Free Will

Originally posted by gumUnderfoot: ↑

The experiments had conditions set before testing so how can they be an exercise in free will?

The decision was to either press a button in the left hand or a button in the right hand. At the same time, the subject was watching a screen which flashed a series of letters in rapid succession. Subjects were asked to note which letter was being displayed on the screen at the moment that they made the decision to press one button or another.

It's not the same as one day waking up and deciding I will use my left hand instead of my right hand to brush my teeeeeeeth.
Nobody is saying, do this experiment, you have a decision to make on which hand to use.

Few scientists are convinced that this is the death knell for free will, though. Marcel Brass, of the University of Ghent, Belgium, points out that the 60% figure is not that much better than chance, but adds, "It shows our decisions are influenced by stuff that happens in our brain before we decide. But it is not showing our decisions are completely pre-determined." Jeff Miller, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, agrees: "Finding that brain activity predicts a decision does not undermine free will." He explained the brain activity used to make the prediction could just be a leaning towards one choice or another, and that the final decision could still have been made consciously.Haynes himself accepts this possibility. "Maybe this early signal isn't a full decision, it's just like a nudge that you get, it's just biasing you one way, but its not really finally making up your mind."

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"... and that the final decision could still have been made consciously."

Yes, I agree that we make our final decision consciously. But we don't make our final decision independently of our prior knowledge, or experience, or state of affairs. Our final decision is always caused by our prior knowledge, or experience, or state of affairs, and therefore there is no free will involved.

Our choice is always already made. It is ahead of us. That is why we perform our daily tasks smoothly. As long as we believe what we are going to do is good for us we do it (almost) automatically. That is how we are programmed to perform our life. We go about our daily life in the same way a robot performs as it has been programmed. We are hard-wired to choose what is good and avoid what is bad for us; not right or wrong. We must internalise the notion of right (ethical) or wrong (unethical) first before it becomes part of what we consider good or bad for us.

A robot will only stop on its track if the instruction in the program is ambiguous. In the same way we stop and not knowing what to do when we suddenly are not sure whether to do A or B is better for us. If we think to do A is as good or as bad to do B for us, we can't do either A nor B. That is because we are programmed to do what we believe to be the best for us. So in such a situation, perhaps after consulting books, experts, gurus, et cetera, we dig deep into our memory, knowledge, experiences and personal preferences to decide to do A or B.

Let's say we finally believe that to do A is better than to do B, and so we do A. And generally we believe that we have just performed our free will to make a free choice.

However, if we do A because that is what our memory, knowledge, experiences and personal preferences compel us to do, then what we do is essentially no more than the effect of what have happened to or in us. So that belief of free will is just a delusion. The truth is there is just a long chain of cause and effect.