Neuroscience and free will

Is free will a myth, as claimed by many materialists? 

Philosophers have argued this for many centuries. Experiments in quantum physics have something to say, but are extremely esoteric. What does the actual neuroscientific evidence say? One expert review of this is in an article by neurosurgeon Michael Egnor. There have been a lot of spiteful ad hominem attacks on Michael Egnor on the Internet because he is both an ID proponent and a Christian, but I would like to see an actual plausible debunking of this reporting and interpretation of neuroscience researchers Wilder Penfield and Benjamin Libet's results.  

Excerpt: 

"...an objective review of the neuroscientific evidence unequivocally supports the existence of free will. The first neuroscientist to map the brains of conscious subjects, Wilder Penfield, noted that there is an immaterial power of volition in the human mind that he could not stimulate with electrodes. The pioneer in the neuroscience of free will was Benjamin Libet, who demonstrated clearly that, while there is an unconscious material predisposition to acts as shown by electrical brain activity, we retain an immaterial “free won’t,” which is the ability to veto an unconscious urge to act. Many experiments have followed on Libet’s work, most of which use fMRI imaging of brain activity. They all confirm Libet’s observations by showing what is at most a loose correlation between brain activity and volition (for example, nearly half the time the brain activity that precedes the act is on the wrong side of the brain for the activity to determine the will) - the looseness of correlation being best explained as evidence for libertarian free will. Modern neuroscience clearly demonstrates an immaterial component to volition.
....Free will is a real and fundamental aspect of being human, and the denial of free will is junk science and self-refuting logical nonsense."

Concerning Libet's experiments, another article, "Science and the Soul". Excerpt:

"Consistently he (Libet) found that the conscious decision to push the button was preceded by about half a second by a brain wave, which he called the readiness potential. Then a half-second later the subject became aware of his decision. It appeared at first that the subjects were not free; their brains made the decision to move and they followed it.
But Libet looked deeper. He asked his subjects to veto their decision immediately after they made it – to not push the button. Again, the readiness potential appeared a half-second before conscious awareness of the decision to push the button, but Libet found that the veto – he called it “free won’t” – had no brain wave corresponding to it.
The brain, then, has activity that corresponds to a pre-conscious urge to do something. But we are free to veto or accept this urge. The motives are material. The veto, and implicitly the acceptance, is an immaterial act of the will.
Libet noted the correspondence between his experiments and the traditional religious understanding of human beings. We are, he said, beset by a sea of inclinations, corresponding to material activity in our brains, which we have the free choice to reject or accept."

I recall some of this material mentioned on Skeptiko. I am less sure about the "free won't" idea, partly because I am not convinced Libet's experiments are all that useful given it's a weird environment divorced from our day to day reality and thus requires an altered level of perception (you are thinking about deciding, and for an unimportant task no less). [IIRC Dennet was skeptical about at least some of the Libet-type experiments, so it's not just proponent types who question this type of testing.]

I am currently reading Philo Foundations of NeuroSci, written by one person from each profession.  They also have skepticism about the way results are drawn to suggest materialist/determinist arguments. 

There was also that study (article survey) from last year suggesting the anti-free will results were overblown, resposting article here.

The Libet experiments don't seem to be a good measure of anything.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...-free-will

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. If you try the experiment yourself - and you can do it right now, just by holding out your own arm, and deciding at some point to flex your wrist - you’ll become aware that it’s difficult to pinpoint the moment at which you make the decision. 

A further, more subtle (and more arguable) issue is that Libet's experiment seems to assume that the act of willing consists of clearcut decisions, made by a conscious, rational mind. But decisions are often made in a more fuzzy, ambiguous way. They can be made on a partly intuitive, impulsive level, without clearcut conscious awareness. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't made the decision. As the psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist - author of the Master and His Emissary - points out while making this argument, 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. 
An even more serious issue with Libet’s experiment is that it is by no means clear that the electrical activity of the “readiness potential” is related to the decision to move, and the actual movement. Some researchers have suggested that the readiness potential could just relate to the act of paying attention to the wrist or a button, rather the decision to move. Others have suggested that it only reflects the expectation of some kind of movement, rather being related to a specific moment. 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. 

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.

I presume we are talking about libertarian free will here. As before, I'm going with the concept being incoherent. However, I'm happy to listen to proposals for how it might work.

~~ Paul

I presume we are talking about libertarian free will here. As before, I'm going with the concept being incoherent. However, I'm happy to listen to proposals for how it might work.

~~ Paul

Nice to see you Paul, hope you're well!

But re: Free Will, is there any other kind of free will besides "Libertarian"? Because compatibilism is what seems both incoherent to me, though if you have some proposals for how it works I'm all ears.

That said, I'm not sure I would classify Bergson, Whitehead, or the Thomist-Aristotilean versions of Free Will as "Libertarian" which seems to suggest a self-moving soul completely divorced from all that comes before...which I agree is incoherent as a will that breaks from the past is random. But none of those three views on the subject seem to be suggesting such a Free Will.

I feel like this debate ended at an impasse before, though it might be due to the months long break I took from the forum...will try to dig up the thread...or we can start from scratch given how long it's been?

Nice to see you Paul, hope you're well!

But re: Free Will, is there any other kind of free will besides "Libertarian"? Because compatibilism is what seems both incoherent to me, though if you have some proposals for how it works I'm all ears.

That said, I'm not sure I would classify Bergson, Whitehead, or the Thomist-Aristotilean versions of Free Will as "Libertarian" which seems to suggest a self-moving soul completely divorced from all that comes before...which I agree is incoherent as a will that breaks from the past is random. But none of those three views on the subject seem to be suggesting such a Free Will.

I feel like this debate ended at an impasse before, though it might be due to the months long break I took from the forum...will try to dig up the thread...or we can start from scratch given how long it's been?

I'm quite well, thanks, Sciborg. I trust you are, too.

I was just verifying that we are not talking about free will in the legal context or something like that.

What I am waiting to hear is a coherent description of how some agent can make a free decision that it incompatible with determinism, which is the definition of libertarian free will. I'm sure we also agree that randomness in the decision making process is not interesting. We are looking for a free decision that is not wholly predetermined and random.

The arguments I have heard are of two types. The first is to argue that we don't understand determinism and/or we don't understand randomness. The second is to bury the decision down in some possibly supernatural agent that presumably has access to pure freedom. Neither of these arguments is a proposal for how a free decision might be made. The first is a purely negative argument and the second just pushes the problem down a level.

~~ Paul

The arguments I have heard are of two types. The first is to argue that we don't understand determinism and/or we don't understand randomness. The second is to bury the decision down in some possibly supernatural agent that presumably has access to pure freedom. Neither of these arguments is a proposal for how a free decision might be made. The first is a purely negative argument and the second just pushes the problem down a level.

~~ Paul

Without getting too deep into this just yet, it seems to me the two types of arguments are really to be taken together?

If we don't understand determinism nor randomness, we don't understand causality. This would make [a] space [for] the supernatural agent, an entity with its own causal power that is neither deterministic nor random. [In fact until we have the causal account, it's not clear the agent would need to be in any way supernatural?]

I'd agree it's better to have an explanation for causality that doesn't require a special place for an agent amidst otherwise material determined/random causal chains, which is where Dualism (of this kind at least) seems weaker than Panpsychism or Idealism...but this dualist argument seems to be defensible? We can't say there is a problem "down a level" if we're not explaining the causation of events that are taken to be happening without free will (as under Dualism & Materialism).

Admittedly I don't think I've ever fully grasped why there is randomness/determinism dichotomy, and IIRC this was the crux of our past disagreement on the subject of free will? Perhaps this basic question is in need of its own thread.

Without getting too deep into this just yet, it seems to me the two types of arguments are really to be taken together?

If we don't understand determinism nor randomness, we don't understand causality. This would make [a] space [for] the supernatural agent an entity with its own causal power that is neither deterministic nor random.

I'd agree it's better to have an explanation for causality that doesn't require a special place for an agent amidst otherwise material determined/random causal chains, which is where Dualism (of this kind at least) seems weaker than Panpsychism or Idealism...but this dualist argument seems to be defensible? We can't say there is a problem "down a level" if we're not explaining the causation of events that are taken to be happening without free will (as under Dualism & Materialism).

Admittedly I don't think I've ever fully grasped why there is randomness/determinism dichotomy, and IIRC this was the crux of our past disagreement on the subject of free will? Perhaps this basic question is in need of its own thread.

So let's say we've made the space for the agent. Can you give any sort of description of a nondeterministic, nonrandom decision?

Beta decay, for example, appears to be truly random. It is, of course, possible that we just don't understand the deterministic cause of the decay of a specific atom. Quantum mechanics is in for quite a shock if it turns out to be deterministic and predictable. Meanwhile, even if some randomness is actually deterministic, that gives no satisfaction to the libertarian.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure that it matters that the true nature of causality is still being debated. We can give coherent descriptions of cause and effect. For example, we can say that a change of force is a cause. And every tidbit of our technology relies on deterministic cause and effect. I don't think we can say the same thing about nondeterministic "acausal" causes.

~~ Paul

I too feel a certain deja vu with this debate and I am under no illusions that I can follow the philosophical reasoning but - and perhaps this was also part of the previous debate - wouldn't determinism deny novelty and creativity?

I'm also unclear about how determinism fits with darwinism. Darwinism, as we have discussed elsewhere, describes evolution in terms of natural selection following random mutation. Random means chance and chance is incompatible with determinism, isn't it? Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, Paul, but don't you argue for both determinism and darwinism?

So let's say we've made the space for the agent. Can you give any sort of description of a nondeterministic, nonrandom decision?

Beta decay, for example, appears to be truly random. It is, of course, possible that we just don't understand the deterministic cause of the decay of a specific atom. Quantum mechanics is in for quite a shock if it turns out to be deterministic and predictable. Meanwhile, even if some randomness is actually deterministic, that gives no satisfaction to the libertarian.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure that it matters that the true nature of causality is still being debated. We can give coherent descriptions of cause and effect. For example, we can say that a change of force is a cause. And every tidbit of our technology relies on deterministic cause and effect. I don't think we can say the same thing about nondeterministic "acausal" causes.

~~ Paul

Well sticking for the moment with the dualist assumption of the supernatural agent, why can't the decision simply be a kind of mental causation that is neither random nor determined?

It seems to me the question that has to be answered is why are events only determined and/or random?

I think this is all why it matters what the model for causation is. We aren't really saying much when we say a change of force is a cause, especially since as Feynman notes "force" as a term runs into a circular definition problem.

And our technology relies on "good enough" predictability, as I sadly am looking at a laptop on the fritz at the moment...But I don't think it matters much given technology is an extension of human causal power placed on the environment. We don't will the substance of technology into being, but we do will the structural patterns of tech. So that is a predictability we impose upon the world with great effort, rather than causation as found outside the bounds of our will.

IIRC this is always our impasse. I'll dig up the old thread because I'm curious where the debate turned last time...

I too feel a certain deja vu with this debate and I am under no illusions that I can follow the philosophical reasoning but - and perhaps this was also part of the previous debate - wouldn't determinism deny novelty and creativity?

I'm also unclear about how determinism fits with darwinism. Darwinism, as we have discussed elsewhere, describes evolution in terms of natural selection following random mutation. Random means chance and chance is incompatible with determinism, isn't it? Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, Paul, but don't you argue for both determinism and darwinism?

I don't know if random mutation means indeterministic mutation like quantum mechanics is (presumably) indeterminsitic? I assumed random at the biology level would be more akin to chaotic systems, where small disturbances have big shifts. That could be accomplished via determinism.

Also you're right this is debate crops of every so often, we should start to pin down the old threads to keep from over-treading old ground...