Goodbye Freewill, Goodbye Christianity?

[A_Wanderer]

Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. This is shown in a study by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charité University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin. The researchers from the group of Professor John-Dylan Haynes used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. "Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings." (Nature Neuroscience, April 13th 2008)

In the study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their left or right hand. They were free to make this decision whenever they wanted, but had to remember at which time they felt they had made up their mind. The aim of the experiment was to find out what happens in the brain in the period just before the person felt the decision was made. The researchers found that it was possible to predict from brain signals which option participants would take already seven seconds before they consciously made their decision. Normally researchers look at what happens when the decision is made, but not atwhat happens several seconds before. The fact that decisions can be predicted so long before they are made is a astonishing finding.

This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.

"Most researchers investigate what happens when people have to decide immediately, typically as a rapid response to an event in our environment. Here we were focusing on the more interesting decisions that are made in a more natural, self-paced manner", Haynes explains.

More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet’s experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person’s conscious mind. Libet’s experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.

In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

mpg.de

Cracking into the processes of decision making could have some uncomfortable consequences, especially when we consider how much of our behaviour is automatic. That if I think I am doing the opposite of what I was going to do that choice was made unconsciously is unsettling; if one resorted to apathy from that would it be in a sense destiny?

 

[melon]

I think I know what we are then...

[Computed in 6.3 ns]

 

[melon]

Okay, I've been watching too much "Battlestar Galactica" lately (the re-imagining is terribly addictive).

Anyway, I guess it begs a couple of questions:

1) Does it mean that we are the equivalent of humanoid robots (or, yes, Cylons), where our "subconscious" is computing the next decision for our conscious mind?

2) Is the subconscious being fed instructions from a "Higher Source"?

3) Is this study more quasi-scientific crap, where the results won't be reproducible, and the refutation of the study won't get media attention?

 

[acrobatique]

2) Is the subconscious being fed instructions from a "Higher Source"?

3) Is this study more quasi-scientific crap, where the results won't be reproducible, and the refutation of the study won't get media attention?

It does raise some interesting scenarios..how much of what mankind (esp in the 'free' or 'developed' world) has 'decided' over the past 20 years has been a product of pure free will or a merely a by-product of what we were exposed to with the design of subliminal coercion?

And along that path, if this was discovered 20 years ago, what do you think would be more useful for the "Higher Powers" - to have several leading scientist debunk it as hogwash and claim it's not reproducible, therefore the masses will eventually forget about it all....or let us believe that there actually might be some truth to it and have us walking around with our minds opened and on the lookout for it?

Not to be a conspiracy theorist but...

<cue dramatic orchestral arrangement>

 

[acrobatique]

Also, what the does this have to do with Christianity?

 

[A_Wanderer]

Okay, I've been watching too much "Battlestar Galactica" lately (the re-imagining is terribly addictive).

Anyway, I guess it begs a couple of questions:

1) Does it mean that we are the equivalent of humanoid robots (or, yes, Cylons), where our "subconscious" is computing the next decision for our conscious mind?

2) Is the subconscious being fed instructions from a "Higher Source"?

3) Is this study more quasi-scientific crap, where the results won't be reproducible, and the refutation of the study won't get media attention?

It seems connected to the sort of stuff Benjamin Libet did. My bullshit detector hasn't gone off, I have read about a few other related experiments in new scientist over the years and I think Sleek Geeks (an Australian science show) had a demonstration of it.

It seems that unravelling decision making can only really find an internal answer, something akin to telepathy; the input of action from an outside actor doesn't really fit with whats known about the universe very well. Decision making takes place in the brain and it is the product of evolution, it would be interesting if this sort of research bridges the gap between what we take as animal instinct versus enlightened human behaviour.

If there is a strong determinism in unconscious choice then it does lead to the conclusion that we are zombies with the illusion of free will, but that doesn't negate our consciousness or capacity for thinking and action - even though it may be playing to an unconscious tune.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Also, what the does this have to do with Christianity?

Christians keep on saying that it is free will that leads to sin, that free will and bad choices are the reason for evil in the world etc. But if there is no free will then that means that a sinner doesn't have a real choice not to sin, and the possibility that evil is an artifact of this Gods plan and that just makes such an entity malevolent. It seems an area where science is pushing into the domains of religion and philosophy.

 

[Liesje]

There's quite a large chuck of Christians (Calvinists) who do not and have never believed in the concept of "free will"...

 

[A_Wanderer]

A most valid point, but how can one deal with the idea that what we feel is wrong; is an illusion of free will self-justifying? Could we just go through life like Two-Face and base choices on chance to break free (and would that decision to follow chance be determined)? Is free will a seperate issue from determinism - are there enough uncertainties in the universe that mean that it isn't just playing out like an immense Rube Goldberg Machine?

 

[Liesje]

I don't know that I can answer b/c 1) I have not fully read the article and 2) my definition of "free will" is probably different than a lot of people's. I was just quickly browsing through the responses and wanted to point that out. We can't lump all Christians into the "free will" category because that's not true and is a HUGE over-simplification. To a Calvinist, the "will" is one thing, not just will in general as in wanting/willing this or that. Your "will" is I guess like your soul, not really, but that's the closest thing I can think of to make the point. It is not "free". However, anyone has the freedom to make the choices that human's make. Your will can belong to God and you can still make bad choices. There is a distinction between "freedom" and "freedom of the will/free will".

Also, I don't like good vs. evil dichotomy and have come to believe something along the lines of sin/evil as the absence of good. They are not mutually exclusive; there's a spectrum of being good or less and less good. Darkness is the absence of light; cold is the absence of heat.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I can't relate because good and evil are purely emotional responses evolved for social conditioning in primates. What I take to be free will is decision making where I have deliberately and consciously chosen to take an action (be it pressing a button or choosing to use a particular word in a sentence). It doesn't seem the evidence for any extreme is out there, the eventual facts may well point somewhere in the middle.

Does a cat have free will when it pounces on a mouse?

 

[INDY500]

It seems an area where science is pushing into the domains of religion and philosophy.

Kinda like intelligent design pushing into the domain of science, except science is more close-minded.

 

[Liesje]

I can't relate because good and evil are purely emotional responses evolved for social conditioning in primates. What I take to be free will is decision making where I have deliberately and consciously chosen to take an action (be it pressing a button or choosing to use a particular word in a sentence). It doesn't seem the evidence for any extreme is out there, the eventual facts may well point somewhere in the middle.

Does a cat have free will when it pounces on a mouse?

The Bible-study Christian response would be no, because a cat was not created in the image of God. Their will/soul is not subject to God.

My response...I'd have to think about it....

They are loaded questions because it sounds like you are answering theologically motivated questions about a theological term using a scientific/non-religious definition for the term. Your definition of "free will" is simply not how I define it from a theological point of view so I can't really answer the questions.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Firstly intelligent design claims to be a scientific hypothesis not a theology, you just undercut the argument why it should be taught in public schools (promoting religious belief is unconstitutional - if the evidence did point to intelligent design the question of what the designer is would be unanswered; evolution however only requires the existence of a single self-replicating molecule with heritable variability and the mechanical process of selection will bring ecologically useful adaptions to the fore; the origin of life rests in organic chemistry not a divine spark). Secondly peer reviewed scientific studies tackling how cognition works have big implications for understanding reality and informing both philosophy and religion because the theory is grounded in objective fact and will be scrutinised from every possible angle.

The scope of science is ever expanding, domains of knowledge that were once exclusively theological and philosophical are constantly being overlapped with scientific investigation. Science can never disprove religion entirely, but it can undermine specific claims (special creation for instance). This is a similar element, and people who cling to dogma that says the opposite of what actually goes on are doomed to self-perpetuating ignorance.

 

[Liesje]

Firstly intelligent design claims to be a scientific hypothesis not a theology, you just undercut the argument why it should be taught in public schools (promoting religious belief is unconstitutional - if the evidence did point to intelligent design the question of what the designer is would be unanswered; evolution however only requires the existence of a single self-replicating molecule with heritable variability and the mechanical process of selection will bring ecologically useful adaptions to the fore; the origin of life rests in organic chemistry not a divine spark). Secondly peer reviewed scientific studies tackling how cognition works have big implications for understanding reality and informing both philosophy and religion because the theory is grounded in objective fact and will be scrutinised from every possible angle.

I don't refute either (and was taught intelligent design, evolution, Big Bang, and a few other theories...at a private school). I'm just pointing out that tackling "free will" as it is understood by religious peoples would require understanding their definition of the term and how it is used. For Calvinists, "free will" is not really understood as something that determines whether or not you sin, to what extent, etc so it's confusing for scientists to mean that and refer to it as "free will". It's like a Christian understanding a cat as a feline and a scientist actually calling a dog a cat and then trying to explain some things about a cat, when to the Christian they are describing a dog.

I personally have no need to defend theology over science because I do not believe the two are mutually exclusive, I believe that if there is a God in the Christian sense, then science is God-willed. I think scientific studies of cognition and how people make choices are very interesting and don't bother me in the slightest, but that is not really what free will is all about.

 

[INDY500]

My bullshit detector hasn't gone off,

Doesn't this imply the ability to reason?

Now, if you can reason between truth and "bullshit" then, unless you are a psychopath, you can also reason between right and wrong -- between (gasp) good and evil.

Doesn't the existence of a "bullshit detector" prove the existence of free will?

Or are we to believe that it too evolved, evolved from the mouse-pouncing cat that has no free will?

 

[A_Wanderer]

Doesn't this imply the ability to reason?

Now, if you can reason between truth and "bullshit" then, unless you are a psychopath, you also reason between right and wrong -- between (gasp) good and evil.

Doesn't the existence of a "bullshit detector" prove the existence of free will?

Or are we to believe that it too evolved, evolved from the mouse-pouncing cat that has no free will?

No, it simply means that my brain puts information together about the study, the organisations involved and where I heard about it and I feel that it is legitimate. The point of the study was that when a person is told to choose when to push a button when they want the choice is made before they consciously realise it, but we still feel as if we had concious choice in pressing the button.

That doesn't imply free will.

And yes, we have a mammalian brain as do our feline cousins and a cat has behaviours that are advantageous for survival; to live they must be able to pounce at the right moment and that involves a sort of decision. The decision processes in a cats brain may very well be homologous to those in the human brain at some level; even though our brains have a much better system of consciousness for social interaction we are still animals and are made up of the same basic bits.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Doing the right or wrong thing is not neccessarily a matter of choice, often enough it is instinct. To help a person out, to expect some sort of reciprocal altruism at times, to be kind to people (because it enables you to use them just as they use you) etc. So much of that is driven by unconscious factors (making eye contact, smiling, mirroring, laughing, judging the appropriateness of comments, using innuendo at the right times etc. - things that we are not consciously controlling that aid social interaction).

To back up those assertions that I am assuming are true experiments must be done, unless it can be observed and replicated we can't hold assumptions as truth. And to that end I want to stress that science is progressive and can hopefully falsify bad assumptions whereas religions are often taken to be absolute unchanging truth. If an experiment proved that we have no capacity to make decisions consciously it would not make people abandon those tenants of their religion, it would cause a dramatic change in the science.

 

[INDY500]

(promoting religious belief is unconstitutional -

So too is promoting or establishing atheism by the way. Free exercise clause, remember?

cling to dogma

An Obama shout-out?

 

[INDY500]

No, it simply means that my brain puts information together about the study, the organisations involved and where I heard about it and I feel that it is legitimate. The point of the study was that when a person is told to choose when to push a button when they want the choice is made before they consciously realise it, but we still feel as if we had concious choice in pressing the button.

That doesn't imply free will.

And yes, we have a mammalian brain as do our feline cousins and a cat has behaviours that are advantageous for survival; to live they must be able to pounce at the right moment and that involves a sort of decision. The decision processes in a cats brain may very well be homologous to those in the human brain at some level; even though our brains have a much better system of consciousness for social interaction we are still animals and are made up of the same basic bits.

Humans, unlike animals, can make moral decisions. It's the difference between "I'm hungry. Can I eat that mouse?" and "I'm hungry, SHOULD I eat that mouse?"

 

[A_Wanderer]

So too is promoting or establishing atheism by the way. Free exercise clause, remember?


An Obama shout-out?

The establishment clause prevents the promotion or persecution of religious belief. Given that evolutionary biology is not a religious belief it is perfectly valid in the science classroom. Not promoting God in a public school is different from teaching children that there is no God.

It is not free exercise of religion to take a theologically based argument like intelligent design and use public funds to promote it. By all means fill childrens heads with rubbish at home and at Church but the taxpayer money mustn't be funneled for the promotion of religious belief. If an atheist high school student is forced to take a test on Intelligent Design that would be violating their religious freedoms because it is affirming this unfalsifiable creator entity that is codeword for God.

To find out how controversial evolution is these days please skim through some abstracts at nature.com, I can guarantee you that not a single one has intelligent design because it's a piss poor model, evolution is dominant because it works elegantly and matches the observations. If somebody finds an exception to the theory they would be at the top of the pile because they would overturn what people thought they knew. But it doesn't seem to be the case, as time goes on the evidence just keeps pointing to evolution not as a result of some naturalist conspiracy rather the nature of reality.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Humans, unlike animals, can make moral decisions. It's the difference between "I'm hungry. Can I eat that mouse?" and "I'm hungry, SHOULD I eat that mouse?"

Animals make decisions that are moral, vampire bats will share blood with other bats that couldn't go out to feed on a particular night - they will sacrifice some of their benefit for another, altruistic behaviour underpinned by the expectation that the favour will be returned (it's the golden rule being played out in the natural world for perfectly good darwinian reasons).

That rudimentary examples of what we consider morality exist in the animal kingdom is important. It shows that despite our incredible brains there is a long evolutionary history of cooperation and "morality" that exists because it endows some selective advantage (and that advantage may be beyond the individual level to the gene level as with examples of kin selection).

You overlooked the point I was making too, that decisions are made by animals, there are mechanisms in the brain that go into decision making and that if a cat can make a decision without what we might consider free will should we really assume that our decisions are radically different.

 

[BonosSaint]

The pushing of the button though is an act with no consequence.
There is no rationale to decide whether pushing a button at a specific time is better than pushing it at another time. There is nothing to weigh in this experiment. It would be interesting to see a similar experiment when a decision does have consequence and is more complex.

That being said, it certainly seems likely that much of the information that we process is processed underneath conscious level. It also seems that we can negate a decision we have reached.

 

[nathan1977]

Given what the Bible says about our sin nature -- that is, the preconditioned state of brokenness that we are born into -- you'd be hard pressed to argue that humanity is in fact free. Theologians would perhaps argue that it's Christ who allows true freedom -- in that as we grow in relationship to God we are able to make changes and discover free will. Until then, we're sort of trapped by our circumstances/coping mechanisms/survival tactics/dysfunction/addictions/etc. Grace breaks determinism/karma.

So I don't think this article says anything that would violate Christianity...

 

[maycocksean]

Couldn't this simply suggest that we make our "free will" choices before we are aware we've made them.

If there were some deterministic "reason" that led to a particular pattern of button-pushing that researchers were able to uncover thus indicating that what appears to be a free will choice instead is already determined, well then maybe there would be something. But simply recording that the brain "predicts" the response before it's conscious to the person as a decision isn't really stopping free will.

I don't think the existence of the subconscious negates free will. . .

 

[VintagePunk]

For some reason nature.com won't load for me at the moment, so I can't read the entire article, but, it's been accepted for ages that at any given time, there is a lot going on for each of us at a preconscious level. That's sort of a built in measure of protection for us, because if it weren't so, we'd be so overwhelmed by stimuli at times, we probably wouldn't be able to function. We certainly wouldn't be able to focus on the important things, the things we need to in order to survive.

I'd be interested to see the entire study to determine how early in the 7 second window the actual decision is made, and then how much more time passes before the participant reaches what the researchers alluded to as the point of no return in the process, where there was no turning back and changing the decision. It could be that very early in that 7 second window, there was more of a preconscious awareness that there was a decision to be made, as opposed to the actual making of the decision.

As well, depending on the type of computer task they were doing while engaged in pushing the button, how attention-intensive it was, it's possible that the attention given to that task suppressed the attention, and therefore the participants' automatic consciousness of, the button pushing aspect of the task. I've been involved in deployment of attention studies, and one of the knowns is that we can only really focus on a limited number of parts of a task at a time, so that things do become automatic and preconscious. Researchers base studies upon using our attention limits to get access to our preconscious minds all the time.

Also, BonosSaint and maycocksean have made some excellent points about the simplicity and automaticity of a dichotomous task such as button pushing (do I push - yes or no? Right or left hand?), and it doesn't exactly require reasoning or higher thinking.

All that said, it's an exciting finding for the field. I just think it's maybe a tad premature to generalize the findings to an absence of free will.

 

[A_Wanderer]

The question marks and if qualifier in my posts are important

 

[BonosSaint]

Is the subconscious then the link between brain and mind? The dynamic that flows between the two? We assign the brain tasks (either consciously or unconsciously) that it then resolves below conscious level. Does the subconsious belong to the brain or to the mind?

 

[VintagePunk]

Is the subconscious then the link between brain and mind? The dynamic that flows between the two? We assign the brain tasks (either consciously or unconsciously) that it then resolves below conscious level. Does the subconsious belong to the brain or to the mind?

I'm sure A_Wanderer could address this much more articulately than I'm about to, philosophy of the mind stuff bores me silly, so I tended not to pay much attention to it, but, to me, I guess you could say that yes, in a way, preconsciousness is sort of a bridge between unconsciousness and consciousness. I'm assuming that when you say 'brain,' you're referring to completely automatic, unaware processes, and when you say 'mind,' you're referring to things that are fully within our awareness. Preconciousness is a state between the two, where we might not be aware of what's going on at any given time, but we can usually access it if there's a need to.

I don't really think of preconsciousness belonging to either the brain or the mind, to me, they're one and the same, it's all just a continuum of consciousness within the brain.

 

[BonosSaint]

Thanks. Basically I was thinking out loud or thinking in prose about the role of the preconscious/subconscious. Just amusing myself. It's a subject that interests me but I haven't done much reading on it, just some observation.

I follow the brain and mind being the same--I was just using mind as the conscious state. The subconscious seems to be the information organizer/problem solver. Deep subconscious and shallower subconscious ("it was on the tip of my tongue") much
closer to the conscious level. I'm always fascinated how all this works together in the human machine, the flow of it.