There is no need for these experiments: There is no free will, and you can understand this by simply applying pure logic/rational thinking:<p>When you're born (the "1st second" of your life) you're given 2 variables: (1) Your genome and (2) the environment you're born into. You have absolutely no control whatsoever over these 2 variables (with their infinite number of sub-variables they "contain"). And everything else that follows (the "2nd, 3rd, nth... second" of your life) is a function of these 2 initial variables: And this includes your brain that you will use to make the infinite number of choices in your life (both consciously, such as "I'm going to buy milk" and subconsciously, such as "firing neuron X at second Y", "moving atom A to location B", etc.).<p>EDIT: Downvoters - please state why this would be wrong.
Much of the confusion about free will and how much free is our will comes from experiments that study limit cases like our body reactions to external stimuli or something of the sort.<p>But I don't think anyone can seriously state that we are <i>absolutely</i> free, specially when our bodies are involved. Extreme cases reveal that that there's much to say about how we (body+mind) work, and we're certainly not absolutely free.<p>The simplest and, perhaps, best argument for our partial freedom is that we can ask questions. I don't think there is any kind of property in the physical world that would yield questions and truth-intuition about answers to those questions. Electrons just bump into each other. They don't ask questions about it. They move on like there's no tomorrow.
About the experiment, how can Libet conclusively derive the decision came after the initial EEG measurement. I mean how did he know the duration it takes to report the decision. The origin of the decision to being able to reflect on it may take a variable amount of time therefore invalidating the claim.<p>Also the strict separation of conscious/unconsciousness seems simplistic. Most actions may very well be processed subconsciously with very little decision making bubbling up to consciousness. Driving a car comes to mind. This also means when asking a subject to process something impulsively the vast majority of their actions may be subconscious.<p>tl;dr
People spacing out does not invalidate free will.
Sam Harris' book on the same subject - <a href="http://www.samharris.org/free-will" rel="nofollow">http://www.samharris.org/free-will</a>
The law of causality is ultimately incompatible with free will. You cannot have truly autonomous agency within a physical framework ruled by cause and effect. To truly express freedom of will, without influence from any prior cause, you would literally need to exist in your own isolated vacuum of space and time (no outside influence from environment), having also created yourself (no outside influence from genetics). That is to say, if you believe you have free will, the burden is on you to prove that your body, and your brain itself, are not bound by the laws of the physically causal universe.
As stefanix writes:<p>><i>Also the strict separation of conscious/unconsciousness seems simplistic. Most actions may very well be processed subconsciously with very little decision making bubbling up to consciousness.</i><p>This. The "unconscious" processing an answer/reaction belongs to the same entity that the conscious part belongs too.<p>Implying we're some kind of automata because reactions can come pre-processed by the subconscious part misses the point.<p>The subconscious part is the same "self" that the conscious part is, it's not just what we can think "out loud" in our head that counts as us taking a decision.
Libet's study is terrible -- as with many of these studies it's famous for its controversial conclusion, but its flaws are very obvious.<p>He specifically asked his subjects to listen for an urge rather than applying free will ("let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act”). That the urge is measurable before the decision, then, just means his subjects did what he asked them to -- to wait for a feeling of an urge.<p>And frankly, it's most likely the urge was the tension of having sat there a while, knowing someone's expecting you to feel an urge to move your arm...<p>1. Ask subjects to wait for an urge to react to (and therefore not apply free will)<p>2. (Nice-sounding but actually irrelevant measurement set-up with dots, clocks and electrodes)<p>3. Observe subjects decided after a measurable urge<p>4. Conclude free will doesn't exist, rather than that your subjects did what you asked them to in step 1.
In my opinion it is almost trivial to see that something is fishy with the idea of free will - just try to formalize it.<p>Assume you are sitting in a restaurant facing the decision to either order a steak or some pasta. One possibility is that your decision is a deterministic choice, a function of the current state of your body (What nutrients do you need?), your brain (What are your past experiences with steak and pasta?) and your environment (What does the steak on the neighboring table look like?). This does not resemble what I would call free will.<p>The other extreme is that your decision is completely random and not influenced by anything. This assumes that there is real randomness in our universe which is, as far as I know, an open question. There is no real randomness in classical mechanics, only apparent randomness due to ignorance of microscopic degrees of freedom. Quantum mechanics seems to have probabilistic features but they are, as far as I can tell, at odds with the unitary evolution of quantum systems and it remains to be seen whether there is real randomness in quantum mechanics or not.<p>But lets just assume there is real randomness, at worst, if there is only apparent randomness, this option becomes deterministic and degenerates into the first option. There is still some freedom in this option, namely the probability distribution over the different choices. This probability distribution may just be what it is for no deeper reason, a fundamental property of the source of randomness. In this case I wouldn't call it free will, too, because the choice is entirely random.<p>It may also be the case that the probability distribution gets shaped in a deterministic way. The steak on the neighboring table looks really good making it more likely that you choose it but there is still some probability that you will choose pasta. This is kind of a middle ground between the first two options, the final choice is random but the probabilities reflect your current and past states and the state of the environment in a deterministic way. But again I would not call this free will.<p>So what would free will have to look like? The choice must not entirely depend on the current state of you and your environment but it must also not be completely independent of it, i.e. be completely random. I spent quite some time thinking about this but I am completely unable to come up with something that is in some sense between deterministic and random (including deterministically shaped randomness). Am I - or even everyone - missing a (fundamental) third option? Is thinking about free will in terms of systems and states and state changes in some way inappropriate? For the moment I will side with the people denying the existence of free will, if someone can formalize what free will really means I will reconsider things.
This appears to be a bit of bubblegum neuroscience. First, the article states:<p><pre><code> He asked participants to report, using the clock,
exactly the point when they made the decision to
move.
</code></pre>
Then, it goes on to say:<p><pre><code> There’s no reason to think that we are reliable
reporters of every aspect of our minds.
</code></pre>
Well, this is quite the conundrum. Which is it? Report <i>exactly</i> when you do something or accept that we are not "reliable reporters?" Yet the author goes on to further say:<p><pre><code> Even supporters of Libet have to admit that
the situation used in the experiment may be too
artificial to be a direct model of real everyday
choices.
</code></pre>
Given the delays in perception we all experience due to working at "chemical speed", as opposed to light speed, this experiment smacks of fast-twitch muscle measurement more so than exercising free will.<p>Even the original premise of Libet's experiment negates a free will choice:<p><pre><code> “let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act”
</code></pre>
How is this free will? Free will is a conscious <i>choice</i> to do something, not a subconscious act.