a bad thing, you made the decision to do a bad thing, and are part of that group. We'd have a checks and balances based on the number of bad things you did along with severity of bad thing to determine who is the most good.
We need a new system overall no matter if we do or do not have free-will, because right now, we have full, partial and no free-will systems, social responses, economic philosophies etc. It drives me nuts how people seem to either not care, or assume that things are working, when they are not.
You said you are frustrated. Could you not be?
Don’t care, didn’t ask. Plus you are white
Thank you for writing and sharing this. I mean it.
Now your argument is bullshit, because Libet himself said that mind has a "veto-power" to stop anything that was considered in the brain
I like how you merely state « everything is predetermined » without proving anything. Hunger hormones etc sure DO PLAY an influence role on your decisions, but YOU make the decision. Actually what is tricky in that discussion is you may always make up a reply to any example. If I tell you think of the sportsmen who push their limits every time, against their body’s signals that tell them to quit, you would answer that his will is being fit or strong as a consequence of pride and honour, generated dopamines to reach self-satisfaction. You would constantly answer that the action actually is the consequence of feeling a need (natural or for pride or whatsoever). Yet the truth also is, there are many instances in one’s life when the decisions totally come from the inside, and then we try to « negotiate » with ourselves to « need » what we decided.
Is the space between thoUghts that matters, you are that space : you cannot be aware of you thinking the moment you are thinking, it is the definition of being a self, you first are a self then you are aware of yourself, how would you be aware of your self without being a self first? Then you learn to think, using tools to think like mathematics, logic, language which will allow you to think by creating concepts, relating symbols to experiences and using memory, in that deep logical art of thinking it does not matter if you perceived your thought 6 seconds later than you thought it, or a week later, it does not matter if you thought it alone or over time as humanity as a whole, its the simple fact of getting to know the outcomes and its logical consequences that will allow you to choose which path to go, and that decision making based in outcomes is free will. A computer can have free will as long as it can freely decide what is a desired outcome. Is like chess, yet it will not be enough time or energy in the universe to plot all the possible chess games you could play. A perfect infinite combination of deterministic causalities allows you to have free will, your free will is randomness to other wills so thevsystem creates randomness out of deterministic possibilities.
What makes him think that the initial brain activity was particularly to move the hand, but wasn't not to move the hand.
The unconcious mind builds a decision but also makes you aware of both decisions - to move your hand and not move it -, and that is when the free will works becouse there is now something to choose between.
There would off course be a time lag between the REPORTING of a counscious desiscion and the counscious desiscion itself. I don’t see the problem. The experiment doesn’t seem to refute neither free will nor strengthen the philisophical idea of
materialism. Am I missing something here or what?
Yeah i agree with you.. i don't understand how this debunks anything
They forget to account for being on autopilot vs being mindful.
On one end of the spectrum you lack introspection and are just going with the flow.
With mindfulness you're actually in the moment being more conscious of yourself, your actions and the world around you.
So I think it exists on a spectrum.
Quitting an addiction and lucid dreaming would then be ways of exercising free will
It definitely makes a lot more sense that they said out loud they have a thought way after the thought is had? No one can have perfect timing like that, when you have a thought like “push the button” you then are only pushing the button. ONLY THEN do you start the thought of recognizing the thought and saying it out load. I feel like this is really obvious that there’s be a delay?
The sense of free will seems to be a very specific programming by evolution. As such, the purpose of free will must relate
to nature's two mandates of survival and reproduction. Since it seems to be a very specific programming, how specifically is it useful as it relates to survival and reproduction?
What if the person was given an instruction in a language that they only know well enough to understand simple instructions. They would then have to mentally translate it to there native language to act on the instructions. (because they aren't fluent enough in the foreign language for it to be intuitive) My guess is that this could result in them possibly thinking about the action before doing it, maybe no matter what? i don't know
i love that dan dennett is hooked up to the libet experiment
how did libet measure "the time at which they made a conscious decision to move their hand"?
I think therefore thought I.
You can’t choose to choose your choice. Free will would imply infinity paradoxes. Still keep on keeping on.
i searched "libet's delay" and here's what i got after scrolling for far too long
I guess thats what libet means
"Benjamin beyond bliss" "Back there Benjamin" "Libet's dilay" "Libet's all joyful cameraderie".
Ok yeah that’s why I’m here
@@klein2042 Lel
Yep
ye
Libet Delay
this video is perfect art
The highest form of "free will" we humans can muster is to do what we dislike and avoid what we like. The measure of this trait is "willpower". And yeah, that means some of us practice a greater degree of free will than others.
Post awareness stage 6 is without description
Omgg I came here because of the album too!
@Nathan Meeks did you listen for a 3rd time? 4th time?! 5TH TIME!?!
caretaker fans stfu challenge
great summery
0:26 Is that Jimmy Hill in the drop down picture? Probably not.
What is the unconscious decision was a urge ? Cause they ask ask to press it when they felt like it it was instructed just a unconscious awareness ?
Yes it is but it helps you to put your mind at ease.
How about referring to Libets article somewhere? Just a thought...
According the Libet Experiment it is discussable if there is a free will. If decisions are made in advance by unconscious processes in our brain, and if we then become aware of this and still think we have made a decision, this would negate or restrict free will. The human being would then lead a quasi-predetermined life through his subconscious, or through his experiences, environment, upbringing and genetic predisposition. Thus our actions would be determined and would not contradict the law of causality.
Thank you
Don’t really care, thinking about this stuff to hard and it just becomes counter intuitive to life. Just here because of the song.
How to assure machines timing 100% correct.
Any psychology experiment in which the data being collected is based entirely on self report should be suspect. It amazes me that this is taken as seriously as it is.
I'm not saying I believe libertarian free will exists. I lean heavily towards determinism. I just think self report should not be a part any scientific inquiry. People are far too good at fooling themselves.
First thought arises. Idea of pressing the button is the stimulus. Then only he decides to press. Then he acts. These three acts can't be at the same moment. When he decides to act then the hand will be raised automatically . There is a space between the point of stimulus and the point to act. This experiment covers from the point of action potential. Expecting comments from the viewers. Just nod your head won't do.
Nice drawings.
How is the detection of brain activity translated to "your subconscious already made this decision before your conscience"? It seems like quite the leap in logic to me
@D. Engelbrecht good point
Consciously deciding to move your wrist and deciding to write something are two different actions. There's no relation other than the context which is subjective.
Wait I don't get it, how did he get them to track when they make the conscious decision to move their hand? So for example, when someone wants to lift their hand, the brain would first go I want to lift my hand, then my hand moves right? How does this go against free will? Isn't it normal to think first before proceeding with the action? So it would be like brain goes "I want to lift my hand"-->person becomes aware of their thoughts and report it--> action of lifting hand
Although, there's acting on reflex. Does the professional boxer, decide how to move his arm or duck and when ? to avoid the incoming punch ?
One wonders ?
Freedom is the most valuable thing in our lives
That was nice 2 minutes of Disorted seaweed and epic music
Clearly one would prepare and visualize the movement to accomplish before deciding to do it and then actually doing it.
That explains the presence of activity before a decision takes place as there needs to be a question which the decision answers yes to.
If I ask you to snap your fingers every minute on the dot, you would look at your watch, get ready to snap your fingers (priming), then deciding to snap (triggering) and snap your finger a slight moment later (acting).
This plus the fact one cannot measure what actually goes on precisely in someone's mind even today makes this whole experiment quite stupid.
Am I missing something here ?
I personally believe that we have free will to some extent, as in yes, people do become hungry, but they can chose not to eat. It’s either instinct or logic. Either eat because you need to, or
Don’t because you don’t want to.
Yes, your surroundings do make the right choice seem more obvious, but you still can chose the other. Say you were sitting on a cliff, you feel like you could jump, and you kinda want to, but you don’t because that’s the dumbest thing to do, you can use your surroundings to make the right decision.
It’s like life is a game of cards, determinism is what you are dealt, but you can play your hand how you like, while still playing by the rules, you use what to know to make YOUR decision. Cause and effect is real, it’s just all about how you react mentally, and how that will affect other things around you.
My final point is that determinism is the cause and effect of the things people do, that will sway the decision of the people around, yes, you have free will, but the past and instinct will make you do what you need to do, and the only way out is suicide, which is not a good choice to make.
I personally believe everything is predictable if we know how everything reacts down the smallest level and could calculate how those reactions would play out over time, which is surely to complex to achieve. That means everything is predetermined. That's just my belief though, it's not what I want to believe, it's just what I find logical.
I'm not so certain. If an object is thrown in our direction, do we really, consciously decide to move from it's path ? Or do we just move ?
The conscious reporting time measuring is questionable...?!
that just means that theres two layers of thought.
premeditation is even more premeditated then you think.
The "free will" showes brain activity, but the "free won't" don't! But the decision to not do anything is still REAL after all! Materialism is BULLSHIT!
We are programmed to choose some type of reaction. For every action we take,there is a reaction. Cause and effect. Can we really make a free willed choice? Can I use my idea and honestly say it was really my idea to use this idea? I would have to think of what those options/replies/answers are. My idea/answer/choice would be the reaction to the question. In order to come to that decision, we subconsciously or consciously will elect what we believe is the better answer/idea/choice/ based on a reason or reasons.
Essentially we are responsible and also not responsible for our actions. We are in control but also not in control. We are a paradox within ourselves!
If we have free will we are responsible for every action we directly or indirectly take.
If we have no free will we are not responsible for every/any action, whether directly or indirectly chosen by us. We are presented in one way or another choices to elect. Our decision is based on a reason. We have to choose for a reason.
Which sentence is the right one? Which idea is correct?
The answer, to the answer is,what is the reason of your answer. Why did I choose my answer?
The answer and question is, what was the reason for my free willed choice/answer.
In order to know the answer, we need to know the reason of question.
It is an eternal question/answer loop.
We are already programmed to make these choices by something, for some reason we are presented options and have to choose. We are given the choice to choose one of many outcomes. The problem is the outcomes are already there. We just need to pick. So do we really get to choose our own path/idea/choice, or do we select the options presented to us?
What is real free will?
My take on the results, this guy was measuring brain activity, but we are more than just brains, there is more to us than just the physical, we have a soul, a mind, the brain is essentially the mechanism our mind uses to interact with or control our physical body in this physical world, hence why there was brain activity before conscious activity, because you can't measure the mind.
Our mind makes the decision, the brain registers this decision (the conscious reports the decision) and the brain controls the body, you still have free will, its just your free will comes from your mind, not from your brain.
You have pre-supposed that we all have a mind and soul that is separate from our brain. How does the (purely physical, chemical and electric) brain communicate with the (non-physical) soul and mind? Is it magic?
We move our organ by intention not by thought. imagine walking, where every step is a thought to move the leg.
Pero me cambiaron el video a hora es diferente antes consistía en presionar el botón antes que la luz se encendiera
This causes me anxiety
Yes me too. But the only way to get over it is to ignore it and practise your free will normally. There is nothing practical we can use of knowing that there is no free will
It's not something you should go around thinking about, even if free will is an illusion, it's a good one. I believe everything is predetermined, though I want to believe different. Still I don't go around trying to excuse everything I do with this belief, that doesn't help anything.
I've found that like any anxiety, the best way to get over it is to agree with the thought and move on. The more you ry to prove it wrong, the more the cycle of anxiety is reinforced.
For many it tends to, because they feel their experiences are suddenly invalid.
This is not true. You still think, feel and experience the things you do. A lack of free-will doesn't take that away.
I think lack of free-will is ironically freeing. I will still feel mad when someone treats me wrong, but I also know then that they aren't doing it out of choice. They are doing it because of all the factors leading to that decision caused the brain to think it was the best course of action for them and their survival. This means if we did acknowledge that people do not have free-will, we'd have a society that focuses on the root causes of these kinds of negative actions, rather than a system of blame and punishment, which don't actually work to change behavior.
It also means that even if I mess up and feel bad, I ultimately never would of done anything differently, because the information I had at the time is how that decision was made. I can't change what I do not know, because I don't know I don't know it.
It also means that a person with anxiety will never ever suddenly turn into a crazy person or actually be out of control, because they weren't in control in the first place.
On a personal level, nothing changes, because free-will wasn't taken away, it was never there. But on social, economic etc a lot would change. We'd have a system that looks at cause and effect, rather than assumption that chaos is the ultimate factor of our lives.
The issue with anxiety is that it's not logical. You need to face the thought, acknowledge it as existing and then do whatever to distract yourself. Don't deny, don't affirm, just see it as it is, a thought. Our brains are thought machines, always focusing on any and all possibilities. Anxiety is an ancient system of being able to react preemptively to possible negative outcomes, IE, what if that thing in the bushes is deadly, best prepare myself.
Unfortunately because the brain isn't perfect and our social structure is different than our internal mechanisms and patterns, anxiety can ring alarm bells at the thought of a thing in the bushes, with out even seeing a thing in the bushes. It's basically an overactive highly reactive alarm system to just thoughts alone. It takes therapy and/or medication in order to help teach the brain that a thought is not a cause for alarm like this.
Overall, a lack of free-will means a greater thirst for knowledge and understanding. Because the more information you have, the better your "choices" will be, which is true even with free-will, the upside being that, evil doesn't exist, the universe isn't chaos and random and things are actually predictable, including people. And it puts everyone on equal ground. No one is good or bad, instead of have functioning and not functioning and we know that more functioning happy people in the world benefits us too, so we want to help them.
The cons: A LOT of religious and personal/political philosophies people hold are completely incompatible with a lack of free-will. People aren't good because they choose to be, they are good because it benefits them and the brain calculates this.
I have chosen to comment on this video consciously! Wait...
This would only be valid if there was a button pressed (by the subjects) at the exact moment they made their decision
Emil Cioran (1911-1995):
I feel that I am free, but I know that I am not.
This could also mean that your thoughts are sort of physical manifestations of the decisions your soul (YOU) makes.?
So your thoughts are a tool to observe why you do stuff or just what you do in general.
The unability to decide every thought you have doesn't prove that there is no Free Will...Its a matter of which thoughts you CHOOSE to SERVE. A person could have CHOSEN to have not moved his hand when asked to.
That would still be a predictable conclusion if we knew everything about the universe and could comprehend how everything interacts down to the smallest reactions there exist. We could ultimately figure out exactly how that the person would think back and fourth about it but arrive at the conclusion to not move his hand.
But the act of choosing over which thoughts to serve or act out requires a thought of decision, the origin of which we have no control over. And if you suggest that such a thought is not necessary then I ask you can a thoughtless conscious decision still be considered a conscious free will decision?
So it is better not to prove free will through yourself, but to disprove free will through your opponent. Maybe then you and your opponent will agree upon the lack of individual free will but collective will.
This hardly disproves free will. It just shows the exact way decisions are put into practice and the processes by which we as individuals experience them is hard to measure accurately.
I was looking for the caretaker but this is nice too
And now it’s just a fading memory.
@@iamfilleg amogus
caretaker fans stfu challenge
This is amazing! Wow! This is so spot on it’s unreal....what’s been suggested here is not that the conscious mind made the decision after the initial decision was made but the me itself isn’t real. We are talking about two realities here. The story which is the apparent story in time and space and the absolute or the quantum field of infinite possibilities so in the apparent world of cause and effect and time and space there is an apparent me that can make decision though be it after the fact they were made but in absolute reality the conscious me is illusory therefore any doer-ship by the me including free will is also illusory... this is frikkkking brillliant wow thank you sire! The masters have said this eons of apprentice time ago 😂🙏👊👏👏👏
You got it man, love you 💜
Right back atcha sorry jist saw this ❤
I have been struggling with this question of Free Will for Years!!! I really "want" Free Will to exist and, for a while, I believed it was just an "Illusion." But the key word is *Believed* and Not *Knew*!! I know "believe" it totally exists but I have Never been able to prove it, even just to myself!! We can just Never know for sure. I really don't see a point to existence without it....but who knows, I'm just a clueless human after all. At the very least, it does exist from our perspective and THAT is all that really matters because we must live our lives as if it does exist, which in a way, effectively Makes it exist!!! Oh well.....off to invest my time and efforts into more solid and persistent "illusions!"
Why do you want free will to exist ? The idea that us (humans) are free is basically just because we cant handle the idea of us being "enslaved". Experiment that show we do not have free will has to be true if we follow the scientific model and observations. We are - as humans - forced to believe in one form of scientific observations which lead us not having "free" will. So let us just accept that. We are not free. Or what ? :P
@@jonasbendtsen3708 No! just no! On the contrary, we ought to always doubt and never neglect, not even the most insignificant data. Because we can always miss out something or misinterprect results. Never forget that science and technology are babies that are always evolving.
David Belcher why don't you become a neuroscientist?
ua-cam.com/video/G6jhG5Lxb-k/v-deo.html
My issue with this is that it could be the simple issue of brain to body latency. The chemo-electric signal takes time to reach the finger tips and hovers in the region of error for the amount of time it takes from a decision to be made and the action to be performed.
The equipment used is only picking up part of the experience
Back there Benjamin
my fav song in the 3rd stage
caretaker fans stfu challenge
Can I just point out, if you are being told to do something, subconsciously, you are preparing to do something, so this experiment would actually lack in validity and generalisation
good point
i see a great video
haha! Is that supposed to be Dennet.