Neuroscientist: Free will is an illusion but we should believe we have it

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 1, 2018

Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism}

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The Open Door, William Henry Fox Talbot (British, Dorset 1800–1877 Lacock), Salted paper print from paper negative — the open door/William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877)

From Steven Novella at The Ness:

For example, as I said above, even though I am highly aware of what neuroscience has to say about the illusion of free will and decision making, I also recognize that we have to live our life as if we have free will. We do make decisions, and those decisions have moral and ethical implications.

…

To give yet another example, is there meaning in life? From a purely abstract philosophical perspective, I would have to say no. There is no objective source of meaning. But from a practical point of view I say – humans have a need for meaning, and we can make our own meaning in life. Sure, it’s subjective, but so what? Everything depends on your perspective anyway.

From an objective perspective we are a fleeting grain of dust in a vast universe that does not recognize or care about our brief existence. But from a human perspective, in both time scale and space, we have a great deal of impact on the people around us and our little corner of the world. I choose to focus on the perspective that scales with my life, and not dwell on our ultimate insignificance.

In the same way, while I find the question of free will interesting, I focus on living a moral and ethical life as a free agent. More.

But if free will is an illusion so must the notion that he is living a moral and ethical life be. Mustn’t it?

Note: Reader Ken Francis sends a link to a 2009 vid in which John Searle discusses the concept. Francis comments, “If Naturalism is true, then Searle is right. But the problem is, such a situation results in him being nothing more than a machine made of meat, with noise-waves emanating from the vibration of mucous membrane across the larynx; a carbon android at the mercy of chemistry and environment. The real mystery is: why is a highly intelligent philosopher like Searle not aware of this?” Hewrites bvk to add that, in fairness to Searle, he did say n an unedited version of the vid that comptibilism is a “cop-out.”

See also: Michael Shermer: We can never solve mysteries like consciousness, free will, or God. He’s right but his subsequent analysis is shallow. There is a distinction between a mystery as a problem (that is, how exactly does something happen?) and a mystery as a fact beyond our grasp.

Neuroscientist debunks hype about no free will, etc.

GP, Mike Pence and Free Will

At Physics Central: How human beings can have free will as complex, purely physical systems

Do the defects of real numbers open the door to free will in physics?

and

How can we believe in naturalism if we have no choice?

Comments

aarceng @ 1: Exactly! How do a/mats miss that point every time?Truth Will Set You Free_{July 2, 2018
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To sum it up, this Novella guy is incoherent, bitter and rejecting any criticism:
“From everything we know about brain function, our experience of our own existence … are largely a constructed illusion… The brain is still a machine, and is dependent upon the laws of physics.” Actually, you don’t know much and you misinterpret what you see. In fact, all you have is a bad “brain model” – are you’re smart enough to understand this? You don’t know the brain is “a machine” and most certainly don’t know “the laws of physics”. You have a big problem if you must “divorce our abstract thinking from our practical and emotional thinking about our lives”. That simply means one is wrong (yes, that’s your abstract thinking). Are you smart enough to understand this?
Other people get confused by "grades" of free will (“how free is our choice”?), but miss the fact that if we have even a grain of free will, then WE DO have free will. It’s as simple as that: http://nonlin.org/free-will/ What do you call someone that repeats over and over the same faulty argument and is unwilling to listen to logical counterarguments?Nonlin.org_{July 2, 2018
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But from a practical point of view I say – humans have a need for meaning, and we can make our own meaning in life.
Oh please .... there is, obviously, no basis for your distinction between "theoretical" and "practical." If there is no free will, then there is also no "practical free will." Please understand how irrational your position is: If what we think, believe and do can be traced back to events over which we have no control — events that took place before we were even born, then we cannot vouch — or be responsible — for any of our beliefs and rationality breaks down. "Our meaning" cannot be ours since it is, like everything else, a consequence of events beyond our control.Origenes_{July 2, 2018
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The self-referential incoherence is now undeniable.kairosfocus_{July 2, 2018
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Moreover, besides 'veto power' invalidating Novella's claim that we are merely deterministic robots with no free will, recent evidence from quantum mechanics has now come into the picture and also invalidated Novella's deterministic view of reality. Specifically, Steven Weinberg himself, who is also an atheist, noted that in quantum mechanics, in what is termed 'the instrumentalist approach’, humans are brought into the laws of physics at the most fundamental level instead of humans being a result of the laws of physics as Darwinists had falsely imagined us to be.
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/trouble-with-quantum-mechanics/
Needless to say, Atheists don’t like the “instrumentalist approach” of quantum mechanics since it, by letting free will into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level, directly undermines the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, the “instrumentalist approach”, in spite of how atheists may personally feel about it, is experimentally confirmed to be true by contextuality and/or by the Kochen-Speckter Theorem. In regards to contextuality we find that In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation.,,, and,,, Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study.
Contextuality is ‘magic ingredient’ for quantum computing – June 11, 2012 Excerpt: Contextuality was first recognized as a feature of quantum theory almost 50 years ago. The theory showed that it was impossible to explain measurements on quantum systems in the same way as classical systems. In the classical world, measurements simply reveal properties that the system had, such as colour, prior to the measurement. In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation. Imagine turning over a playing card. It will be either a red suit or a black suit – a two-outcome measurement. Now imagine nine playing cards laid out in a grid with three rows and three columns. Quantum mechanics predicts something that seems contradictory – there must be an even number of red cards in every row and an odd number of red cards in every column. Try to draw a grid that obeys these rules and you will find it impossible. It’s because quantum measurements cannot be interpreted as merely revealing a pre-existing property in the same way that flipping a card reveals a red or black suit. Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. That’s part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. http://phys.org/news/2014-06-weird-magic-ingredient-quantum.html
And as Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437
Of note: since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, (i.e. "we are not just passive observers"), I think a Christian perspective on just how important our choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting. Specifically, although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. states it as such:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell." - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
And exactly as would be expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo
One final note, although Novella claims that the meaning we have in our lives is merely subjective, he is wrong. There is VERY powerful evidence from science strongly indicating that our lives do indeed have objective meaning, value, and purpose.
Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqUxBSbFhog
Verse:
1 Corinthians 2:9 But just as it is written, “Things that no eye has seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, are the things God has prepared for those who love him.”
bornagain77_{July 2, 2018
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As to:
To give yet another example, is there meaning in life? From a purely abstract philosophical perspective, I would have to say no. There is no objective source of meaning. But from a practical point of view I say – humans have a need for meaning, and we can make our own meaning in life. Sure, it’s subjective, but so what? Everything depends on your perspective anyway. From an objective perspective we are a fleeting grain of dust in a vast universe that does not recognize or care about our brief existence. But from a human perspective, in both time scale and space, we have a great deal of impact on the people around us and our little corner of the world. I choose to focus on the perspective that scales with my life, and not dwell on our ultimate insignificance. In the same way, while I find the question of free will interesting, I focus on living a moral and ethical life as a free agent.
So Novella claims he has no free will and that his life has no meaning but 'he chooses' to live his life as if he had free will and as if his life had meaning? Surely the direct contradiction in the logic of his thinking can not be completely lost on him? Might I suggest that this inability, indeed impossibility, for him to live his life as if he truly had no free will and as if his life truly had no objective meaning, i.e. to live his life as if atheistic materialism were actually true, is actually proof that he is living in a delusion? In the following article subtitled “When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails”, Nancy Pearcey quotes many more leading atheists who honestly admit that it would be impossible for them to live their life as if atheistic materialism were actually true.
Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails - Nancy Pearcey - April 23, 2015 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/when_evolutiona095451.html
This impossibility for Atheists to live consistently within their stated worldview directly undermines their claim that Atheism is true! Specifically, as the following article points out, if it is impossible for you to live your life consistently as if atheistic materialism were actually true, then atheistic materialism cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but atheistic materialism must instead be based on a delusion.
Existential Argument against Atheism - November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen 1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview. 2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview. 3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality. 4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion. 5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true. Conclusion: Atheism is false. http://answersforhope.com/existential-argument-atheism/
As to evidence that supposedly invalidates free will, Novella mentions these following 'supposed' evidences in a article he linked to from 2016,,,
“ There is at least preliminary evidence showing that some decisions are made in the brain (indicated by lighting up on fMRI) before the person is aware of the choice.,,, This is most dramatically demonstrated in the split-brain experiments. Briefly, if the major connection between the two hemispheres is severed, they cannot fully communicate. If you then show the right half of the brain an image and then ask the subject to choose an item with their left hand (the hand controlled by the right hemisphere) they will choose the image they just saw. If you then ask the left hemisphere why they did that (the left hemisphere doesn’t know) it will invent a justification – “I chose the bottle of water because I was thirsty,” when in fact their other hemisphere had just seen a picture of a bottle of water.” - Novella
Yet free will is not invalidated by preparatory signals and split brains as Novella seems to think:
The Case for the Soul: Refuting Physicalist Objections - video Computers vs. Qualia, Libet and 'Free won't', Split Brain (unified attention of brain despite split hemispheres, as well, visual and motion information is shared between the two hemispheres despite the hemispheres being split), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB5TNrtu9Pk Split brain does NOT lead to split consciousness - January 30, 2017 A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness. Instead, the researchers behind the study, led by UvA psychologist Yair Pinto, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain.,,, Split brain is a lay term to describe the result of a corpus callosotomy, a surgical procedure first performed in the 1940s to alleviate severe epilepsy among patients. During this procedure, the corpus callosum, a bundle of neural fibres connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, is severed to prevent the spread of epileptic activity between the two brain halves. While mostly successful in relieving epilepsy, the procedure also virtually eliminates all communication between the cerebral hemispheres, thereby resulting in a ‘split brain’. This condition was made famous by the work of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga. In their canonical work, Sperry and Gazzaniga discovered that split-brain patients can only respond to stimuli in the right visual field with their right hand and vice versa. This was taken as evidence that severing the corpus callosum causes each hemisphere to gain its own consciousness. For their study, Pinto and his fellow researchers conducted a series of tests on two patients who had undergone a full callosotomy. In one of the tests, the patients were placed in front of a screen and shown various objects displayed in several locations. The patients were then asked to confirm whether an object appeared and to indicate its location. In another test, they had to correctly name the object they had seen, a notorious difficulty among spit-brain patients.… To the researchers’ surprise, the patients were able to respond to stimuli throughout the entire visual field with all the response types: left hand, right hand and verbally. Pinto: ‘The patients could accurately indicate whether an object was present in the left visual field and pinpoint its location, even when they responded with the right hand or verbally. This despite the fact that their cerebral hemispheres can hardly communicate with each other and do so at perhaps 1 bit per second, which is less than a normal conversation. I was so surprised that I decide repeat the experiments several more times with all types of control.’ According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. ‘The established view of split-brain patients implies that physical connections transmitting massive amounts of information are indispensable for unified consciousness, i.e. one conscious agent in one brain. Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy and highlights the complexity of unified consciousness.’ https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/split-brain-does-not-lead-to-split-consciousness/
As to 'preparatory brain signals' in particular,,, In trying to provide actual scientific evidence for their belief that they have no free will, but are just ‘mindless automatons', atheists will often invoke the experiments of Benjamin Libet from 1983. Yet Libet himself was a strong defender of free will:
Do Benjamin Libet's Experiments Show that Free Will Is an Illusion? - Michael Egnor - January 15, 2014 Excerpt: Materialists often invoke the experiments of Benjamin Libet when they deny free will.,,, (Yet) Libet himself was a strong defender of free will, and he interpreted his own experiments as validating free will. He noted that his subjects often vetoed the unconscious "decision" after the readiness potential appeared. ,,,"The role of conscious free will would be, then, not to initiate a voluntary act, but rather to control whether the act takes place. We may view the unconscious initiatives for voluntary actions as 'bubbling up' in the brain. The conscious-will then selects which of these initiatives may go forward to an action or which ones to veto and abort, with no act appearing." - Libet Libet even observed that his experimental confirmation of free will accorded with the traditional religious understanding of free will:,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/01/do_benjamin_lib081171.html
In fact Libet himself stated this,,,
MIND TIME: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness - Benjamin Libet - 2004 Excerpt: According to this determinist view, your awareness of yourself and the world around you is simply the by-product or epiphenomenon of neuronal activities, with no independent ability to affect or control neuronal activities. Is this position a “proven” scientific theory? I shall state, straight out, that this determinist materialist view is a belief system; it is not a scientific theory that has been verified by direct tests. It is true that scientific discoveries have increasingly produced powerful evidence for the ways in which mental abilities, and even the nature of one’s personality, are dependent on, and can be controlled by, specific structures and functions of the brain. However, the nonphysical nature of subjective awareness, including the feelings of spirituality, creativity, conscious will, and imagination, is not describable or explainable directly by the physical evidence alone. As a neuroscientist investigating these issues for more than thirty years, I can say that these subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function. This is in contrast to my earlier views as a young scientist, when I believed in the validity of determinist materialism. That was before I began my research on brain processes in conscious experience, at age 40. There is no guarantee that the phenomenon of awareness and its concomitants will be explainable in terms of presently known physics. In fact, conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you would not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena. Only a report by the individual who is experiencing such phenomena could tell you about them. https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BBenjamin_Libet%2C_Professor_Stephen_M._Kosslyn%5D_Min.pdf
Moreover, despite the widespread false belief in Academia that Libet himself supported a 'deterministic brain', the experimental work of Libet, that materialists have often invoked to falsely support their belief in a 'deterministic brain', has now been reexamined in finer experimental detail and found to be contrary to their deterministic presuppositions:
Do we have free will? Researchers test mechanisms involved in decision-making - January 4, 2016 Excerpt: Back (in the 1980s), the American researcher Benjamin Libet studied the nature of cerebral processes of study participants during conscious decision-making. He demonstrated that conscious decisions were initiated by unconscious brain processes, and that a wave of brain activity referred to as a 'readiness potential' could be recorded even before the subject had made a conscious decision. ,,, Until now, the existence of such preparatory brain processes has been regarded as evidence of 'determinism', according to which free will is nothing but an illusion, meaning our decisions are initiated by unconscious brain processes, and not by our 'conscious self'. ,,, Using state-of-the-art measurement techniques, the researchers tested whether people are able to stop planned movements once the readiness potential for a movement has been triggered. "The aim of our research was to find out whether the presence of early brain waves means that further decision-making is automatic and not under conscious control, or whether the person can still cancel the decision, i.e. use a 'veto'," explains Prof. Haynes. ,,, "A person's decisions are not at the mercy of unconscious and early brain waves. They are able to actively intervene in the decision-making process and interrupt a movement," says Prof. Haynes. "Previously people have used the preparatory brain signals to argue against free will. Our study now shows that the freedom is much less limited than previously thought. http://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-free-mechanisms-involved-decision-making.html
bornagain77_{July 2, 2018
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... even though I am highly aware of what neuroscience has to say about the illusion of free will and decision making
Free will does not exist.
I also recognize that we have to live our life as if we have free will.
Nonsense. If there is no free will, then we have no choice about the way we live our life.
We do make decisions, and those decisions have moral and ethical implications.
More nonsense. If there is no free will, we do not choose, make no decisions and are, as a consequence, no ethical beings.Origenes_{July 2, 2018
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"We do make decisions, ...." Pardon me? No free will? Then how do we make decisions?aarceng_{July 1, 2018
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