Neuroscience: free will does not exist

ok, i have no choice but post this....

Our bodies can be controlled by outside forces in the universe, discovers Tom Chivers. So where does that leave free will?

For a man who thinks he's a robot, Professor Patrick Haggard is remarkably cheerful about it. "We certainly don't have free will," says the leading British neuroscientist. "Not in the sense we think." It's quite a way to start an interview.

We're in the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, in Queen Square in London, the nerve centre – if you will – of British brain research. Prof Haggard is demonstrating "transcranial magnetic stimulation", a technique that uses magnetic coils to affect one's brain, and then to control the body. One of his research assistants, Christina Fuentes, is holding a loop-shaped paddle next to his head, moving it fractionally. "If we get it right, it might cause something." She presses a switch, and the coil activates with a click. Prof Haggard's hand twitches. "It's not me doing that," he assures me, "it's her."

The machinery can't force Prof Haggard to do anything really complicated – "You can't make me sign my name," he says, almost ruefully – but at one point, Christina is able to waggle his index finger slightly, like a schoolmaster. It's very fine control, a part of the brain specifically in command of a part of the body. "There's quite a detailed map of the brain's wiring to the body that you can build," he tells me.

I watch as Christina controls Prof Haggard's fingers like a marionette. The mechanical nature of it is unsettling. A graph on a screen shows his muscle activity plotted by time; 20 milliseconds after she clicks the button, it depicts an elegant leap and drop, like a heartbeat on an ECG. That 20 milliseconds is how long it takes for the signal to travel down his nerves. "The conduction time would be less from my jaw muscles, more from my leg muscles," he says. And as many of us will recognise, the process gets less effective as we age: "As I get older, the curve will move slowly to the right on the graph."

The idea that our bodies can be controlled by an outside force is a pretty astonishing one. "This is absolutely out of my control," insists Prof Haggard, as his muscles continue to move. "I'm not doing it, Christina is. I'm just a machine, and she is operating me."

What does this mean in terms of free will? "We don't have free will, in the spiritual sense. What you're seeing is the last output stage of a machine. There are lots of things that happen before this stage – plans, goals, learning – and those are the reasons we do more interesting things than just waggle fingers. But there's no ghost in the machine."

The conclusions are shocking: if we are part of the universe, and obey its laws, it's hard to see where free will comes into it. What we think of as freedom, he says, is a product of complexity. "An amoeba has one input, one output. If you touch it with one chemical, it engulfs it; with another, it recoils.

"If you see a light go green, it may mean press the accelerator; but there are lots of situations where it doesn't mean that: if the car in front hasn't moved, for example. The same stimulus sometimes makes me press the accelerator, but sometimes the horn. We are not one output-one input beings; we have to cope with a messy world of inputs, an enormous range of outputs. I think the term 'free will' refers to the complexity of that arrangement."

Slowly, however, we are learning more about the details of that complexity. This, Prof Haggard says, has profound implications: philosophically, morally, and – most worryingly – legally. "We understand what brain areas are responsible for impulsive behaviour, and which bits are responsible for inhibiting that behaviour. There's a whole brain network associated with holding back from things you shouldn't do.

"What happens if someone commits a crime, and it turns out that there's a lesion in that brain area? Is that person responsible? Is the damage to the machine sufficient for us to exempt them from that very basic human idea that we are responsible for our actions? I don't know." He refers to a major project in America, where "lawyers, neuroscientists, philosophers and psychiatrists are all trying to work out what impact brain science has on our socio-legal sense of responsibility".

This runs shockingly contrary to the sense of freedom that we feel in terms of controlling our actions, on which we base our whole sense of self and system of morality. "As far as I know," says Prof Haggard, "all societies hold individuals responsible for their actions. Even in animal societies, individuals have reputations. Non-human primates adjust their behaviour according to how other animals will respond. Junior males will not steal from older males, because they know they'll get beaten up. That's the beginning of social responsibility; the awareness that your behaviour has effects on the behaviour of others, and can have good or bad consequences.

"It's a rule that we need to have as social animals. You couldn't have society unless, if you do something wrong, you pay for it. The question is, what do we do when people don't have the brain machinery to play by the rules – or decide not to play by them? That's not a scientific question. That's a moral one."

Maybe, I suggest, we've over-defined free will. Perhaps it doesn't exist in the mystical breaking-the-laws-of-the-universe way, but there is a sense in which this "me", this brain and body, responds to the world, reacts to information, tries to shape its environment; takes decisions. Can we not pull free will back to something more defensible? He taps his fingers.

"Yes, interacting intelligently with your environment might be enough. The philosophical definition of free will uses the phrase 'could have done otherwise'. I picked up the blue cup; could I have picked up the white one? Given the initial conditions, the world as it was, could I have acted differently?

"As a neuroscientist, you've got to be a determinist. There are physical laws, which the electrical and chemical events in the brain obey. Under identical circumstances, you couldn't have done otherwise; there's no 'I' which can say 'I want to do otherwise'. It's richness of the action that you do make, acting smart rather than acting dumb, which is free will."

Some philosophers – Robert Kane, and, famously, Karl Popper and John Eccles – have held out hope that quantum indeterminacy, the randomness at the level of the universe's finest grains, could rescue true freedom.

Prof Haggard is dismissive. "No one wants to be told they're just a machine. But there is simply nothing approaching convincing evidence for the quantum view. Popper and Eccles proposed that free will was due to quantum indeterminacy in the chemical messages that communicate between neurons.

"But none of that happens at the quantum level. From a physics point of view, it's macro-level." Besides, quantum activity is purely random, and randomness gives you no more freedom than determinism does.

Does this bother you, I ask? Being a machine? "I keep my personal and professional lives pretty separate," he says, smiling. "I still seem to decide what films I go to see, I don't feel it's predestined, though it must be determined somewhere in my brain.

"There's an idea in theology that our free will places us next to God. Milton describes this beautifully in Paradise Lost. We like to think we're wonderful, that we have this marvellous capacity. But we should be more impartial: perhaps we overestimate the value and the excitement of having free will."

On that note, I take my leave. Although really, I didn't have any choice.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

furthermore, wiki sates....

In generative philosophy of cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology, free will is assumed not to exist.[68][69] However, an illusion of free will is created, within this theoretical context, due to the generation of infinite or computationally complex behaviour from the interaction of a finite set of rules and parameters. Thus, the unpredictability of the emerging behaviour from deterministic processes leads to a perception of free will, even though free will as an ontological entity is assumed not to exist.[68][69] In this picture, even if the behavior could be computed ahead of time, no way of doing so will be simpler than just observing the outcome of the brain's own computations.

en.wikipedia.org...

which reminds me of ug...



your predetermined comments pls?

the secret you.....

Where do I sign up? I wanna live inside a computer!

Star and flag for an interesting thread. However, I would like to propose you read a thread I made in July that could serve as a counter-argument: www.abovetopsecret.com...

In general I don't think it follows that just because you can "insert" your own electromagnetic signals at the point in the neural system where muscular motion is signaled, to produce "un-willed" action, that the idea of will is thereby false.

After all, we are physical creatures. So the fact that everything we experience has a physical analogue in the brain should come as no surprise. We may even be deterministic at the core. But this doesn't mean the experiences themselves aren't real. In fact, experience comes first; the existence of the physical world is an inductive inference derived from regularity of patterns discovered in experience.

Lately I've been leaning toward the belief that everything in the universe is willed, not in spite of but in many ways because of the time I've spent studying neural networks.

This is a good topic, but i doubt i'll address it properly. But i totally feel that there are outside forces controlling our/my actions.

As such i have developed systems to prevent such control. I know this might sound daft or unreasonable, but impulses in my brain are constantly telling me to do stuff, such as spend money or, er .... play with myself.....

The truth is the truth, but these are impulses that do not come from my own free will. SO. I write down, in advance, what my free will allowsmy to do. But even that doesnt work and i spend money on stuff i dont want, and mysteriously give in on te bizarre urge to surf the web for naked gorls.

not sure how this fits in with the OP. I think the lack of free will is even greater in the young who are more impulsive and easier to direct. Thus they think its their own idea to take drugs as it feels cool, but its really an evil impulse placed by an evil 'projector' of impulses.

I think there are many sources of impulses ranging from direct communication, including talk and written work through to psychic projection which stems from old people and the dead, ie spirits, as it is from the spitit land that these impulses are the strongest. The older you are, and the more departed from your pyhsical self you are the stronger your ability.

Thus an old man could project impulses into a child to do things that are... impulsive, like eat sweets, or more interestingly, like or dislike someone.

So the most powerful conditioner of impulses are parents whos close will is strong. Thus children will know without being told that something will anger their parents, they just know. But that control does not go when you grow up, it merely broadens and is transfered to peer groups and managers and landlords. And thats were OLD PEAOPLE PREY ON THE WEAK.

Other methods of control are the control of basic instincts such as fear and happyness. A lot of this is'common sense' but to hear someone putting science to it is interesting.

Personally i dont need proof, i know they are feeeking with my head. Thats why my tin foil hat is so large!!!

Seems the good doctor is just catching up.

Destiny

With Love,

Your Brother

I wonder how many people the uk gov has tortured to find this out.

Science is based so much on torturing humans, and these people are so inhumane its amazing, like getting a degree makes them into uncaring rats.

paper here

www.quantumconsciousness.org...

Hameroff and Penrose argue the opposite with a lot of data.

reply to post by Sunsetspawn


No positive thinking is garbage.

i wonder how many sports stars want to win, but if you microwave them, would they even be able to compete.

Microwaving people is something that happens alot today.

Do you people know that sports stars have weapons used on them.

Positive thinking is rubbish. Ask all those people in india that fell for it.

Originally posted by andy1033
reply to post by Sunsetspawn

 

No positive thinking is garbage.

i wonder how many sports stars want to win, but if you microwave them, would they even be able to compete.

Microwaving people is something that happens alot today.

Do you people know that sports stars have weapons used on them.

Positive thinking is rubbish. Ask all those people in india that fell for it.

how do they microwave people? i think they have microwaved me from outerspace. I often feel ill for no real reason.I think they can do similar things by projecting negetive thoughts at you. The negetive thoughts will make you depressed and not at your best often resulting in failure at your job and social life etc.

It depends on how you define free will. If you take it to me conscious control over all of your actions, then no you don't have free will. However, the neuronal impulse occurs before the behavior and it is possible through a person's will to stop the impulse before the action occurs. I'll look through my books and see if I can find the studies that show this.

reply to post by andy1033


Psychology has stringent ethical guidelines that must be adhered to in order for an experiment to be performed. Before any kind of actual experimenting starts the researchers must first provide a detailed outline of their experiment to an Internal Review Board who will determine whether the experiment is ethical or not. For example, under the modern ethics code there is no way the famous Milgram experiment would never make it past an IRB.

Originally posted by Xcalibur254
reply to post by andy1033

 

Psychology has stringent ethical guidelines that must be adhered to in order for an experiment to be performed. Before any kind of actual experimenting starts the researchers must first provide a detailed outline of their experiment to an Internal Review Board who will determine whether the experiment is ethical or not. For example, under the modern ethics code there is no way the famous Milgram experiment would never make it past an IRB.

thats an awesome experiment. how far would you have gone?

Right, someone else can rig my car so they can take over control of the accelerator while I'm driving.
Does that mean I did not have control of the accelerator previously?

And then they go on to equate physical actions with free will.

If you take control of the accelerator in my car, I can still fight for control, trying to disable your connection, use gears or brakes, steer into a barrier or jusmp out the door. Taking over control of a physical connection is not taking over control of the will.

There are many better examples of a lack of free will, such as
- an addicted smoker who has just given up smoking finding their feet taking them to the ciggy counter to buy more and them having no memory of walking there. (a friend's experience)
- When suicidal I've found myself on the road, in a stream of traffic, with no memory of walking out there.
- In familiar situations our brains can go to sleep, sort of, and we just respond by habit.
- In emergencies a lower part of our brain can take over and respond by instinct.
- Events recalling a traumatic incident can cause an unchosen response which relates to the original trauma, not to the present incident.

So humans, who want to always be in charge of their own actions, have an uphill battle.
But we do have the will to try.

reply to post by Sunsetspawn


did you watch the second video?

I find it very hard that some scientists can claim we have no free will when theres no scientific consensus defining consciousness. Also if its true we have no free will then how come its has been observed that human will can influence events using quantum probabilities.....

reply to post by mcrom901


What can I do, I gotta give you a Star for an excellent post and a rather effective use of U.G. . But more importantly I gotta a star you cause its part of the predetermined determinedness that we call reality.

As for my predetermined comments, it's been predetermined that they will be posted later. When that later will be has not been made privy to me.

The Tralfamadorians said, "he always presses the button, he always will, always has. We always let him the button, that's the way the moment is structured." and like Billy says "It was all right. Everything is all right, and eerybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfrmadore." Kurt Vonnegut.(I hope that lets me off the hook)