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Is free will an illusion?

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Posted by: Frederik

Libet and Free Will
Robert Bass

A few years ago, Benjamin Libet conducted a series of experiments on the experience of choosing and deciding. While brain and nerve impulses were being monitored, subjects were asked to make some trivial choice – e.g., to move a finger up or down and to report the moment of decision-making. What Libet found is that the nerve impulse from the brain to the finger was on its way before subjects reported having made the choice. Now, the difference is not much – on the order of half a second – but since nerve impulses propagate at finite maximum speeds, once the impulse to move the finger one way or the other is on the way, it appears that no later decision can derail it nor can the finger’s movement depend upon the later decision. (Libet actually thinks this is not quite right, but it’s not important to go into for the present.)

This seems deeply at odds with lived experience. Try it for yourself. Hold out your hand and, after a short interval, decide whether to move it left or right, or else up or down. Pay attention to what goes on, to the decision as it is experienced. Do you believe – can you believe – that your hand did not move in response to your choice? Nonetheless, that seems to be the conclusion to which Libet’s evidence points.

What to make of this? The face-value interpretation is that the experienced choice is some sort of illusion: it occurs after, and therefore cannot affect, the generation of the nerve impulse that causes the finger movement. If anything, the conscious, experienced choice is some kind of epiphenomenon, a reflection in experience of some underlying process, and it is the underlying process, not the decision, that accounts for the way the finger moves and perhaps also for the way the decision is experienced. If we generalize this, we get the disturbing thought that our actions never depend on our conscious reasoning or decision-making.

We might find a bit of wiggle-room in the fact that it is the reported conscious choice that doesn’t stand in the right time-relation to the movement-causing nerve impulse. Since the face-value interpretation requires that something is distorting introspective access to what’s going on when we choose and act, face-value interpreters cannot, on the basis of some supposed introspective reliability, object to the suggestion that the distortion might be in the apparent timing of the choice rather than in the dependence of the action upon the choice.

But let’s leave this aside. Suppose Libet’s evidence does show that the “choice” has no effect on which way the finger moves. Must that upset our notions of freedom and responsibility? Not obviously. For Libet’s evidence does not bear at all upon what must surely be the most common and prominent cases in which we think our actions depend upon our choices. For the choice to move a finger a minute hence is notably trivial, and more, it is notably arbitrary in that it is hard to see how there could be a reason for moving it this way or that. What, though, about a choice today to act in a certain way tomorrow? Nothing Libet has shown indicates that tomorrow’s actions cannot depend upon today’s choice. If there are reasons to be concerned that our lives are not significantly (or at all) under our own control, that the disturbing thought from above is true, they are not to be found in Libet’s work.


Posted by: StarChilde

Instead of spending your time in searching the internet for controversy, why don't you spend some time in studying the Bible? and reading it?The following verses show that God does give you a choice, or free will to choose:

Deu 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day lifeand good, anddeathand evil;

Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

Jer 21:8And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.

Jos 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

2Sa 24:12 Go and say unto David, Thus saith the LORD, I offer thee three things; choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.

Pro 1:28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:
Pro 1:29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:

Isa 56:4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choosethe things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;

Isa 65:12 Therefore will I number you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter: because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did choosethat wherein I delighted not.

Phi 1:22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. (know not)



Posted by: Frederik

I simply cannot deal with such stuff. When I hear something like this I always get confused...


Posted by: StarChilde

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frederik
I simply cannot deal with such stuff. When I hear something like this I always get confused...
I looked up the verses on free will... others look up verses and give them also... what is so hard to "get"? All the verses are about choices, and to show you that there is such a thing as free will and choices.

This is why you ask God for wisdom, this is why you trust that He is giving it to you... maybe that is all the problem... you are looking to man for wisdom, when you should be asking God for it.

Jam 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. Kjv

Jam 1:5 If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be condescended to when you ask for it. (the MSG)


Posted by: Frederik

But I have asked for wisdom! Not just once.
Somehow no matter what I do it doesn't seem to work.


Posted by: StarChilde

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frederik
But I have asked for wisdom! Not just once.
Somehow no matter what I do it doesn't seem to work.

Which wisdom is it that you are seeking? that which is from men, or that which is from God? There is a difference. I would not say that God has never given you any wisdom, as I see contrary to that. God's word says:

Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Isa 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.


Posted by: Frederik

What a question!
Wisdom from God of course.