Free Will an Illusion?

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tonyrey said:
Great minds think alike, Charlie! I submitted a letter to the Editor this morning as follows:

“The publicity-seeking claim by neuroscientists that free will could be the result of background noise in the brain overlooks the possibility that noise is not the ultimate factor. Their conclusion is self-refuting because it would be the result of background noise in their brains and therefore lacking credibility.”

How reliable are conclusions are based on selection by cacophony? :ehh:
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PS Needless to say, my letter has not been published. Such is the dominance of the secular mentality in the UK. *The Independent *is not so independent as it claims to be!

Free will doesn’t enter most people’s scheme of things because it leads to awkward questions…
 
inocente said:
There were five scientists on that research team, and I’m intrigued how you guys can be so certain none of them are Catholic.

Actually, in the original UC Davis press release, the lead scientist says:

Libet’s experiment raised questions of free will — if our brain is preparing to act before we know we are going to act, how do we make a conscious decision to act? The new work, though, shows how “brain noise” might actually create the opening for free will
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Then the author of the article is guilty of deception:
It has previously been suggested that our perceived ability to make autonomous choices is an illusion – and now scientists from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, have found that free will may actually be the result of electrical activity in the brain.
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This is not an uncommon assumption in our secular society…

A cynic could regard it as a convenient excuse for evading responsibility for our behaviour. :hmmm:
 
When science wrongly attacks free will, there will be a profound consequence. People will then begin to ask, if I am not in control of my will, who is? The surrender of my free will must be to someone who wants to control my will. Will that be the State? Or does the State also have no free will? Then who really controls the State? Science? But science also has no free will, since all free will is supposed by science itself to be an illusion.
 
tonyrey said:
A cynic could regard it as a convenient excuse for evading responsibility for our behaviour. :hmmm:
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I don’t know. Maybe the opposite. The results show that the decisions are not simply deterministic but are influenced in some way by the state of the entire brain, and presumably that is indicative of the balance of the entire mind:

*Bengson, said: "[Though] purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment.

“This random firing, or noise, may even be the carrier upon which our consciousness rides, in the same way that radio static is used to carry a radio station.” - ibtimes.co.uk/could-free-will-stem-background-noise-our-brains-1453834*

Substance dualists should be well pleased as they can argue that the carrier wave is the interface with the immaterial soul :).
 
inocente said:
I don’t know. Maybe the opposite. The results show that the decisions are not simply deterministic but are influenced in some way by the state of the entire brain, and presumably that is indicative of the balance of the entire mind:

*Bengson, said: "[Though] purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment.

“This random firing, or noise, may even be the carrier upon which our consciousness rides, in the same way that radio static is used to carry a radio station.” - ibtimes.co.uk/could-free-will-stem-background-noise-our-brains-1453834*

Substance dualists should be well pleased as they can argue that the carrier wave is the interface with the immaterial soul :).
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Which is at odds with Antonia Molloy’s cynical conclusion…
 
inocente said:
I don’t know. Maybe the opposite. The results show that the decisions are not simply deterministic but are influenced in some way by the state of the entire brain, and presumably that is indicative of the balance of the entire mind:

*Bengson, said: "[Though] purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment.

“This random firing, or noise, may even be the carrier upon which our consciousness rides, in the same way that radio static is used to carry a radio station.” - ibtimes.co.uk/could-free-will-stem-background-noise-our-brains-1453834*

Substance dualists should be well pleased as they can argue that the carrier wave is the interface with the immaterial soul :).
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The brain’s activity does not make a decision, but its activity is moved, so as to display the soul’s decision to the material world. There is no intelligence in the brain, but it is an instrument for manifesting intelligence, an instrument wielded by the soul. All of the activity monitored in the brain during the “supposed” decision making process is actually activity moved by the soul to bring an image of decision to the conscious thought. The words “I Choose A” will appear in the conscious thought out of nowhere, making grammatical sense and logical sense.

John Martin
softvocation.org/2013/12/27/the-trinity/
 
I forgive the dog who chews my furniture because he was not aware that he could choose between chewing it and not chewing it. I do not forgive the person who chews off my ear with gossip because I know he could choose not to chew off my ear. Every dog is a determinist. No man is a determinist but the man who thinks like a dog. 😉
 
“… it is quite as easy, by the methods of the rationalistic heckler, to suggest that freedom is nonsense as that faith is nonsense.” G.K. Chesterton
 
John_Martin said:
The brain’s activity does not make a decision, but its activity is moved, so as to display the soul’s decision to the material world. There is no intelligence in the brain, but it is an instrument for manifesting intelligence, an instrument wielded by the soul. All of the activity monitored in the brain during the “supposed” decision making process is actually activity moved by the soul to bring an image of decision to the conscious thought. The words “I Choose A” will appear in the conscious thought out of nowhere, making grammatical sense and logical sense.
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You appear to be expressing substance dualism. This is not the view of the CCC, which says the soul is the form of the body, not a different substance.

Substance dualism, unlike the CCC, runs up against a big problem these days. If brain activity is moved by the soul then, since the brain is physical substance, the immaterial substance doing the moving must manifest itself physically (the non-physical could only move the physical by imparting physical energy). The energy would have to be electrical. But these days it would be detected. It would also break conservation laws, the brain would be a perpetual motion machine, getting free energy.

I think the CCC expresses Thomas’ arguments, which are much more subtle. He argues that while physicalism is inadequate to describe us, a human being is a single entity and cannot be divided (or else we wouldn’t need bodies and would be angels). The SEP has an article by a Catholic philosopher on this - plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/#BodSou
 
inocente said:
You appear to be expressing substance dualism. This is not the view of the CCC, which says the soul is the form of the body, not a different substance.

Substance dualism, unlike the CCC, runs up against a big problem these days. If brain activity is moved by the soul then, since the brain is physical substance, the immaterial substance doing the moving must manifest itself physically (the non-physical could only move the physical by imparting physical energy). The energy would have to be electrical. But these days it would be detected. It would also break conservation laws, the brain would be a perpetual motion machine, getting free energy.

I think the CCC expresses Thomas’ arguments, which are much more subtle. He argues that while physicalism is inadequate to describe us, a human being is a single entity and cannot be divided (or else we wouldn’t need bodies and would be angels). The SEP has an article by a Catholic philosopher on this - plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/#BodSou
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My statements are precisely from Thomas Aquinas.
The spiritual does not “impart physical energy”, nor does it need to in order to move the body, intelligently move neural activity.

John Martin
 
As Aquinas pointed out,
God moves the soul’s thoughts and wills in a non-deteministic manner leaving us the initiative and free will to think the thoughts we want and will what we want.

Similarly, God mediates interactions between soul and body. After all, not a single hydrogen atom in the universe would continue to exist if God didn’t constantly sustain it in existence by his specific attention to it.

This dualism problem is no problem when you consider God is in charge. The soul and body and any created substance is helpless by itself and would not even continue to exist one second without God.
 
If one wants to understand the meaning, value or truthfulness of what is written here, one has to consider it in terms of mind and spirit. No amount of study as to the interplay of matter will provide an answer.
 
Aloysium said:
If one wants to understand the meaning, value or truthfulness of what is written here, one has to consider it in terms of mind and spirit. No amount of study as to the interplay of matter will provide an answer.
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Indeed! The brain doesn’t even know it exists. 😉
 
empther said:
As Aquinas pointed out,
God moves the soul’s thoughts and wills in a non-deteministic manner leaving us the initiative and free will to think the thoughts we want and will what we want.

Similarly, God mediates interactions between soul and body. After all, not a single hydrogen atom in the universe would continue to exist if God didn’t constantly sustain it in existence by his specific attention to it.

This dualism problem is no problem when you consider God is in charge. The soul and body and any created substance is helpless by itself and would not even continue to exist one second without God.
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Aside from faith and belief…what evidence do you have for this assertion?
 
For those who believe that dualism not only exists but somehow gives us free will, I have the following questions:
  1. What, exactly, is a spirit? What is it composed of? How can we demonstrate it exists?
  2. How does something immaterial interact with something material? How does a spirit move brain molecules?
  3. If we are part material and part immaterial beings, and if thoughts start out as immaterial things in the soul and end up as material things in the brain, what determines when a thought is sufficiently formed and ready to make that transition from immaterial to material?
  4. Once the brain is processing one thought, it may lead to another thought. Does that second though jump out of the brain and go to the soul for processing, then return to the brain? Are thoughts constantly going back and forth between a soul and a brain?
 
Why do internet atheists keep bringing up the Libet experiments when Libet himself said they were compatible with free will? Do internet atheists know more about studies than the author himself? It boggles my mind.
 
oldcelt said:
And what is your evidence of that?
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The onus is on you to produce evidence that the lump of tissue in the skull understands what it’s doing.

Do you usually regard thoughts as just electrical impulses?

Do you really believe you’re no more than a machine? 😉
 
Estevao said:
Why do internet atheists keep bringing up the Libet experiments when Libet himself said they were compatible with free will? Do internet atheists know more about studies than the author himself? It boggles my mind.
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The writer of the article has no qualifications whatsoever! The kind of stuff she writes is:

“Ricky Gervais has a conversation with ‘God’ and it’s everything you might expect.” I’m amazed the Independent pays for such puerile nonsense.It has certainly lowered itself in my estimation…
 
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