Past experiments seem to deliver evidence that materialist's were right and that we don't have free will. Well things are changing as evidence is showing that free will exists in some degree. I never thought we have full blown free will though as our brain restricts our immaterial soul and will greatly.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/02/a-neuroscience-finding-on-free-will.html
For the materialist's who believe in determinism it looks like the evidence for that is far from conclusive. Also materialist's have been intepretating their experiments on free will as evidence against free will.
https://news.ncsu.edu/2018/03/free-will-review-2018/
In similar news apparently an ancient virus could be responsible for human consciousness. Hmm okay, wouldn't a brain virus be more likely to bring about a zombie rather than consciousness?.
https://www.livescience.com/61627-ancient-virus-brain.html
Showing posts with label Free Will. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Will. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2018
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Why Free Will is Not an illusion created by the brain!
There is a lot of experiments that materialist's use to support their view that free will is illusory. These experiments however are often misinterpreted to support that view. There are three big reasons why the experiments don't provide that free will is illusory. This is taken from brain blogger all credit goes to W.R. Klemm, DVM, PhD. (I realize he isn't a dualist but he makes good points when it comes to free will not being illusory based on experiments purported to show it. So here we go.
1. The timing of a free will event requires introspection as well as other research hows that introspection estimates of event timing are not accurate.
2) Simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
3) The brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.
There are some more obvious issues as well that many scientist's have glossed over when examining the data.
Decisions are not often instantaneous (certainly not on a scale of a fraction of a second).
Conscious realization that a decision has been made is delayed from the actual decision, and these may be two distinct processes.
Decision making is not the only mental process going on in such tasks.
Some willed action, as when first learning to play a musical instrument or touch type must be freely willed because the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
Free-will experiments have relied too much on awareness of actions and time estimation of accuracy.
Extrapolating from such simple experiments to all mental life is not justified.
Conflicting data and interpretations have been ignored.
We should not underestimate the true power of the subconscious mind, and it is the subconscious mind that shares duties with the conscious mind. This have been known for decades from research done in psychical research and parapsychology.
1. The timing of a free will event requires introspection as well as other research hows that introspection estimates of event timing are not accurate.
2) Simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
3) The brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.
There are some more obvious issues as well that many scientist's have glossed over when examining the data.
Decisions are not often instantaneous (certainly not on a scale of a fraction of a second).
Conscious realization that a decision has been made is delayed from the actual decision, and these may be two distinct processes.
Decision making is not the only mental process going on in such tasks.
Some willed action, as when first learning to play a musical instrument or touch type must be freely willed because the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do.
Free-will experiments have relied too much on awareness of actions and time estimation of accuracy.
Extrapolating from such simple experiments to all mental life is not justified.
Conflicting data and interpretations have been ignored.
We should not underestimate the true power of the subconscious mind, and it is the subconscious mind that shares duties with the conscious mind. This have been known for decades from research done in psychical research and parapsychology.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Free Will Is Not An Illusion After All
I have come across a new scientist article where two scientists did a couple of experiments trying to replicate Benjamin Libet's free will experiment where he concluded that unconscious neural processes determine our actions before we are ever aware of making a decision. His experiment is however called into question by Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. They used scalp electrodes, but instead of letting their volunteers decide when to move, Miller and Trevena asked them to wait for an audio tone before deciding whether to tap a key. If Libet's interpretation were correct, Miller reasoned, the readiness potential should be greater after the tone when a person chose to tap the key.
While there was an readiness potential before volunteers made their decision to move, the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap. Miller concludes that the readiness potential may merely be a sign that the brain is paying attention and does not indicate that a decision has been made.
Miller and Trevena also failed to find evidence of subconscious decision-making in a second experiment. This time they asked volunteers to press a key after the tone, but to decide on the spot whether to use their left or right hand. As movement in the right limbs is related to the brain signals in the left hemisphere and vice versa, they reasoned that if an unconscious process is driving this decision, where it occurs in the brain should depend on which hand is chosen. But they found no such correlation.
You can read about the experiments here
Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.08.006; Brass Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.2112.
While there was an readiness potential before volunteers made their decision to move, the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap. Miller concludes that the readiness potential may merely be a sign that the brain is paying attention and does not indicate that a decision has been made.
Miller and Trevena also failed to find evidence of subconscious decision-making in a second experiment. This time they asked volunteers to press a key after the tone, but to decide on the spot whether to use their left or right hand. As movement in the right limbs is related to the brain signals in the left hemisphere and vice versa, they reasoned that if an unconscious process is driving this decision, where it occurs in the brain should depend on which hand is chosen. But they found no such correlation.
You can read about the experiments here
Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.08.006; Brass Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.2112.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Free Will Is It Real Or An Illusion?
Some believe free will is real while others believe it's just a illusion. A powerful illusion that we strongly believe we have but we don't. While i strongly disagree, it's very evident that we have free will to some degree anyways. One such example that we have some free will is the fact that are arms go up when we get out of bed in the morning. You can say well that is the thing with the old arm sometimes it goes up and someones it doesn't. But the fact remains the arms go up. For a epiphenomenalism to work it has to show why a simple observation of the arm moving up and down is just an illusion. Of course free will conflicts with the current scientific worldview which is naturalism.
On a off-topic note on my father: He is doing good, my mom had to go to the Halifax hospital to see my father. The doctors there are running tests on his heart to see if another blood clot form in his heart.
On a off-topic note on my father: He is doing good, my mom had to go to the Halifax hospital to see my father. The doctors there are running tests on his heart to see if another blood clot form in his heart.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Rebuttal To Article Brain Scanners See Your Decisions Before You Make Them
Brain scanners can see your decisions before to make them
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/18/BANFRK1TG.DTL<
Response From Titus Rivas:The only thing that can be demonstrated by this type of evidence is that there is some brain mechanism involved to facilitate consciousness during our incarnated existence. This does not at all mean the contents of consciousness are themselves caused by the brain mechanism. In other words, the evidence can be perfectly interpreted in terms of the transmitter-receiver hypothesis.
One of the main responses seems to me that there is an interaction of brain and mind, so that the role of the brain does not exclude a separate role of the mind. Anyway, epiphenomenalism is logically untenable as I showed with Hein van Dongen in our Exit Epiphenomenalism: http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/epiphenomenalism.html
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/18/BANFRK1TG.DTL<
Response From Titus Rivas:The only thing that can be demonstrated by this type of evidence is that there is some brain mechanism involved to facilitate consciousness during our incarnated existence. This does not at all mean the contents of consciousness are themselves caused by the brain mechanism. In other words, the evidence can be perfectly interpreted in terms of the transmitter-receiver hypothesis.
One of the main responses seems to me that there is an interaction of brain and mind, so that the role of the brain does not exclude a separate role of the mind. Anyway, epiphenomenalism is logically untenable as I showed with Hein van Dongen in our Exit Epiphenomenalism: http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/epiphenomenalism.html
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