The ability to choose forms the basis of our system of ethics and morality, as well as our system of punishment and redemption. All is not as it seems, however, as is so often true with the workings of the mind, and there is evidence regarding the workings of this biological machine, our brain, that could potentially threaten what we presume to know about will.

I will relate the following examples from a broadcast lecture by the scientist Vilayanur Ramachandran. The lecture is titled “Neuroscience - the New Philosophy”, and can be obtained here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture5.shtml . I recommend this, and many of the lectures that can be found in this link – it is well worth the time to listen to them.

Within the lecture, Ramachandran reveals the following when one performs the voluntary movement of an appendage: he states that the events in the brain that cause you to move an appendage occur BEFORE you are consciously aware of it, but the brain purposely delays the movement of the appendage so your awareness of it coincides with the movement.

Essentially, you move independently of willing yourself to do it, and only after the brain events have fired does the conscious part of the brain kick in and falsely attribute the action to some choice of performing it.

This next example is taken form the lecture “Synapses and the Self”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture2.shtml

There is a neurological disorder called Blindsight. In this disorder, the visual cortex becomes damaged, resulting in blindness, but the vision centre that passes through the superior colliculus, the more primitive, and unconscious part of the brain, is still intact.

Patients that exhibit this rare form of Blindsight, although they can’t consciously see objects, when asked to point at them (the patient believes he is guessing, of course, because he’s blind), can locate those objects accurately 99% of the time. This means they aren’t guessing, they must be seeing them, but they aren’t consciously aware that they can see them. Conscious awareness of the object is therefore not required to react to it (in this case, pointing to it).

If the interpretations of these events are indeed correct, then wil,l as we know it, is shown to be an illusion. If will is then an illusion, how can anyone be held accountable for what they do? It would seem that we are slaves to our surroundings and to events over which we have no control.

So your saying we're being controlled by some higher power, maybe an alien race?

What I'm saying is the brain works like any other computer. Feed it a set of information, and it will spit out an answer. It responds directly to external stimuli, and the notion that we have any control over it is an illusion. In fact, I would state that the notion of self, the "I" that we presume controls our bodies, requires reexamination.

Interesting you should say that about aliens actually. Ramachandran has hypothesized that some forms of paranoid schizophrenia suffer from a flaw in their brains that removes this system that creates the sensation of willing movement. What happens is that these individuals then believed that aliens, or microchips, or whatever, is controlling them. You see, they no longer get the sensation that they're controlling themselves, so they attain the belief that something else must be controlling them.

It's interesting because I also heard that because the eye sees things before the brain registers it. This might work the same way.

This is interesting, but I haven't the slightest idea what to say. Or if I would even be saying it....

How interesting in a small and deluded sort of way.

This post has been edited by ScottMan: Jul 1 2008, 05:47 PM

Well, if no one else is going to say anything, then I will.

There are so many things to consider if it is indeed true that we cannot be blamed for our actions.

We can consider religious implications if you will:

The concept of heaven of hell that exists in many religions imply that there are rewards and punishments if individuals behave a certain way. How can we be punished, however, if we are only acting according to how we were created to act (if you believe we were created). We have no influence over where we were born, or who gave birth to us. Our genetic and environmental inheritances are beyond our control, and yet, they define who we are by deciding how our brains develop, and ultimately, how we react to certain situations.

Obviously this same argument can be applied to legal systems. Is it ethical to punish people when,in reality, they have no control over what they are, or how they behave. But what then should we do with them? Kill them? Try and redeem them?

Other implications exist as well.

Consider the fact that, regardless that most of us reside in democratic countries, where the ability to move up in social status is assumed to be the right of an individual, for the most part, social status is inherited.

Statistically speaking, children will enjoy the same income bracket as their parents. We are limited to responding only to the ways our brains are programmed to. This programming is a result of genetic and environmental factors over which we have no control. Therefore, people are not free to move in social standing, it's not up to them, it's up to fate...

I don't understand how you equate the order of perception versus action, into not having free will. You seem to be missing the crucial middle step that gives us free will, and that is decision. we perceive something, our subconcious makes a decision as to how we will react, then our concious becomes aware of it, and our concious mind makes the final decision as to what we do. How often don't we over ride ou subconcious in our daily lives. This seems to me to be free will? I am afraid I don't understand how you make the connection you do?

You're absolutely right, Dundee.

All Ramachandran is saying is that I send a signal to my hand to move. My hand begins to move. It sends a signal back to the brain to tell the brain that the hand is moving. I receive the signal that the hand is moving. The hand begins to move before I'm aware that it is moving.

I see what you're saying, but I fail to see how the conscious mind can make any decision if the brain events that allow for an action to take place are already in motion before one is consciously aware of it. In fact, according to Ramachandran, one is only aware of it when the action is already taking place, and that's only because the brain has delayed the signal so awareness coincides with the movement.

Here is a quotation form his lecture:
"the subjective sensation of wiling is delayed deliberately to coincide not with the onset of the brain commands but with the actual execution of the command by your finger, so that you feel you're moving it."

If consciousness was making a decision, one would think that awareness would coincide with the onset of the neural events that allow for an action, not with the execution of those actions. By the time consciousness kicks in, the decision has already been made.

I find it interesting that our subconscious decide everything before we're even aware, but I think the final step towards finding out if we truly have free will doesn't stop with the subconsciousness, but rather with string theory. If we discover that we can predict what will happen at that level, then things are predetermined, then whatever happens after that happens because it has to. Unless we have a soul of some sorts that isn't bound by physical laws and that it is the soul that make our decisions for us, whether it is conscious or not.

I'm just rambling here. Am I making Any sense?

If there is no free will, it our subconscious make all our decisions for us, then we are all just pawns set to play out a series of predetermined events towards an ultimate goal.
But if not, then we're all free to choose that goal for ourselves. I don't know, but I can find comfort in either one of those.

Actually, you make perfect sense.

Ramachandran ended this part of his lecture with this statement:

"So you see the amazing paradox is that on the one hand the experiment shows that free will is illusory, right? It can't be causing the brain events because the events kick in a second earlier. But on the other hand it has to have some function because if it didn't have a function, why would evolution bother delaying it? But if it does have a function, what could it be other than moving the finger? So maybe our very notion of causation requires a radical revision here as happened in quantum physics. OK, enough of free will. It's all philosophy!"

I don't agree that the experiment shows this at all. Perhaps HIS data does, but then I would find his data suspect.

It's simple cause and effect.

Besides, if you study the nervous system, then you know that the somatic nervous system REQUIRES conscious control.

I still dont see the mystery here, take a robotic arm moving boxes over a certain height off a conveyor belt.

The boxes go past the sensor,
Big boxxes trigger the sensor which is fed back to the controller.
A decision is made to move the robotic arm, which is sent from the controller to the arm,
The arm responds and moves,
Another sensor see's the box has moved far enough and sends this info to the controller
The controller tells the arm to retract
Another sensor tells the arm to stop when in the home position,

If you have ever programmed a PLC, Programmable Logic Controler, you would see that this simple cycle is actually a complex system of inputs, outputs, timing and delays.
But in my mind, the ultimate decision to move, is still made by the controller.

If I annoy you enough, and you make a decision to shoot me, it is still your decision, I don't see how the timing of events to coincide with perception has any bearing on the question of free will.

Although I agree that it is simple cause and effect, and that no physics need to be rewritten in this case (Ramachandran's thoughts concerning the reworking of causation was merely speculative anyways), I see no evidence that the somatic nervous system requires conscious control.

Please refrain from statements that claim something is true because ‘anyone who knows anything about a certain subject knows that it is true’. The somatic nervous system does not require conscious control, and here is my evidence:

“The bulk of spontaneous problem-solving is unconscious, and the same is surely true of voluntary actions. Much of our intention to perform a particular act must be formulated unconsciously, and the muscular effectors and subgoals needed to carry out the intention are also largely unconscious. Thus many systems cooperate in creating a voluntary act” (Baars, 1993).

“Consciousness of human behavior does not necessarily imply that all aspects of the motor performance are under conscious voluntary control” (Stephan et al., 2002).

References

Baars, B.J. 1993. Why Volition is a Foundation Problem for Psychology. Consciousness and Cognition. 2: 281-309.

Stephan, K.M., Thaut, M.H., Wunderlich, G., Schicks, W., Tian, B., Tellmann, L., Schmitz, T., Herzog, H., McIntosh, C.G., Seitz, R.J., Homberg, V. 2002. Conscious and Subconscious Sensorimotor Synchronization—Prefrontal Cortex and the Influence of Awareness. NeuroImage. 15: 345-352.

Is it still my decision?

So, assuming you were annoying me so much that I wanted to shoot you, I wonder what the exact processes in the brain would in fact be. I will speculate that they might be as follows:

My brain is sensing displeasure at the annoyance you are causing. I form this unconscious goal that this displeasure must end. This gun I happen to have with me can be used to end your life, and therefore the annoyance, and so I shoot you.

Why did I shoot you? I could have walked away. I could have verbally abused you enough that you might leave. There are any number of things that I COULD have done, but didn't.

I shot you because my brain, for whatever reason, concluded that it would be the best solution to my problem. The solution, however, was generated before I was aware of it, but the brain purposefully delays the signal of conscious awareness so that 'I' believe I shot you.

If this purposeful delay was not in place, I may acquire the feeling that 'something else' controlled me and shot you, because I would lack any sense that I did it.

Free will would presume the choice was with me on whether to shoot you or not. We identify our 'self' with the conscious part of our brains. If this is not the part of us that makes the decision, however, then there was no opportunity to exercise free will, and it is only an illusion that the brain purposefully maintains (for whatever reason).

But if you have an awareness in your concious mind that you are thinking about shooting me, you chew it over for a day or two, look at alternatives and decide that I am a pain in the arse and I must be shot. You plan your attack, wait in hiding, spring your trap and bang you shoot me.
The interation between concious and subconcious and the timing is irrelivant insn't it. If you had an awareness of what you were doind, thought about it for days then did it. How is this not free will. The delay in perception is exactly as you stated it, other wise it would be like trying to control the mars rover, the delay would make it difficult.
Try this one at home, it is very freaky. Get a camera flash, go into a totally dark room and sit your left arm out n a table in front of you. Stare at it in the dark then flash your camera at it. As soon as the image forms in your eyes move your arm away from the table. The image stays in your vision for quite a while and it is increddibly spooky to see your arm in front of you out feel it elsewhere. Without the delay, it would be difficult to function.

However, what many people don't seem to understand is that MANY systems in the body are controlled by multiple systems, and so you have somatic nervous control of your lungs but you also have autonomic control of your lungs, and I don't care how many quotes you can throw at me, you can't change the fact that although your arms have somatic nerves that allow you to control them, they also have autonomic nerves that respond to stimuli without conscious control. This is what your references are talking about. To give another example: walking requires conscious control. We control our somatic nerves that send signals to our legs. At the same time, the autonomic nerves responsible for balance are sending thousands of signals to our fine motor control, and these muscle movements that maintain our balance are NOT consciously controlled. I suggest you read my statement again. I did NOT say that all motor function requires conscious control. I said control of SOMATIC nerves requires conscious control, and again, your sources do NOT refute my argument.

Your argument that we can catch something without conscious control does not stand up to logic. By your logic, so long as a person still has the motor functions intact, they should still be able to throw a ball, even if their cognitive centers are not intact. For example, some semi-catatonics still have autonomic and reflexive motor function ... but they can't catch a ball. Why?

I have followed a few of the posters of this thread and find what they have to say rather sad.

After all that study of the brain, you have not learned a thing of value. This thread on possibly no free will at all is @#$%.

While I suppose some people would gladly argue with me, I studied how the mind works, forms thoughts and executes them as a side hobby. I am no expert but even I can see this idea of no free will is ... lacking... to use a kind word.

There are many things that happen when a person forms a thought. At first glance free will can be highly questionable. In fact the sheer number of automatic and subconscious reactions can be mind blowing. But that only means your not done looking. If you really look you may be suprised to find that free will is there, in fact, the subconscious is powered purely by free will alone.

There are some 50 trillion separate events that take place with something as simple as moving a finger. This latest discovery is only at around step number 37 trillion. In other words there was allot more that came before. Conscious recognition of free will is artificial. It is not the first act of free will. It is much later on the chain of events. It exists as a state of recognition and verification that all the steps that came before have been done.

I don't come to this site to debate how the brain works so I will not brake it down for you. But the findings of this latest experiment are incredibly lacking and it deserves to be stated as such.

I may be aware that I am thinking about shooting you, but the thought process itself is largely unconscious. The act of shooting you may not seem morally reprehensible to me due to other, largely unconscious, thoughts entering my brain.

It is not free will because the ‘self’ does not initiate its own thought process, the unconscious goal of ending the annoyance initiates the thought process that ultimately results in you getting shot. This unconscious thought process is in turn a direct result of the genetic and environmental inheritance that shaped the brain, and which is also beyond the control of the ‘self’.

To support this point I will offer the following quotation (although I sense that my quotations are annoying some of the posters… I hope they don’t shoot me ).

“In many ways, voluntary control resembles spontaneous problem solving. Most of the time when we recall a word or solve a mental arithmetic problem, we are conscious of the question and of the answer, but unconscious of the specific processes that lead us form the question to the answer” (Baars, 1993).