Free Will and Precognition

[Raxter]

Benjamin Libet preformed studies revolving around the subject of free will. His methods were relatively simple, involving an oscilloscope timer and a button which would note the position on the timer when pressed.

 

The subjects were fitted with electrodes about their scalp to monitor brain activity and were asked to push the button "when they were first aware of the urge to act". They had to push the button at least once during the oscilloscope's rotation, but they could press the button multiple times if they felt the need to. As long as the button was pushed once, the researchers could map the brain activity of the patient during their entire decision making process.

 

So, what they found was that the unconscious processes in the brain were the true initiator of voluntary acts. The brain activity in the secondary motor cortex took an average of 500 milliseconds from the time the person "thought to act" and the time they "actually acted". Implying a buildup of unconscious decision making processes that the patients weren't even aware of.

According to a more recent study (that's awaiting review and confirmation of evidence) it can take up to 7 seconds for a patient to be fully aware of their choice to act from the time a stimulus is introduced to the time that they're actually making the decision to act.

 

The implications of this study seem to be along the lines of our unconscious brain "making decisions for us" and our conscious mind "deciding to / not to continue with the action." I think of this as a survival mechanism. The unconscious brain takes in information from all our sensory sources and then presents only what it thinks to be important. After all, it takes far too long for our conscious brain to recognize what's going on around us without our subconscious filtering out the fluff from the important stuff.

But it seems to take a liberal step further to go so far as to make decisions for us, and I find this a troubling notion to say the least.

 

Am I really exercising free will if all I'm able to do is veto my unconscious mind's decisions?

 

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The other notion that I think this brings up is the concept of precognition as this study seems to suggest that we "know" things, even if it's just concerning decisions, before we "consciously know" them. Anthony Peake explains in his book of a theory posed by Daniel Dennett called the "Cartesian Theatre". This theory seems to coincide with Libet's findings that there's a kind of mental buildup concerning what a person perceives as a choice, based upon sensory inputs, before there's actually a conscious realization that a person is experiencing something, even if it's just the experience of deciding to act on something. He likened this to sitting in a theatre with a movie playing on screen. The movie is the culmination of all our senses from all our nerves and organs.

 

This metaphor poses a problem though. We see things quicker than we can feel them and we hear things faster than we can smell them. This means that we should perceive reality like a movie where the sound is out of synchronization with the visuals.

For us to experience all our senses as occurring at the same time it must mean that there is a buffer zone in our (un?)conscious mind that is receiving all these signals at different times and then waits until it's able to play us the movie in the comfortable reality that we all can say we are experiencing.

 

So, not only does it seem we are unconsciously making decisions before technically "making them". But we're also experiencing things before "experiencing" them. Or, to put it another way, we're recognizing that things are occurring before we're consciously aware that they're occurring. Which to me sounds an awful lot like precognition even if it's only concerning a few hundred milliseconds to a few seconds.

Of course you could say that it's not really precognition if we aren't consciously aware of it. You can't take advantage of knowing the future a few seconds ahead anyways unless in some of the most extreme cases I would imagine. So it's uses would be somewhat limited anyways even if we were able to see or hear things "in real time" rather than when our brains tell us it's okay to.

 

But, it doesn't change the fact that it's physically impossible for us to sense everything all at once in the manner that we do unless there's operations in our brain that prevent us from sensing "until it has all the information". So this brings me to the other question:

 

Is the "real reality" occurring just ahead of what we're able to make sense of?

 

I found the notion of no real free will or no real reality to be astonishing and mind boggling to think about. What are your thoughts?

[Sara+Rob]

Although what you're saying is a popular interpretation of Libet's experiment (replicated by others as well), it's not the whole story and recent experimental data indicates that interpretation may not be correct.

 

Abstract

 

Benjamin Libet has argued that electrophysiological signs of cortical movement preparation are present before people report having made a conscious decision to move, and that these signs constitute evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously. This controversial conclusion depends critically on the assumption that the electrophysiological signs recorded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl (1983) are associated only with preparation for movement. We tested that assumption by comparing the electrophysiological signs before a decision to move with signs present before a decision not to move. There was no evidence of stronger electrophysiological signs before a decision to move than before a decision not to move, so these signs clearly are not specific to movement preparation. We conclude that Libet’s results do not provide evidence that voluntary movements are initiated unconsciously.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810009001135

 

 

Abstract

 

Neuroscientific studies have shown that brain activity correlated with a decision to move can be observed before a person reports being consciously aware of having made that decision (e.g., Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983; Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). Given that a later event (i.e., conscious awareness) cannot cause an earlier one (i.e., decision-related brain activity), such results have been interpreted as evidence that decisions are made unconsciously (e.g., Libet, 1985). We argue that this interpretation depends upon an all-or-none view of consciousness, and we offer an alternative interpretation of the early decision-related brain activity based on models in which conscious awareness of the decision to move develops gradually up to the level of a reporting criterion. Under this interpretation, the early brain activity reflects sub-criterion levels of awareness rather than complete absence of awareness and thus does not suggest that decisions are made unconsciously.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24394375

 

There's a lot more to be found, for and against. It's still an open question.

[Raxter]

Although what you're saying is a popular interpretation of Libet's experiment (replicated by others as well), it's not the whole story and recent experimental data indicates that interpretation may not be correct.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810009001135

 

Libet's experiments were conducted in the '70s and were built upon research done in '64 by Lüder Deecke and Hans Helmut Kornhuber who were testing for "Readiness Potential." Which, like you explained, is slowly being debunked. Thankfully we're able to do a lot more in today's world than simply read the electrical activity in the brain and extrapolate on what we think it means but this was probably the best they could work with at the time.

 

Personally I believe the buildup that they were "measuring" was actually the excitement in which a person was telling themself "Okay, I'm going to act...NOW!" and then doing whatever action that may be. This would certainly show up on an EEG and may have been misinterpreted as "background thinking." In this case the individual pushing the button had free reign to press it whenever they wished, certainly the act of merely observing someone who knows they're being observed alters their behavior. I'll refrain from saying how they could do this experiment "better" (and with more modern technology than an oscilloscope!) until I do more research on it to the point I'm comfortable with it before making a claim such as that.

 

However, this drives me to look at how we make decisions in their entire process and not just before we make the "choice" to make a choice. Perhaps after this study concludes it's 3 year test we'll have more insight. At the moment it would appear that there's at least some form of unconcscious stirrings in our head before we make any final decisions, even if it's just filtering this choice through our bias, past experiences, expectations, and personal goals even if we aren't consciously aware that we're doing it.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24394375

 

"Sub-criterion levels of awareness" is an incredibly interesting notion to me. While I may not necessarily agree with Libet's findings, I do find the ideas he's presenting as things that should be further pursued such as levels of awareness. In many cases I think we're simply distracted, like in the invisible gorilla test which can show how easily our mind will only focus on that which it's looking for. In this gorilla test we are "aware" that we are "seeing" the gorilla as it's in the shot and our eyeline far longer than what it takes for us to recognize it but the viewer isn't really acknowledging their awareness of it until after it's pointed out or they "discover" it upon rewatching.

 

So even if Libet's experiments end up being totally wrong these other experiments are showing an even greater field of study:

 

Just how much are we really aware of, and just how much of that is what our mind thinks is important enough for us to "know" about?

[Leaf]

Just how much are we really aware of, and just how much of that is what our mind thinks is important enough for us to "know" about?

It is impossible to quantify this question since the unconscious aspect is unconscious and cannot easily be compared to what we are aware of. That said, I think a vast majority (probably upwards of 98%) of what goes through the mind is filtered out. The conscious mind tends to only deal with one or two things at once, although it often seems like more since we can shift it back and forth rather easily. People are notoriously bad at multitasking, although there are always exceptions. You word your question like the unconscious mind is some alien aspect that determines what is important and what isn't. While this is true to some extent, what we consciously think about impacts the sensory processing. Selective attention can be consciously modified so that you "notice" some things over others, and what those include is to some extent up to you. Its always limited because there is just too much information coming in for the conscious mind to deal with, but much of that information we would or have deemed unimportant at some point or another.

 

I would be careful how you view the whole process. It seems to me like you get the idea that the unconscious mind permanently discards some information like we do consciously. While it is true that it changes as new sensory information comes in, I would liken it more to a pool. It categorizes information and allows for the conscious mind to "pick" what it will focus on. Some things tend to get filtered out more and would thus seem to be deemed unimportant by the unconscious. The unconscious seems to make some information more easily accessible then others, but this is due in part by conscious conditioning (ie the more you practice the easier it becomes). Then again, how much our conscious mind "controls" the unconscious is a point of debate, and it certainly seems like a mutual process rather than a hierarchical one like so many of us assume.

[Raxter]

Selective attention can be consciously modified so that you "notice" some things over others, and what those include is to some extent up to you. Its always limited because there is just too much information coming in for the conscious mind to deal with, but much of that information we would or have deemed unimportant at some point or another.

 

I agree. A good example that comes to mind when I read this is when vehicle drivers are typically are scanning the road and our surroundings for other cars and not always necessarily motorcycles or bicycle riders.

However, if we ourselves are a motorcyclist or bicycle rider and we get behind the wheel of a car we may have a higher awareness of what else might be around us. We would then have the defensive driving experience to know a bit more about what to look for and we would have a subconscious conditioned response to "know" when to look for things other than mostly cars. That's just the situation that came to my mind.

 

I would be careful how you view the whole process. It seems to me like you get the idea that the unconscious mind permanently discards some information like we do consciously. While it is true that it changes as new sensory information comes in, I would liken it more to a pool. It categorizes information and allows for the conscious mind to "pick" what it will focus on...and it certainly seems like a mutual process rather than a hierarchical one like so many of us assume.

 

The unconscious mind as by definition is about as elusive a concept as one can get without actually knowing full-on what it really is when concerned with scientific application.

Personally, I believe behaviorists and neurologists don't put enough effective investigation into it. Any issue that could be coming from a subconscious level is likened almost to a split personality, or a "subroutine" in a computer that runs unseen but has no less of an impact on things occurring in the "non-mental" world.

 

Even if the subconscious does operate as a categorizer I would still say that it's making some sort of decision on its own. Indeed if it wasn't for it being able to do at least some sort of thinking process under our conscious radar then we wouldn't have the ability to create tulpas. I explain my background reasoning, and my research for this idea, throughout my progress report so I'll save the reader's time by not double documenting it.

 

However, I do think the pool analogy is appropriate and an effective way to think of it. You and your subconscious stand on some sort of mutual understanding on what is important. I agree that isn't a case of your subconscious saying "That's important, focus on that, no I'm the boss you have to listen to me." After all, your conscious mind is always going to have the option to act (or not act) even if this was the case.

 

It's still a odd investigation into the way we exercise our free will despite the seemingly background noise and nonsense we experience every day!