Friends,
Free will is the capacity to choose between alternatives of action. In philosophical discourse, the debate—never resolved—is between real, not illusory, freedom of action and determinism. In neural discourse, the deterministic position seems a priori obligatory. There is a wrinkle in that position, however. Assuming that there is a “free agent” in the brain, it must be subject to so many inputs, conscious and unconscious, with so much latitude of action that, barring duress, illness or imprisonment, the determinism of action becomes diluted in a sea of imponderable probabilities. Thus, it seems to me, free will does in fact exist, but subject to a kind of “soft determinism," as William James would have it. Where is it?
Cheers, Joaquín
Is this really so? Is free will really the capacity to choose between alternatives of actions?
The term 'free will' was taken from the Bible. And here it does not mean at all that one has the possibility to choose between alternatives. It's a total misinterpretation which lead to debating the idea of free will, either accidently or on purpose.
Free will is here the product of hiddeness: He performs with faith, since he does not know for sure.
So when exactly is a human being nowadays in such situations that one does not know for sure? And what does one do then? They search for information untill one decission becomes more rational above the other, don't they?
Doesn't matter here that the search for information may be one-sided; the point is either that it gets rationalized untill it sounds good.
Free will exists only were there is lack of information and two choices seem to be equaly balanced, meaning: I do not know the outcome of either situation.
But when exactly is this the case? Maybe in movies? When the action hero has to make a decission if he cuts the red or blue wire?
How do people act here? They are forced to make a choice and they must act with faith in a good ending. Otherwise they would be stucked.
In a world based on more and more information: Where is free will here? That I get informed or I don't get informed? Does freedom mean then that I don't get informed? Or does it mean that I collect so much information untill I reach a barrier were there is really no information at all?
Who has more freedom then? The wise or the fool? Or are they both only trapped in the illusion of free will?
Dear Carmen:
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, free will is defined as "capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives." All your rational arguments are plausible, but none takes free will out of the brain, which is the focus of my question.
Cheers, Joaquín
Thanks, Gabriele. The self, in my opinion, is the cerebral cortex. Therefore your comment about the perception of the self acting seems correct. All deliberate and free actions take place within the Perception-Action Cycle (PAC), which circulates through the cerebral cortex and the environment by use of feedforward and feedback. Our consciousness (or illusion?!) of free will is a phenomenon (literally) of the dynamics of the active, goal-directed PAC. Keep in mind that, in the brain, the nearest thing to a “free agent” is the prefrontal cortex, at the output/environment interface of the cycle, with its executive functions of planning, executive attention, working memory, and decision making. But this cortex does not do anything by itself. It works together with other cortical components of the PAC and with subcortical structures that bring to it emotional inputs.
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Consciousness and Access to Information:
It has been known for some time that conscious decisions can follow the activation of the cerebral cortex by hundreds of milliseconds as measured with EEG (Libet 1985). Recent fMRI studies have confirmed this finding for the frontal, parietal, and cingulate cortices (Soon et al. 2008). Not surprisingly, consciousness follows one’s access to the information that is stored in the brain and beyond. This should not be confused with the idea that man does not have a propensity for free will, since it is the information (as stored neurally and beyond in books, files, ledgers, contracts, and so on) that provides one with behavioral options.
References
Libet B (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behav Brain Sci 8:529-566.
Soon CS, Brass M, Heinze H-J, Haynes J-D (2008) Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neurosci 11:543-545.
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Above text as posted in Project/Consciousness and Information Transfer/Tehovnik/RG
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