Consciousness: more support for free will (General)

by David Turell , Friday, December 06, 2019, 20:30 (1603 days ago) @ David Turell

Well reasoned retort to Labet:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-f...

"However, if we look more closely, Libet’s experiment is full of problematic issues. For example, it relies on the participants’ own recording of when they feel the intention to move. One issue here is that there may be a delay between the impulse to act and their recording of it—after all, this means shifting their attention from their own intention to the clock. In addition, it is debatable whether people are able to accurately record the moment of their decision to move. Our subjective awareness of decisions is very unreliable.

***

"In a modified version of Libet’s experiment (in which participants were asked to press one of two buttons in response to images on a computer screen), participants showed “readiness potential” even before the images came up on the screen, suggesting that it was not related to deciding which button to press.

"Still others have suggested that the area of the brain where the "readiness potential" occurs—the supplementary motor area, or SMA—is usually associated with imagining movements rather than actually performing them. The experience of willing is usually associated with other areas of the brain (the parietal areas). And finally, in another modified version of Libet’s experiment, participants showed readiness potential even when they made a decision not to move, which again casts doubt on the assumption that the readiness potential is actually registering the brain’s “decision” to move.

"A further, more subtle, issue has been suggested by psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist. Libet's experiment seems to assume that the act of volition consists of clear-cut decisions, made by a conscious, rational mind. But McGilchrist points out that decisions are often made in a more fuzzy, ambiguous way. They can be made on a partly intuitive, impulsive level, without clear conscious awareness. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't made the decision.

"As McGilchrist puts it, Libet’s apparent findings are only problematic "if one imagines that, for me to decide something, I have to have willed it with the conscious part of my mind. Perhaps my unconscious is every bit as much 'me.'" Why shouldn't your will be associated with deeper, less conscious areas of your mind (which are still you)? You might sense this if, while trying Libet’s experiment, you find your wrist just seeming to move of its own accord. You feel that you have somehow made the decision, even if not wholly consciously.

"Because of issues such as these—and others that I don’t have space to mention—it seems strange that such a flawed experiment has become so influential, and has been (mis)used so frequently as evidence against the idea of free will. You might ask: why are so many intellectuals so intent on proving that they have no free will? (As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pointed out ironically, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”)"

Comment: I've published other refutations of Libet. This is the strongest. That throws Libet finally out the window. EEG results are v a secondary electrical glimpse as to exactly what the brain is doing