One other option is that free will is not a testable phenomenon in itself but instead a premise in some sort of "intentional stance" that scientists assume by preference so they need not invoke everything since the Big Bang in deterministic accounts.

These empirical results may not so much shake free will strongly as it may point to relatively narrow preconceptions we might have concerning the temporal and spatial scales of a cognitive event such as a "will" to do X or Y.

Illusions are another preconceptual holdover of a classical view of reality as a singular, available, but distant standard towards which we poor fools are always struggling towards.

I think what needs to be shaken strongly is our perspective on how to approach what have been loose intuitions deeply entrenched by history.

One other option is that free will is not a testable phenomenon in itself but instead a premise in some sort of "intentional stance" that scientists assume by preference so they need not invoke everything since the Big Bang in deterministic accounts.

These empirical results may not so much shake free will strongly as it may point to relatively narrow preconceptions we might have concerning the temporal and spatial scales of a cognitive event such as a "will" to do X or Y.

Illusions are another preconceptual holdover of a classical view of reality as a singular, available, but distant standard towards which we poor fools are always struggling towards.

I think what needs to be shaken strongly is our perspective on how to approach what have been loose intuitions deeply entrenched by history.

This is quite true for very trivial tasks, such as pushing a button or another basing the choice on very simple stimuli . For these kind of tasks it makes sense for the brain to rely on activation patterns that anticipate even the feeling of being "conscious" of the choice. What about instead if now I tell you - if you don't answer to this comment you agree that free will is present in complex decisions?

Thanks Vahid Rakhshan , Damian G Kelty-Stephen and Gianguglielmo Calvi for your suggestions , but i would like to assess the concept by simple observational method . I am planning to observe a well known person , probably a person whom can spend more time with me per day and observe his attitude on various situations , his emotions , plans , actions [without his knowledge] and after completing observation on that person , i will  switch over to other person to get same data.  Can this method be effective or ineffective ???? , kindly send your comments .    

Get in touch with Patrick Haggard at University College, London - I'd be very surprised if he couldn't help you with any query you had on this matter. If not his own knowledge, where to start and to start with whom...

Thanks Ernesto Araujo  , Vahid Rakhshan and Jonathan Jewell for suggestions and valuable information. 

Not really my field of expertise, but the Libet experiments come immediately to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet

The problem with measuring or quantifying free will, is that - despite free will being a concept  everybody have an idea about - there is no agreement what free will actually refers to. Some will try to equal it with psychological or cognitive processes, such as self-control, impulse inhibition, decision making, subjective agency etc. Some will say that you have free will if conscious decision precedes neural activity. Other will claim that free will is the ability to act autonomous from the immediate surroundings, or that the agents action is in accordance with his/her desires. Other again will say that free will requires that the agent is causally unaffected by prior processes or even that the agents behaviour is indetermined in the metaphysical sense. Investigating free will as one of the many ways you can define it, or claiming to prove/disprove one kind of free will, does not say anything about other ways in which free will has been defined.

The short answer is: Dependent on the definition of free will you choose, you have to apply different methods to measure free will. Most times it is actually more useful to just call what you refer to as free will, by what you otherwise would call it. E.g. if you see free will as cognitive self-control, refer to it as cognitive self-control instead of free will. That way you avoid people think you talk about the metaphysics of causation when you are studying a psychological phenomenon.

Sorry that I do not actually answer the question you proposed.

The clearest, common-sense demonstration of free-will that I'm aware of depends on characterising the regular behaviour of a group of typically self-serving people. Exposing them to the stories (written, videos, living encounters) of markedly un-selfish, non-political people (Albert Schweitzer, Theresa of Calcutta, etc.), then observing them for any practical changes towards unselfishness. Generally, very few will decide (are able) to change their routine behaviour; most will not. This raises the question of whether actual free-will is only measurable in a very small percentage of people . . .   

Thanks  Hans-Christian Jetter for information on Libet experiments  .

Mikkel C Vinding : I appreciate  the way of your explanation in first para , and for having similar though like mine  which you have expressed . I was also working on concepts like effect of free will on UMS based on control and free will mode - will take all suggestion into account , thanks for your suggestions.

Special thanks to Martin Rice for his beautiful and worthy suggestion, it seems to be tougher in practical method , but his inputs are valuable , Thanks. 

The problem with free will, is that it is dependent on the concept of Will, which is controversial. Evidence suggests that Will is a kludge created by the mechanisms of the brain, in order to simplify attribution of actions to the self and others. If so there may be no real causal factor in Will, or it may be misattributed in many cases.

Free will, is the free application of Will, and is merely a way of saying that things are not predestined. However, Libett's work and the work of similar psychological testers suggests that things may not be a simple as Free Will suggests. Depending on your model of will, the causal factors may start much sooner than the impression that you are deciding does. This just illustrates the fact that the attribution of will is controversial.

A very interesting topic... the question that I have is: whatever the definition of free will, should the experiment/observation be applied to a general sample, or should it be applied to to a specific target population - eg. criminals, terrorists, etc. I think the latter will generate a great deal of interests...

It will generate the wrong type of interest if you apply it too quickly to a specific population. The subject alone will attract attack.

Vikram, interesting anecdote.. but what about the will to follow the will of God? That does take some free will.

And I have another thought.. would this somewhat relate to the issue of compulsion, addiction, etc.?  Those are I think well-researched area (somewhere within psychology I think).  Some people are addicted to fast driving, smoking, porn, etc. They know it is bad, they want to stop but it's just not possible; almost like they have no free will...

Dear Vikram Zaveri and Nordin Zakaria , thanks for the discussions , hope we are in the same track for revealing similar thoughts on this topic .......  let us put the question like in this matter .... so said children, young men , older men , saint ...... follow some pattern in their life which also includes their will of doing particular things .. it depends on whether they succeed or fail on their effect willingness .  let us think like this .... if some codes have been preprogrammed before in womb [ via with some genetic coding]  and allow the child to face the happenings in his/her life stages ...... that child's behaviour will depend upon mixture of its pre program and the effect of happenings from external environment ....... in such case at which point that child can feel that he/she has been programmed to act like a pattern even in multi functional happenings ......

let us think like this - weaver you have mentioned has been already programmed to face all the mentioned happenings and  consequences [ all good and bad happenings which he have faced ] ..... why cant he realize or stop or rethink his actions at a point and say " i am not doing it " or " i should do it" ......... its because he might have been programmed not to realize or control the Do's and Dont's which he prefer to alter ........ let us have a parallel story that the weaver stops at one point and changes his track in another direction [ even at this phase the happenings occur due to his will or is he is  pre programmed to follow the happenings] 

If self realization occurs at a point then there comes the answers for [ who am i , what i am doing in this place , why i have particular complexion and physique , when my life ends ] ......... in another case of pattern many cant even recognize the existence of these type of questions  [ for ex . a tribe from a island ] ......... so i feel that there should be a pattern for tuning the happenings of particular persons which he/she would face in his life term according to pre program / effect from external environment ..... the key lies with the almighty [ until some one breaks the code and explains the pattern of free will or even tune the pattern ] .........  any suggestions from genetic engineers is highly appreciable and this topic is open for discussions , Thanks to all.......

The psycho-physiologist, Benjamin Libet, has done experimental work on this topic--work that has been widely quoted (and beloved) by philosophers for decades. A modern philosopher, with much to say about this matter is Helen Steward at the University of Leeds. Her latest book in particular "A Metaphysics for Freedom" (Oxford U Press, 2012) should be of interest. Here she argues that animals (including humans) have agency that allows the settling of  certain theretofore unsettled matters, therefore making determinism untenable. 

Thanks Linda Brakel for information on "A Metaphysics for Freedom" by Helen steward . This book seems to be highly useful for my research work......

Now, as the topic morphs into the discussion of strong will, weak will--i.e. free will in that sense, the views of philosopher Harry Frankfurt might be of much interest. He has  much to say about the relation of will to personhood.

I am not sure you are talking about will there Vikram, It sounds more like "Wont" power.

Seriously now, WILL is controversial and you are verging on a Number 1 type definition of free will. To be either strong or weak willed requires that there be a "Force of will" that can be strong or weak.

To get back to your theory, the exact number of senses, is determined by what you consider a sense is. What about the sense of heat / cold is that a separate sense from touch? There are actually different neurons involved in the sense of heat and cold, than in the sense of pressure. Philosophy has opened up some of these concepts since Aristotle's time. You are quoting a dogma, and one dated by several centuries.

Indeed there are many definitions of free will - that is why it is difficult to bring any consensus to the discussion. My own experience is that when you talk about free will people usually tend to misunderstand each others arguments, unless it is made explicit what  'kind' of free will we are talking about.

@  Vikram, Zaveri

"As for myself, I believe that, in order to acquire freedom from bondage, we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe which is bound by conditions of time, space and causation." - this is a common definition of free will in metaphysics. However there is clear consensus that human (or animal) agency does not work outside the laws of physics or is un-caused in this sense. This kind of free will have been disproved. It does not exist.

"So naturally, my definition is not of this world". - Then why continue arguing for this position?

"You can take this notion of unification of individual wills as my original contribution to philosophy." - This position was already discussed by ancient philosophers such as Democritus and Aristotle.

"Every individual must have his own understanding of free will." - Why? I agree that many people have intuitions about what it means to be free, and that these intuitions differ. But I fail to see why this is a "must be"? If every individual must have his or her own definition of a subject no common knowledge can be made.

"If anything is imposed upon him, that will be like destroying his free will." - Are you referring to individuals understanding of free will? If so this makes no sense, that changing peoples belief in free will, will destroy his/her free will? If free will is a thing, trait, skill or something else that the subject has, then changing the his/her concept of this, does not change what it actually is. Lots of psychiatric patents think their thoughts are being controlled by the government or aliens. This belief does not mean that their "will" is in fact controlled by the government or aliens. It is perfectly possible to hold false beliefs. Furthermore, You started defining free will as something that does not exist. I fail to see how you can say that if people are being "imposed", then that compromises their will if this did not exist in the first place? If you by "imposing" mean that people are being commanded by other people, say, if I were threatened by a robber with a gun to give him my money, not giving me other choice than comply with his demand (than being shot) - then you are talking about free will on a social level in the interaction between individual. This is different from the metaphysical definition you start out with.

Regarding your theory of consciousness, Filippo Salustri's last sentence in his comment above is pretty accurate.

Free will is probably related to being able to take free but sensible decisions within a moral/ethical framework. An interesting research experiments that investigated how a robot, being programmed to follow Isaac Asimov's first law of robotics as a moral guideline spectacularly failed to do sensible ethical choices when given ethical dilemmas: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329863.700-ethical-trap-robot-paralysed-by-choice-of-who-to-save.html#.VBlPBUkYru4

On the other hand, many humans would also hesitate for too long, given such difficult choices.

Part of the problem with programming in Asimov's Laws, is that they are too abstract for a direct program. In order to program them you must concretize them in such a way as to inflate the number of decisions.

Essentially you run into the halting problem with any sufficiently general problem.

The number of decisions needed to make the Asimov destinctions are beyond the limit imposed by any prevalent technology. This is a standard problem in A.I.

The problem Fillipo is that getting enough information to make all the decisions needed to deal with a general law such as Asimov's laws, takes too much time, as do the actual decisions once the information is available.

Deep Learning is a new type of A.I. that retains information about the world, so that much of the information that is needed, already exists in the system and does not need to be generated at decision time. However, making a Statement such as Asimov's first law within a Deep Learning environment is not really practical yet.

I agree that ethics is based on information, and part of that information comes pre-bottled in the form of emotions and instincts. The Orbital prefrontal cortex seems to specialize in this type of processing. Damage to it, has been shown to cause ethical blindness, especially when the limbic connection is severed. However some evidence suggests a "Sweet Spot" during early life when attachment to the mother affects the development of this area. If this is true, then it could be that samples are taken in the early life from which different ethical patterns depend.

@Filippo,

Yes, exactly. By the way I was trained in computer engineering technology and didn't complete the course. I have been trying to get my brain around Neuroscience in order to design an artificial consciousness for a number of years now, and recently have come up with an integrated model of consciousness, but it is still in flux, so I haven't published it yet.

Interesting discussion! The frontal cortex of primates hyperscales with brain size (http://www.pnas.org/content/101/11/3962.full) and we are on top among the primates, which may be the reason for some of our advanced social behaviour, ethical and planning skills.

The prefrontal cortex of a cat is very small, some have said almost nonexistant, but even they can show protective behaviour across their species, in a similar way as the first law of robotics would require. This YouTube video shows an example of such behaviour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6GQR3Ym5M8.

A cat has free will in the sense of being able to act autonomously, it certainly has some level of awareness, but does it fulfill all requirements to have a free will? This may boil down to whether one can say that a cat's brain capacity is advanced enough to be able to act as a persona, which again requires some level of planning capacity and ability to abstract thinking. I am not sure that cats are at the level of abstract thinking that they can be called personas, even though they seem to be able to do some simple reasoning to protect their "pack". This means that cats for example may not have free will in the sense of being able to choose right from wrong in an ethical/moral framework. It is for example very difficult to teach a cat right from wrong. They probably only know that some actions cause punishment (e.g. jump on the table), others reward, but they do not really understand why.

Hi, I'm working on the topic in social / cognitive psychology, here is my point of view if it can help :

In humans the problem of free will (on a psychological level) boils down to the possibility (or not) of conscious process to generate behavior in an autonomous way == without being first generated by unconscious processed. 

However it can be more complexe if you include a long term scope. For example I may not be able to consciously refrain a behavior (== lack of free will), but may learn over a long period of term to regulate it. While the initial spark to change the behavior could be conscious (==free will), the whole long term process over which I can change the behavior can't be fully conscious or fully unconscious, but most probably a complexe interaction of both varying over time. 

I guess if you want to reproduce such interaction in an artificial setting, the major challenge is to recreate the interaction between various prefrontal process that we tend to associate with free will (conscious control over impulses for example) and automated processes. A good look into it can come from addiction studies where prefrontal control is impaired and results in a lack of "free will". 

Hope this can help

Good point - consciousness and the possibility of using a conscious process for generating autonomous behaviour is probably related to free will. Lack of impulse control probably causes a reduction of free will - however it can sometimes be hard for an individual to realise that, due to lack of self-insight into how the obsessive behaviour affects the free will (e.g. do you as an alcoholic start drinking because you want to or because you have to? Is it then free will to start drinking?) It may be even worse when the individual realises that lack of impulse control reduces free will.

The interesting thing is that we still do not really know what consciousness is, and what is required (for example in a machine) to reach a level of awareness that would mean being conscious. An interesting article that discusses this is "Brain simulation and personhood: a concern with the Human Brain Project" http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-013-9330-5. Would a simulated human brain (if it ever is possible) be conscious? And would it then be ethically right to switch it off after the experiment finished?

@Nils, Part of the problem with using addiction as a loss of free will, is the fact that addiction is a function of the human brain, specifically the Insula since lesions in this area have freed people from long standing addictions.

As such, it is not a loss of free will, but an indication that free will is something that is overestimated. Wont power will keep you from getting into situations where you might become addicted, but chemical dependency can sneak up on you and people who are noted for their strength of purpose have been subverted by bad advice from their family physician or by emergency treatment with chemicals that are addictive. Once they are addicted however their will power is lost to the addiction at least in that particular part of their lives.

As to whether a simulated brain will ever be conscious, it depends on whether consciousness is a function of the human brain or not, if it is a function of the human brain then emulation which is a superior form of simulation will create it. I am confident that this is the case. Part of the problem is that we don't yet know enough about consciousness to emulate it, which is something I am working on. So far the Model I am working on looks good but it will be years yet before anything comes of it.

The challenge with designing an experiment measuring free will, as the original post proposes, is that free will is a subjective property. You have free will if you think you have a free choice, but different individuals will interpret this freedom differently depending on their level of self-insight, their inhibitions, their addictions and their life experience.

There is probably also a cultural part (or bias) if you want to measure free will, since some cultures emphasise free will, whereas other cultures may not (for example focusing more on destiny or a divine power controlling ones actions or choices).

@Yann, Part of the problem with your viewpoint is that we really don't know yet what thought is. Should it be any less the case that there is free will, if thought requires unconscious processes? It is still conscious thought, but has a process by which it is created rather than being born without process.

I think "free will" can be viewed at multiple level.

At the lowest level, "free will" can be interpreted at a neurological level. The debate then becomes what choices that can be made given the neurological pattern, given the behavioral inclination, of whether or how the conscious can control the unconscious over the long run (as per the post from Yann), over habits, behavior, etc.

What about free will at the highest level - that of destiny, having control over life and existence itself. Some people are born poor and not-so-smart,  some poor but talented and with the right attitude, some rich and talented, etc, etc. Some are born into progressive society, some not. Some people are born into well-off, supportive family, some not so.. Its all at the throw of the dice that determines where and how you happen to be brought up and what sort of world, society you have to spend your life in..  Consider for example a child brought up in an abusive family, who's not doing well in school, who sleeps on the street, who's never lucky enough to be "savioured" by anyone  vs a child who's brought up in a "normal" family. What "free will" does the former child has, compared with that for the child in the latter case?  What about those child brought up in terrorist school, trained and brainwashed to be terrorists? What free will? What "free will" does each of us have?   Or consider the case of poor dog vs rich dog.. The poor dog abused and unwanted, dirty and diseased, living out on the street  vs the "rich dog" that has everything it needs, that can be everything... what "free will" does a dog has, other than that imposed by its human God?

At this highest level, are we not any much different from those "ants in the box"? Is this will imposed on us the "limitations of this universe which is bound by conditions of time, space and causation" as mentioned in a previous post (by Vikram I think)?

I think @Nordin has a good point. Free will depends on the mental capacity you have for choices at a neurological level - this is sort of the size of the mental toolbox you have for free choices. This capacity is however not fixed, it may change with age, experience, what you learn or how you age etc. The mental capacity for choice will also be different across species as well as between individuals.

Secondly, free will depends on how restricted your perceived choice is within the "toolbox-of-choice" that you have based on external restrictions. One example of severe restriction of free choice is an Orvellian surveillance regime, repressive regime or a Panopticon (prison house under constant surveillance) where the perceived set of choices has been restricted to little or nothing.  The same may be said for poverty or abuse - it restricts the perceived set of choices you have.

Third, free will depends on how restricted your perceived choice is, or which palette of choices you think you have, based on your internal restrictions, for example your moral and ethical framework. This also restricts our choices, even though society in at large considers these restrictions a good thing. Moral or ethical rules/restrictions can be shifted via brainwashing or radicalidation, but also learning, experience etc. which means that you may increase or change your set of perceived choices (reference frame) to include actions that originally was not considered. An extreme case is moving from an ethical standpoint where killing someone is considered inacceptable, to a radicalised standpoint where killing is considered acceptable or even a duty in certain situations.

You have free will since the very moment you think you have choices, it doesn't matter if those choices are influenced by internal or external forces.

Dear Manuel,

I Agree with your point , but how to identify if that choices does not work as per our will even though probability of doing that work should or will always work. Example : i would like to cross a curved road where there is no traffic signals and i could not check whether any vehicle is approaching from that curved road, at that moment i assume that i can cross safely , but if suddenly some vehicle comes through that road and hits me while crossing ,in such case does my "will" making me to suffer ? and that type of will i did not chose. Can we assume that some external force is manipulating my thoughts and actions even though i had choice to take my own decision before crossing road.