Brain Story BBC Documentary Consciousness and Free-Will

[Animus]

This is a clip from a documentary BBC did a few years back. Hosted by neuroscientist Susan Greenfield.

The documentary challenges the common beliefs about consicousness and free-will.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtL3k982 ... D&index=25

[Tomas]

.

[Unidian]

Does it affirm that free will is nonsense? If so, I may watch it.

[Animus]

Yes it does Unidian. It talks about Libet's experiments and some that have been done since then. It doesn't get into Consciousness and Free-Will until near the end of the series, the rest is a build-up to that. For example: There is a scene where a woman is having brain surgery and she is kept in a minimally conscious state in order to determine where in her brain speech is controlled. They do this by applying an electrode to the surface of her brain and asking her to count backwards from 10. It is interesting to watch.

But the best piece of evidence from experimental neuroscience is probably that of John Dylan-Haynes and is not included in the series, the research is very recent. http://videolectures.net/eccs08_haynes_udofdithb/

[Ataraxia]

There's some interesting stuff in that doco Animus, thanks for posting it.

Are you familiar with this recent study? It is an extension of the Libet one.

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11 ... .2112.html

[Animus]

There's some interesting stuff in that doco Animus, thanks for posting it.

Are you familiar with this recent study? It is an extension of the Libet one.

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11 ... .2112.html

Yea, I usually refer to it as John Dylan-Haynes et. al. as the other names are difficult to remember. Check my previous post, I posted a lengthy video lecture on the experiments by Haynes.

I've also got a PDF of the complete Nature Neuroscience article if you haven't had a chance to read more than the abstract. The URL I grabbed it from is no longer active, I have it on my desktop at home I'll send it to whoever wants it or if someone can recommend a good place to upload it. I'm thinking Scribd.com I might already have an account.

Nevermind! Here it is here: http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Na ... _et_al.pdf

[Ataraxia]

[

Yea, I usually refer to it as John Dylan-Haynes et. al. as the other names are difficult to remember. Check my previous post, I posted a lengthy video lecture on the experiments by Haynes.

Oh, good man, I hadn't noticed.


thumbs up to you sir, I'll watch it now.

[Animus]

I find it humorous and kind of sad that when Libet's results came out people were rushing to reproduce them and find ways around the 300ms. Some even postulated that quantum events allowed consciousness to reach backwards in time 300ms.

But with these new results from Haynes, Soon, etc.. none of these hypothesis pans out. The only hypothesis that actually works is that these decisions are made unconsciously, they appear to be conscious at the same time that Libet found, about 200-300ms before the depolarization of the motor neuron. Or in other words a fraction of a second before the action was performed. This is intuitvely obvious to me, 99% of what I do (consciously) happens a fraction of a second before or after I'm aware of it.

It might be the case that consciousness provides this symbolic information and the action can be vetoed as Libet believed and as Hayne's considers, but 300ms (on the high end) is hardly enough time to deliberate consciously. Any vetoing that occured then would be unconscious because it would take the entire length of time to make the veto conscious. If my decision to push a button occurs 10s before I'm consciously aware I've made the decision, the veto decision would also have to occur 10s before I was conscious of the decision to veto it.

The problem is still there for the libertarians and compatibalists it has been made more obvious with this research done last year. Since then no one has touched this research! I haven't seen much talk about it from either side of the debate in Neurophilosophy. The only reference I've seen to it was in an issue of SciAm Mind a few months back. Silence is golden, as they say.

[Ataraxia]

I find it humorous and kind of sad that when Libet's results came out people were rushing to reproduce them and find ways around the 300ms. Some even postulated that quantum events allowed consciousness to reach backwards in time 300ms.

.

Hehe. I seem to remember there was a guy at that 'Enlightenment 2.0' symposium that gave a lecture proposing just that.

[Animus]

I believe it was Stuart Hammeroff

He argued that quantum fluctuations and entanglement in the microtubules of nerve cells allowed for Free-Will.

[Shahrazad]

To me, the concept of free will is just as far-fetched as the concept of God.

[brokenhead]

To me, the concept of free will is just as far-fetched as the concept of God.

And as far-reaching.

[Shahrazad]

Good point, broken.

[Unidian]

More so, really. I'd argue that god-beliefs haven't caused half the trouble faith in free will has.

Interesting information above. If decisions are made and "vetoed" unconsciously, then it appears that consciousness is just "along for the ride." It lends credence to the view that consciousness is an accident of evolution, and has no significant functional purpose.

I used to resist that view, but I will now have to give it more consideration. Perhaps there were some remnants of free will faith in my thinking.

[brokenhead]

Interesting information above. If decisions are made and "vetoed" unconsciously, then it appears that consciousness is just "along for the ride." It lends credence to the view that consciousness is an accident of evolution, and has no significant functional purpose.

I don't draw that conclusion at all. Consciousness is a manifestation of the process of evolution, in that the higher forms of life have evolved from lower forms. To say it is accidental is just unwarranted, certainly by anything dealt with in this modest video clip.

This clip contains nothing really new or revolutionary, at least as far as I can see. It seems to me that it is a well known phenomenon that consciousness parses experiences and that repetition of a series of muscular actions passes from consciousness to a more automatic subconscious level. Anyone who has played a musical instrument relies on this enormously - a musician does not want to consciously execute each note and "figure out" where his hands should go next; rather, he wants the piece to happen before him, in such a manner that he can control the overall effect of dynamics and interpretation.

It is common knowledge that one can be a passenger in a vehicle and travel the same route every day, and still not learn the route. But if that same person drives it once, he will learn it better than he has during the many times he was a passenger.

To say consciousness is an accident is baseless. To make any claims about the existence of free will based on the findings of the research in this video is stretching it a bit. "Free will" is clearly limited by many things, the extent of one's training and knowledge being among those limitations. It might be my free will choice to pilot a jumbo jet, but I would not recommend anyone be my passenger until I have trained many physical actions to become automatic so that they will happen without my consciously thinking about each one.

[Animus]

The actions performed in the experiments are not trained patterns of behaviour. They were specifically designed to be what we'd consider to be a "conscious free-choice".

In Libet's experiments this involved subjects watching a clock progress while deciding a specific time to push a button. In Haynes et al's experiment the subjects were given two options (left or right) and the freedom to choose a particular time to press one of two buttons (left or right).

For all intents and purposes this is what people experience as a "conscious free-choice".

[brokenhead]

The actions performed in the experiments are not trained patterns of behavior. They were specifically designed to be what we'd consider to be a "conscious free-choice".

In Libet's experiments this involved subjects watching a clock progress while deciding a specific time to push a button. In Haynes et al's experiment the subjects were given two options (left or right) and the freedom to choose a particular time to press one of two buttons (left or right).

For all intents and purposes this is what people experience as a "conscious free-choice".

I was merely addressing the driving example in the posted video. We drive on auto pilot, but we do not surrender the ability to choose whether we turn the wheel left or right. To me, this seems like a very useful evolutionary development. It need not be associated with driving, of course. Its first manifestations were likely with things such as throwing rocks. You can aim your throws, but if you have done it enough, you do not have to. In fact, for early man, the ability to hit a moving target quickly without thinking after learning how to do it meant getting a meal as opposed to not getting one. You get the modern equivalent today when you hear a baseball play-by-play analyst say about a pitcher, "He's starting to have control problems. It looks like he's aiming his pitches."

Lumosity is a fun site that deals with this kind of thing.

[Unidian]

What "ability to choose?"

Define that ability. Explain what it is and how it works.