Neuroscience and free will

[Laird]

I've seeded a page on the wiki based on the redux I gave above. That wiki page is In Defence of Free Will. Edits and additions welcome.

I found an excellent short paper from 2018 by psychologist Raymond Bergner that it seems to me completely undermines the "determinism makes human free will impossible" argument. It includes an extensive and devastating attack on the universal applicability of the Libet experiments to all human choices and deliberations, and on the standard interpretation of these experiments.

The Case Against the Case Against Free Will by Raymond Bergner, Illinois State University, at https://www.researchgate.net/publication..._Free_Will .

Abstract:
My aim in this paper is to demonstrate that those who believe that they have mounted a decisive, logically and scientifically based case against the existence of a human capability to engage in deliberate action, and thus that there is "no such thing as free will", have not in fact done so. It is to argue that, certainly at the present historical moment and perhaps in principle, there is no strong reason to distrust our experience in the matter of whether or not we possess the ability to make genuine choices. In part 1 of the paper, I state what I have observed to be the standard arguments in favor of causal determinism of human behavior, with an emphasis on the determinist principle itself and on the experimental work of Benjamin Libet and John Dylan-Haynes. In parts 2 and 3, I present a series of counterarguments which, taken collectively, militate strongly against the soundness of the hard determinist position regarding human behavior and its purported scientific foundation.

Conclusion:
The field of psychology and the broader culture, perhaps especially its more educated members, are currently being urged to accept as uniquely scientifically respectable the idea that persons are organisms whose behavior is causally determined and thus have no free will (Cave, 2016; Coyne, 2012; Harris, 2012). In learned books, magazines, documentaries, and talk shows, they are being told that persons are, in E.O. Wilson’s phrase, “marvelous robot(s)...wired (neuronally) with awesome precision” (1999, p. 53). The social impact of this view being presented to the public is a matter of considerable importance. An increasing body of research has shown that disbelief in free will, in addition to being a prima facie case of believing that one has no control over one's life, is associated with a variety of antisocial outcomes (Baumeister, 2008; Baumeister, Masicampo, & DeWall, 2009; Bergner & Ramon, 2013; Vohs & Schooler, 2008). According to Martin et al. (2010), further, among the most important casualties of this view are beliefs in moral accountability, the legitimacy of human rights and responsibilities, and notions of praise- and blameworthiness. Finally, as argued above, behavioral determinism carries the logical implication that, if true, there can be no such thing as justified true belief, thus calling into question the very possibility of empirically grounded scientific knowledge itself. For all of these reasons, the presentation to the public of a conception of persons as lacking free will -- as individuals whose behavior is completely causally determined -- is deeply problematic. I have tried to show here that there are many strong reasons to conclude that this conception is not in fact something "that science has shown" or even that we have strong reason to believe in.

I think that Bergner has successfully done that.

A new experimental study invalidates the major empirical argument against free will. This is covered in an article entitled A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked, at https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...al/597736/ . 

It seems that Benjamin Libet's "readiness potential" experiments are no longer any real evidence against free will, leaving his "free won't" observations still evidence for it.

The particular protocol used by Libet was where the subjects simply acted whenever the moment struck them. Those spontaneous moments turn out to have coincided with the haphazard random ebb and flow of the participants’ brain activity, where they would have been more likely to tap their fingers when their motor system happened to be closer to a threshold for movement initiation.

"This would not imply, as Libet had thought, that people’s brains “decide” to move their fingers before they know it. Hardly. Rather, it would mean that the noisy activity in people’s brains sometimes happens to tip the scale if there’s nothing else to base a choice on, saving us from endless indecision when faced with an arbitrary task. The detected "readiness potential" would (just) be the rising part of the brain fluctuations that tend to coincide with the decisions. This is a highly specific situation, not a general case for all, or even many, choices." 

"In a new study under review for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schurger and two Princeton researchers repeated a version of Libet’s experiment. To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged. If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported consciously making decisions in Libet’s original experiment.

In other words, people’s subjective experience of a decision—what Libet’s study seemed to suggest was just an illusion—appeared to match the actual moment their brains showed them making a decision."

Personally, until someone can show me, in pure math logic, that there's a way to make a choice without a logical path, I won't believe it. Because that's the fundamental thing here.

That being said, I did try to do some of my own math for it to see what it would take. I created a network of nodes and paths between them. The idea was that every node would be connected to every other node. Thus if you picked two random nodes there would be increased uncertainty of which path specifically was taken to get from A to B in any instance. Nonetheless there'd still be a path so no choice would be free. But if you take it to infinity something interesting happens. Certainty goes to 0.

Now, this doesn't equal free will because there's still paths, in order for it to be free will it would hav to come from outside of the system. I.e, certainty would have to be negative, not just 0. You just have no way to tell which one would be taken in any instance. However it does bring up an interesting question. Can someone win an infinite lottery? I don't know. Presumably yes because there should still end up being A winning ticket, but at the same time no because the chances are infinity to 1. That's the closest I've ever gotten to a mathematical proof in support of free will. You could achieve this effect in reality through liquefying the system. Assuming you can infinitely divide the space, then you effectively have infinite nodes and pathways, or one single meta node.

This is unlikely because of plank length... but... what if you use a substance out of phase or more fundamental than this specific universe? Then maybe plank length doesn't matter because it literally doesn't exist and thus you can subdivide as much as you want. Or maybe you don't even need to and it's all just pure information. Like how irrational numbers never end.

Regardless, I don't actually think free will is real, yet, but I also think that's really stupid so I act like its real anyways.

Personally, until someone can show me, in pure math logic, that there's a way to make a choice without a logical path, I won't believe it. Because that's the fundamental thing here.

That isn't fundamental. It rests upon an unproven assumption.  There is no particular reason to suppose that pure mathematical logic is applicable to this topic. Indeed there are different branches of mathematics, the choice of logic seems arbitrary. I tend toward the view that such a choice is strongly weighted by the familiarity we all have with computers in their many forms, they are part of our everyday lives, thus logic is an idea very familiar to us. I think we need to look further, rather than reaching for the nearest tool.

Regardless, I don't actually think free will is real, yet, but I also think that's really stupid so I act like its real anyways.

Given this, perhaps it might be interesting to play devil's advocate, attempt to construct ideas and theories in support of free will. It could be time well spent.

Personally, until someone can show me, in pure math logic, that there's a way to make a choice without a logical path, I won't believe it. Because that's the fundamental thing here.

..............................

Regardless, I don't actually think free will is real, yet, but I also think that's really stupid so I act like its real anyways.

This reminds me of a simple thought experiment. Consider a Rembrandt portrait. What is its origin? Some scientists (of course strictly wedded to metaphysical naturalism/methodological naturalism in their scientific method) are tasked with finding the origin of this artifact. The paradigm of their basic method assumes reality to consist exclusively of random/probabilistic and deterministic processes of matter, energy, space and time. The deterministic processes consist exclusively of logical causal chains (with the stochastic/random elements sometimes added in). There is absolutely nothing else. Certainly not free will.

However, the properties of conscious awareness (the essence of what we are) remain in an entirely different existential realm than the properties of matter, energy and space, what can be investigated by physical science. This is the conscious creative awareness that we know from both historical observation and introspection was the true source of the Rembrandt portrait. Some examples with conscious awareness:

– intentionality – the quality of directing toward achieving an object
– aboutness: being about something
– this object of aboutness may be totally immaterial as in abstract thought, i.e. a thought about the number pi
- having meaning
– subjectivity
– qualities of subjective awareness – i.e. blueness, redness, loudness, softness

The properties of mental phenomena such as the examples given can’t be derived from the properties of the ultimately physical phenomena investigatable by physical science. They are in entirely different existential categories.

The scientists' paradigm consequently deliberately excludes consciousness and teleology of any kind as a source of complex functional information.

But these properties or qualities and more are strongly elicited by the Rembrandt portrait, indicating a conscious intelligent and creative originator having these immaterial properties. This is the only known source of such an artifact. Not a “meat robot” as assumed by materialism.

The researchers can’t actually demonstrate even theoretically that a mechanism consisting only of random/probabilistic and deterministic sub-mechanisms can create such an artwork consisting of a very large amount of complex specified meaningful information (of course with no intelligent outside input). They can’t do this any more than they can demonstrate even theoretically that the extremely large amount of complex specified information in biology has such an origin in totally stochastic and deterministic Darwinian processes. This is shown by the bankruptcy of modern synthesis Neodarwinism. As absurd as hypothesizing that the faces on Mount Rushmore are the result of natural wind erosion and tectonic processes over millions of years.

Since the scientists are prohibited by their paradigm of naturalism from ever even at the start considering conscious creative intelligence having free will as a possible origin of the painting, they get nowhere. What does this say about the validity of their basic paradigm?

[Laird]

I've seeded a page on the wiki based on the redux I gave above. That wiki page is In Defence of Free Will. Edits and additions welcome.

I've added some further discussion to that page. To see the changes, click here - the full article's text is shown below the change report if you just want to scroll down and read that. Comments, criticisms, suggestions, and constructive edits welcome.