Burial t1_itsitgm wrote on October 25, 2022 at 11:53 PM

This seems very much in keeping with Benjamin Libet's famous experiment.

>Researchers also analyzed EEG recordings for each trial with respect to the timing of the action. It was noted that brain activity involved in the initiation of the action, primarily centered in the secondary motor cortex, occurred, on average, approximately five hundred milliseconds before the trial ended with the pushing of the button. That is to say, researchers recorded mounting brain activity related to the resultant action as many as three hundred milliseconds before subjects reported the first awareness of conscious will to act. In other words, apparently conscious decisions to act were preceded by an unconscious buildup of electrical activity within the brain – the change in EEG signals reflecting this buildup came to be called Bereitschaftspotential or readiness potential.

Nowritesincehschool t1_itvv91w wrote on October 26, 2022 at 6:07 PM

This is a silly test for “free will” we already know that reactions are subconscious. If something is thrown at your face you move. You don’t think about moving and then move. You just do it. However I can think about typing out this response to you. I. Can. Stop. And. Make. Periods. For. No. Other. Reason. Than. Conscious. Control.

You can sit for hours and think logically about a problem and solve that problem using conscious thought. Where do those thoughts come from then? I can choose to sit in response to what I read about free will for ten minutes. Or I could choose to get up. I can tap my fingers or do any one of a million choices that have nothing to do with instinctual brain processing.

I am open to discussion. I just haven’t seen an explanation for conscious logical thought that answers the no free will question enough for my taste.

The best I have seen is, your brain is tricking you into having those thoughts. That everything that happens in your brain is like this article. A memory that pretends to be conscious. But that doesn’t track with living as a human being. I don’t know. It all seems to fall apart with just a small amount of “free will” taken when talking about free will. Even the choice to engage with this post was a choice. I will just stop typing because I chose to

freebytes t1_itvytea wrote on October 26, 2022 at 6:30 PM

I think, more importantly, from your perspective, you can edit the comment before submitting. That is, you can evaluate prior to submission.

But, even if conscious thought is merely subconscious thought, that does not mean we have no free will. That would simply mean that our conscious decisions are derived by unconscious actions. But, based on the 'edit' ability, our deeply considered decisions (which may be argued to be the most important ones) are the ones that go through this feedback loop. We think about them, and those thoughts re-enter our brain to continue the processing. So, we are refining. This refining of prior thoughts is more closely related to conscious thought than any actual awareness of our thoughts.