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JimG
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This is good news. If no one has free will, then no one should have to go to jail for any crime. And I need never go to to confession again!
Freaked out!. (neuroscience is beginning to debunk free wil?!?!)
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jimmy
Guest
Yes, live it up because you can’t help yourself.
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J_Peterson
Guest
The thing that people forget is that the sub conscience is a part of us so those choices are still ours. The mystics have always held that the self we call “I” is really an illusion and our true self is hidden. As Catholics we try to follow the inner hidden self because its the part of us that will see God if its His will. My conscious mind tells me that masturbation is fine. Some hidden part of me (my soul?) says its not. To my rational mind the Eucharist is nonsense but in my heart I know that it is Truth.
I believe in free will but don’t think it’s what we think it is, it’s a mystery and essential to our humanity. But some folks, in an attempt to dethrone God, are willing to sacrifice their own humanity.
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Ben_Sinner
Guest
I don’t really understand that. I thought it was the other way around. Usually my subconcious is responsible for bad things…ex: pornographic dreams, extreme anger and hatred when my concious is not even aware of it (anxiety attacks),…and thats where all our sinful thoughts originate
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Ben_Sinner
Guest
…and wouldn’t that mean that we are not culpable for anything we do concsiously since it’s the “Illusion” part of us while the “hidden true self” is doing something else?
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iloveangels
Guest
These are all speculative theories. Calm down.
As an example, after all the research that’s been done on neurotics, psychologists still have a terrible time trying to cure them. Why? Because people are very complex and you can’t drive the mind around, at your will, like you would drive a volkswagen. Okay? Easy does it. You can’t believe everything you read, particularly on the internet.
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MPat
Guest
First of all, read Feynman’s “Cargo Cult Science”:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science - about the article
calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf - the article itself
That should give you a thought: if there is an experiment that shows something contrary to everything else you know - was the experiment well designed? And, as you can see from the example in the article, experiments in Psychology and related disciplines tend to be hard to design really well…
A second thing you should read is one cartoon (“Science News Cycle”):
phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
In other words, look for the original articles and not just “some articles about scientists claiming/proving …]”.
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Highwayhound
Guest
Ben Sinner, think about it in this way. If we have no free will then it matters not what the scientist say, what they research or what ideas they try to tell us. The very fact that they seek knowledge and then wish to pass it on to others means we have free will.
God bless
God bless
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epan
Guest
But you have no choice. Off to confession you go, and behave. It has already been determined.
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J_Peterson
Guest
I didn’t mean to confuse you, please keep in mind that like iloveangels said, I’m just some guy on the Internet with an opinion. If what I said causes you to question your faith then I should say nothing. I’m pretty terrible at explaining myself. My position simplified: God exists and we can choose Him.
The report you are talking about bothered me for a bit as well. I watched the bbc documentary about it and it wasn’t that alarming. Basically what it amounted to was that the conscious mind can only handle a few things at a time so the subconscious takes over for a good chunk (I.e in a game of basketball). They did not talk about moral issues at all.
Although I never finished reading it you may want to check out Philosophy of the Mind by Fesser. It’s essentially a refutation of the materialist position.
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fred_conty
Guest
What did you eat for breakfast? Did you decide what you were going to eat? And did you decide whether to eat or not? And did you decide what utensil you would use in eating breakfast? And do you alway eat the same for breakfast or do you eat something different from time to time?
The answer to that should tell you whether you have free will, whether it is yours or not.
Just a thought.
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ReapReason
Guest
Modern science is not materialism.
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TheAtheist
Guest
A sensible reply for an alarmist argument.
To the OP - no. We haven’t disproven free will.
There’s a lot of “media-hype” surrounding my field of study these days - similar to the cloud of hype that hovers around quantum physics.
Might i make a suggestion? Instead of relying upon a media outlet, why not go to the source of the claim? As in - google the (hopefully) peer-reviewed article making the claim.
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iloveangels
Guest
Modern science isn’t an “ism” at all. It’s a set of tools. It can tell you HOW something works but it can’t tell you WHY.
For instance, it can tell you HOW roses bloom in the spring, but it can’t tell you WHY there have to be roses. And why they are beautiful or smell good. Roses do not have a necessary existence of their own. They could just as easily have been black and stinky, or even completely absent from creation, but that’s not how God decided to do things, rather obviously. We have roses.
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ReapReason
Guest
People often confuse the how with the why. I think it is immature to think that science was invented to destroy peoples faith. All it does is make us think harder about what we actually believe, instead of taking scripture and its meaning for granted.
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Marc_Anthony
Guest
Scientism is very real, though I agree with you that the philosophy should not exist. But look it up. People hold to the philosophy.
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buffalo
Guest
If anything science is actually farther away from explaining consciousness than a few of these guys think.
Brain might not stand in the way of free will
Advocates of free will can rest easy, for now. A 30-year-old classic experiment that is often used to argue against free will might have been misinterpreted.
more…
Brain might not stand in the way of free will
Advocates of free will can rest easy, for now. A 30-year-old classic experiment that is often used to argue against free will might have been misinterpreted.
Code:
In the early 1980s, [Benjamin Libet](http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/27/local/me-libet27) at the University of California in San Francisco, used electroencephalography (EEG) to record the brain activity of volunteers who had been told to make a spontaneous movement. With the help of a precise timer that the volunteers were asked to read at the moment they became aware of the urge to act, Libet found there was a 200 millisecond delay, on average, between this urge and the movement itself.
But the EEG recordings also revealed a signal that appeared in the brain even earlier – 550 milliseconds, on average – before the action. Called the readiness potential, this has been interpreted as a blow to free will, as it suggests that the brain prepares to act well before we are conscious of the urge to move.
This conclusion assumes that the readiness potential is the signature of the brain planning and preparing to move. "Even people who have been critical of Libet's work, by and large, haven't challenged that assumption," says [Aaron Schurger](http://www.unicog.org/main/pages.php?page=People) of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Saclay, France.
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Michael19682
Guest
You may have freaked out Ben, but for all the wrong reasons. A socks B right in the jaws, because B stole his favorite pair of stockings the day before Chirstmas. B claims that he was angry because his friend C stole a favorite Christmas tie. C, when asked, says that D just borrowed his car and smashed it up. D has a story too for why he got drunk and wrecked the car. That story, as many of us know, need not stop anywhere. So, if each link in the chain is given equal strength: Why was the violence committed in the first place? It might very well trace back years in time. Even millenia. Perhaps it is rooted in some recalitrant witness to these words: “…know that they hated me first…” Jn 15:18. Therefore, since the chain of causation is infinite, only God’s mind knows. Ask your neuroscientist why and his myopic answer is pitiful in comparison. But he will keep trying, perhaps citing myths and legends as examples of cause, because he gets a nice salary from his department to keep wasting his time creating neuropsychological weapons. This isn’t to say that we don’t need myopia. Microscopes are still useful. Very useful, if used properly and by people with ethical minds.
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grannymh
Guest
You are right that science is getting farther away from explaining our spiritual faculties in terms of our material anatomy.
A few years back on CAF, I was discussing a major research paper on the brain/volition issue. Because I am traveling, I do not have the specifics with me. As I recall – when going over the methods and materials of this research, it was obvious that the essentials of free will, as taught by the Catholic Church, were not present.
Your link to Benjamin Libet info reminded me that the current scientist knowledgeable about Libet’s work is Patrick Haggard, London. As I recall Haggard, at one point, acknowledged the difficulties found naturally in experiments on free will. Yet, he and others continue to probe for “material” explanations for the mind.
Two difficulties in brain research are: 1. some kind of external material stimulus is used which contrasts with an immaterial intellective stimulus, and 2. there are some external measuring instruments which at times can restrict or limit the actual operation mode of free will.
It is true that our limbs including fingers, for example, can respond to directions from the brain. Yet, our fingers are not free to deny the instructions unless they are paralyzed or the nerves in-between are damaged, etc.
The impossibility of neuroscience comes when the researcher is trying to locate the immaterial “will” within the blood and guts of the material anatomy. Stimulating the open brain with an electrode to produce movement in a specific limb (research during awake brain surgery) is not the same as a person making an informed decision regarding a *real *choice which can be made in a *free *atmosphere,
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Ben_Sinner
Guest
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