Humans really don't know what they're doing?

[ruby sparks]

Did they predict it?

Yeah. They gave someone a gun and predicted when they weren't going to fire it.

- - - Updated - - -

I am not planning what moves I am going to make a minute from now.

Again, for the umpteenth time, that is not the point. The point is that in a scenario where you were planning to do a move of some sort, in a time of your choosing, as and when you felt the urge, you'd still say that it was initiated consciously at the time you did it. So how could anyone predict when it would happen beforehand, especially which arm (when that choice was not part of the prior planning)?

Not true.

The results were not 100%.

There is a possibility they will guess wrong.

What does that mean?

One possible answer is that it's a fledgling technology and the measurements are not yet precise enough.

And as I said before, Ithzak Fried claimed 80% success. Haynes et al less so.

But in any case you can't ignore statistically above chance. Sorry. Science doesn't work that way. You have to try to explain statistically above chance I'm afraid.

 

[untermensche]

Did they predict it?

Yeah. They gave someone a gun and predicted when they weren't going to fire it.

I didn't ask that.

Did they predict if a person would randomly just stop participating?

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah. They gave someone a gun and predicted when they weren't going to fire it.

- - - Updated - - -

I am not planning what moves I am going to make a minute from now.

Again, for the umpteenth time, that is not the point. The point is that in a scenario where you were planning to do a move of some sort, in a time of your choosing, as and when you felt the urge, you'd still say that it was initiated consciously at the time you did it. So how could anyone predict when it would happen beforehand, especially which arm (when that choice was not part of the prior planning)?

Not true.

The results were not 100%.

There is a possibility they will guess wrong.

What does that mean?

You can't ignore statistically above chance. Sorry. Science doesn't work that way. You have to explain statistically above chance I'm afraid.

You have a 50% chance to begin with.

And they got many predictions wrong.

What does that mean?

 

[ruby sparks]

You have a 50% chance to begin with.

And they got many predictions wrong.

What does that mean?

Now I haven't a clue what you're even on about. Apart from anything else, I already offered a possible answer for that.

You're just barking up any old tree that you happen to stumble across, even if it's the wrong tree, because you don't like the fact that these experiments, while far from conclusive, are nonetheless at least contra-indicative of conscious control.

 

[untermensche]

You have a 50% chance to begin with.

And they got many predictions wrong.

What does that mean?

Now I haven't a clue what you're on about. Apart from anything else, I already offered a possible answer for that.

It is not startling that when you plan to move your right hand you use a slightly different part of your brain than when you plan to use your left.

This study is a cheap trick.

It tells us nothing about intention. It only shows us the results of intentions.

None of these studies that ask participants to guess about their "inklings" tell us anything about intention.

They are marking time studies.

Because there is no objective model of consciousness. So subjective "inklings" are used instead.

 

[ruby sparks]

You have a 50% chance to begin with.

And they got many predictions wrong.

What does that mean?

Now I haven't a clue what you're on about. Apart from anything else, I already offered a possible answer for that.

It is not startling that when you plan to move your right hand you use a slightly different part of your brain than when you plan to use your left.

This study is a cheap trick.

It tells us nothing about intention. It only shows us the results of intentions.

None of these studies that ask participants to guess about their "inklings" tell us anything about intention.

They are marking time studies.

Because there is no objective model of consciousness. So subjective "inklings" are used instead.

The usual blah blah blah. Whatever.

Ciao.

And next time, at least read up on experiments so that you don't get them basically wrong. Or, if you do, at least admit it.

 

[ruby sparks]

There is still, I think, an interesting and OP-relevant aspect to this everyday phenomenon of 'prior intent' (the thing that another poster oddly said is not a feature of his daily life). Suppose you get in your car with the prior intention of going somewhere, but instead of 'automatically' putting the key in the ignition straight away, you let yourself wait quietly for a while (or perhaps something distracts you or you deliberately ponder something or allow yourself an 'om' moment of pause, or even at a pinch because you have fitted a hypothetical new gadget to yourself which can measure your non-conscious RPs and you are curious) and then insert the key, when you choose to, what effect has the previous prior intent had?

I would not think that many people other than convinced afreewillists would say that because of the prior intent, the subsequent insertion of the key was not, of itself, consciously directed when it happened, if it felt like that (eg when you snapped out of your reverie and consciously realised you had to put the key in to start the car). And yet, in a way, to get back to the OP, you knew in advance what you were going to do, or at least you had entertained (ie experienced consciously) a mental/virtual prediction about it. Iow, in that sense, thought did precede action. The question of whether non-conscious activity nonetheless preceded any particular conscious thought, at any point in time, is another matter of course. If it did, then the answer to the OP might be, yes, predictions about what they might do aside, humans really don't know what they actually are doing (at any given moment). But in principle, thought did still precede action. Which I think takes us beyond what the various lab experiments we have been discussing have looked at, as far as I know, and into deliberated decisions extending into the future, which some say are a different ballpark.

To temporarily use the model suggested earlier that consciousness, and by extension conscious intent, is possibly a matter of 'necessary or useful attention' and is related to encoding a robust/reliable memory, we might venture to suggest that the prior conscious intent to go somewhere in your car encodes a memory (briefly setting aside the question on the other thread about downward causation and provisionally assuming it to be possible) which is then recalled to facilitate (or at least prompt) the key insertion, when it happens.

This might also help to explain or at least be consistent with reasons why you might alternatively insert the key 'absent-mindedly' (ie without any apparent conscious intent) especially if starting your car is a routine action for you, because in that case (which would be different to you 'open-endedly' waiting for the conscious urge) the memory prompt is operating automatically and non-consciously, conscious attention not being needed in that case. We might think of the former case as you getting into a hire car in a foreign country (perhaps with the steering wheel on the opposite side to what you are used to) or a car that you are not familiar with, so that you do have to look for where the key goes.

Amateur ramblings, as ever.

 

[untermensche]

It is not startling that when you plan to move your right hand you use a slightly different part of your brain than when you plan to use your left.

This study is a cheap trick.

It tells us nothing about intention. It only shows us the results of intentions.

None of these studies that ask participants to guess about their "inklings" tell us anything about intention.

They are marking time studies.

Because there is no objective model of consciousness. So subjective "inklings" are used instead.

The usual blah blah blah. Whatever.

Ciao.

And next time, at least read up on experiments so that you don't get them basically wrong. Or, if you do, at least admit it.

Your same old worthless defense of the timing of human guesses about their "inklings".

The "Libet delusion" is wide and deep.

None of these studies, that have no objective understanding of consciousness so they rely on the timing of totally subjective inklings, tell us anything about how a human initiates the movement of their arm.

 

[Subsymbolic]

If thoughts do emerge from brain activity, as the evidence supports, it is physically impossible for thoughts to emerge before sensory input, before propagation, before processing, before memory integration enabling recognition, etc, this being a necessary order of cognitive events, which is brain activity, prior to conscious perception and response. After all, it is a physical process.

That's assuming that prediction of the future only happens at an agent level when all the evidence suggests it's an activity that permeates the brain and, frankly, the body. It's common sense than a content can't travel faster than its vehicle, but that doesn't mean, in a situation where there are regular and reliable correlations, that the brain can't have the appropriate image (for example) in place - based on what has come before - well in advance of the signal arriving. Just look at the phi phenomenon or binocular rivalry to see the brain caught out doing just this. Think of predictive texting on your phone. If you type 'are you coming... and the phone pops up 'to' before you type it, you don't say it's physically impossible for the word to emerge before you have typed it.

I'll say it again. The brain is not a passive observer, it's spent the last few billion years and a lifetime preparing for what happens next and it would be rather surprising if it wasn't better than my apple phone at giving me what I need before it happens. It also makes sense for the default assumption to be that the guess is correct unless told otherwise. Thus the only information the brain needs is how reality diverges from the prediction. This saves computing power and allows the brain to get ahead of the environment (and the signal) in most familiar circumstances.

 

[Subsymbolic]

It is not startling that when you plan to move your right hand you use a slightly different part of your brain than when you plan to use your left.

This study is a cheap trick.

It tells us nothing about intention. It only shows us the results of intentions.

None of these studies that ask participants to guess about their "inklings" tell us anything about intention.

They are marking time studies.

Because there is no objective model of consciousness. So subjective "inklings" are used instead.

The usual blah blah blah. Whatever.

Ciao.

And next time, at least read up on experiments so that you don't get them basically wrong. Or, if you do, at least admit it.

Your same old worthless defense of the timing of human guesses about their "inklings".

The "Libet delusion" is wide and deep.

None of these studies, that have no objective understanding of consciousness so they rely on the timing of totally subjective inklings, tell us anything about how a human initiates the movement of their arm.

How about you respond to my experiment? Because you can't say that about that.

Oh and Dennett. You could have the good grace to admit that you were wrong in traducing Dennett.

Or you can pretend it didn't happen.

 

[ruby sparks]

None of these studies, that have no objective understanding of consciousness so they rely on the timing of totally subjective inklings, tell us anything about how a human initiates the movement of their arm.

I think it's generally agreed by the experts in the various fields that the experiments at least tell us a bit more that some anonymous internet individual like you baldly asserting stuff in an online equivalent of a pub chat because it 'feelz like sumthing', and magic name-dropping (as you like to call it when it's not you doing it) god botherers, dead and alive. So you can decry whatever experiments you like in your stubborn desire to hold on to your own little subjective opinions (and clearly you'll assert almost anything, correct or incorrect, in order to do that, including for example denying that you have such things as prior intentions, ffs) but if you think I'm going to prefer your, may I say sometimes inconsistent and often irrelevant, inklings about what you think is happening over the better-informed and clinically-tested views of those who know a lot more than either of us, you can think again.

The results of the studies are contra-indicative evidence and aren't going to go away just because you don't like them. It would have helped if you'd (a) understood what the set ups and results actually were (instead of getting both wrong) and/or (b) made the objections that are generally agreed to be valid, but you didn't. So, carry on being a dogmatic and ill-informed twit on the internet by all means, and of course don't stop indulging in the double-standard of asking for types of evidence from others that you don't have yourself.

And as for "worthless tricks" it would be a good idea to read up on them before opening your gob and clearly putting your foot in it about the set ups and results.

I mean, it would take me about 15 seconds to go and find a relevant study that does challenge Libet, but why should I? You clearly don't need it, because you just make up your own counter-claims, even when they're irrelevant or damaging to your own position without you realising it beforehand (possibly because of this rare inability of yours to do forward thinking) so why should I spoon-feed you stuff that you don't even need in order to spout off, and have probably never read yet?

Point being, neither of us, you or I, can lay claim to know the answers, because nobody can. Perhaps, just for a change, you should consider at least being a bit less religious about the answers you devoutly believe in and more open-minded about the possibilities, however unpalatable to you, in the interests of genuine sceptical enquiry.

 

[untermensche]

Your same old worthless defense of the timing of human guesses about their "inklings".

The "Libet delusion" is wide and deep.

None of these studies, that have no objective understanding of consciousness so they rely on the timing of totally subjective inklings, tell us anything about how a human initiates the movement of their arm.

How about you respond to my experiment? Because you can't say that about that.

Oh and Dennett. You could have the good grace to admit that you were wrong in traducing Dennett.

Or you can pretend it didn't happen.

Your experiment? Like I have that burned into my memory.

Dennett is worthless on this and I showed his smug ignorance.

He dismissed quantum effects as an answer with the flick of his wrist. And decades later he has no working model for the effect of consciousness using either chemical or electrical phenomena.

He has no explanation for consciousness and no more understanding of it than anyone on the street with one.

He's a decent guy who's ideas have yielded nothing in this area. Perhaps he made contributions to his field, philosophy.

 

[untermensche]

None of these studies, that have no objective understanding of consciousness so they rely on the timing of totally subjective inklings, tell us anything about how a human initiates the movement of their arm.

I think it's generally agreed by the experts in the various fields that the experiments at least tell us a bit more that some anonymous internet individual like you baldly asserting stuff

I'm asserting things you can't deal with.

It is called shared delusion.

It is called wanting to know the answer so much you pretend to know it based on the timing of inklings. Not different from any religious delusion.

It's called having a prejudice and using any shred of evidence to claim it is true.

None of these studies examine spontaneous movement.

And none of them have a working model of consciousness.

Consciousness in these experiments is always subjective guessing about inklings.

But pulling somebody from their religion and delusions is like pulling a dog from a fresh kill.

And as for "worthless tricks"

That's all that experiment is.

It is guessing based on stereotypical activity that has nothing to do with the initiation of that activity.

A person makes a preliminary subconscious decision because they know a decision is needed imminently.

But the consciousness ultimately makes the final call.

In a worthless real life situation there is no reason for the consciousness to override a decision so it goes along with it.

But they are wrong sometimes. Those may be the times the consciousness overrides a preliminary and tentative subconscious decision.

 

[Speakpigeon]

There is still, I think, an interesting and OP-relevant aspect to this everyday phenomenon of 'prior intent' (the thing that another poster oddly said is not a feature of his daily life). Suppose you get in your car with the prior intention of going somewhere, but instead of 'automatically' putting the key in the ignition straight away, you let yourself wait quietly for a while (or perhaps something distracts you or you deliberately ponder something or allow yourself an 'om' moment of pause, or even at a pinch because you have fitted a hypothetical new gadget to yourself which can measure your non-conscious RPs and you are curious) and then insert the key, when you choose to, what effect has the previous prior intent had?

I would not think that many people other than convinced afreewillists would say that because of the prior intent, the subsequent insertion of the key was not, of itself, consciously directed when it happened, if it felt like that (eg when you snapped out of your reverie and consciously realised you had to put the key in to start the car). And yet, in a way, to get back to the OP, you knew in advance what you were going to do, or at least you had entertained (ie experienced consciously) a mental/virtual prediction about it. Iow, in that sense, thought did precede action. The question of whether non-conscious activity nonetheless preceded any particular conscious thought, at any point in time, is another matter of course. If it did, then the answer to the OP might be, yes, predictions about what they might do aside, humans really don't know what they actually are doing (at any given moment). But in principle, thought did still precede action. Which I think takes us beyond what the various lab experiments we have been discussing have looked at, as far as I know, and into deliberated decisions extending into the future, which some say are a different ballpark.

To temporarily use the model suggested earlier that consciousness, and by extension conscious intent, is possibly a matter of 'necessary or useful attention' and is related to encoding a robust/reliable memory, we might venture to suggest that the prior conscious intent to go somewhere in your car encodes a memory (briefly setting aside the question on the other thread about downward causation and provisionally assuming it to be possible) which is then recalled to facilitate (or at least prompt) the key insertion, when it happens.

This might also help to explain or at least be consistent with reasons why you might alternatively insert the key 'absent-mindedly' (ie without any apparent conscious intent) especially if starting your car is a routine action for you, because in that case (which would be different to you 'open-endedly' waiting for the conscious urge) the memory prompt is operating automatically and non-consciously, conscious attention not being needed in that case. We might think of the former case as you getting into a hire car in a foreign country (perhaps with the steering wheel on the opposite side to what you are used to) or a car that you are not familiar with, so that you do have to look for where the key goes.

Amateur ramblings, as ever.

I have some rambling, too. I was just thinking that we have different modalities to effect movement. Between completely involuntary movement like heart beat (at least for ordinary people like me) and the many supposedly voluntary actions we do everyday, there is a very wide range and room for distinctions. Clearly, most of our actions in the course of a day, like the keyboard typing I'm doing right now, the adding of a spoon of cacao in a mug of hot water I did this morning, the shuffling of my feet whenever sitting, the moving my legs when I walk, etc. are somewhere in between. I would broadly say that we somehow supervise these actions without really deciding of them. So, I would hope that there's at least some part of the whole process effecting these actions that is indeed voluntary, but I'm also convinced that most of these processes is not consciously decided. If I were to try and make sure I consciously choose every key I press, this post would take at least a few hours to compose and I not sure I would even have the time to pay attention to what is going around me or even think about what to do. Not doable, and the same applies to walking, adding spoons of cacao, etc. So, there's no doubt in my mind that a lot of what we do, even that which is not strictly speaking involuntary, like keyboard typing, is largely controlled by unconscious processes. Now, that leaves some bits that have to be voluntary, if at least we are to know anything at all about what we're doing.

So, my problem with the lab experiments done so far by various people is that I'm not convinced they themselves know what they're doing.

There are several real difficulties in my view. I can see at least three difficulties, all of them to do with getting the subject reliably tell what happened within their own consciousness, so to speak.

So one is to tell when exactly they've decided.

A second difficulty is for the subject to tell exactly what decision it was.

The third one is a bit more subtle: how much they've really consciously decided.

Looking at how I do things myself, even right now typing on that beautiful keyboard I think I have decided to buy with my own money, I'm not sure I could answer those questions.

Right, I think I've decided to stop rambling.

But who am I to know?
EB

 

[untermensche]

Suppose you are running through a dense forest and must make constant adjustments of your body based on visual and tactile information.

Does anybody who has ever done something like this really think it could be done reflexively?

You use anticipation and memory and judgement and experience all at once and move smoothly not hitting anything.

The reflexes are spastic jerks.

 

[ruby sparks]

Suppose you are a robot vacuum cleaner moving through a room with furniture in it and must make constant adjustments of your body based on visual and tactile information in order to move smoothly not hitting anything.

Or suppose you are a fish swimming through a coral forest. Or a kelp forest, where the obstacles themselves are moving around also.

 

[ruby sparks]

Right, I think I've decided to stop rambling.

Your rambling is at least as good as mine if not better.

But who am I to know?

Knowing that we don't know is a respectable position, even if slightly contradictory.

 

[DBT]

It doesn't matter. You miss the point. The point being that the subject's selection is predicted based on the brain activity patterns displayed on the screen before the subject makes any movement.

It is just a stupid trick.

It tells you absolutely nothing about intention except that when you intend to move your right hand you create different activity than when you intend to move your left.

If we want to predict intention we allow subjects to randomly refuse to participate and see if that can be predicted.

There is no trick. The decision to be made is predicted on the basis of brain pattern activity displayed on the fMRI screen before the subject indicates his or her choice.

 

[DBT]

If thoughts do emerge from brain activity, as the evidence supports, it is physically impossible for thoughts to emerge before sensory input, before propagation, before processing, before memory integration enabling recognition, etc, this being a necessary order of cognitive events, which is brain activity, prior to conscious perception and response. After all, it is a physical process.

That's assuming that prediction of the future only happens at an agent level when all the evidence suggests it's an activity that permeates the brain and, frankly, the body. It's common sense than a content can't travel faster than its vehicle, but that doesn't mean, in a situation where there are regular and reliable correlations, that the brain can't have the appropriate image (for example) in place - based on what has come before - well in advance of the signal arriving. Just look at the phi phenomenon or binocular rivalry to see the brain caught out doing just this. Think of predictive texting on your phone. If you type 'are you coming... and the phone pops up 'to' before you type it, you don't say it's physically impossible for the word to emerge before you have typed it.

I'll say it again. The brain is not a passive observer, it's spent the last few billion years and a lifetime preparing for what happens next and it would be rather surprising if it wasn't better than my apple phone at giving me what I need before it happens. It also makes sense for the default assumption to be that the guess is correct unless told otherwise. Thus the only information the brain needs is how reality diverges from the prediction. This saves computing power and allows the brain to get ahead of the environment (and the signal) in most familiar circumstances.

The brain is not necessarily a passive observer, but nevertheless acts upon information acquired by its senses in relation to memory function, integration enabling recognition, developing likes and dislikes, needs, wants, etc, and seeking out or avoiding what is related to these drivers, and of course, fresh inputs acting upon the system.....

 

[Speakpigeon]

Suppose you are a robot vacuum cleaner moving through a room with furniture in it

Right.

I just realised why my place is always clean. Not a speck!
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

The decision to be made is predicted on the basis of brain pattern activity displayed on the fMRI screen before the subject indicates his or her choice.

You might know better than me but I'm not sure if the predictions were made in real time before the move in this or that experiment (eg the John-Dylan Haynes one), or whether they were reviewed/analysed later (by persons who did not know when the move was going to come up in the data or which move). Either way it wouldn't really matter. But I did once see a cool video of a 'real time' experiment. Basically, the subjects sat in front of a table with electrodes attached to their scalps and there were 2 buttons on a box on the table. Either button on the box was primed to light up when non-conscious activity in certain brain areas reached a certain level or matched a certain pattern (the machine having prior to the trials learned the subject's brain patterns prior to button presses) and the game was to see if the subject could press the button before it lit up. And apparently they couldn't:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmI7NnMqwLQ&vl=en[/YOUTUBE]

The experiment only measured 'when' not 'which button' and as such I don't know why there were two buttons. Maybe the same box was intended to be used for a different 'which button' experiment also.



I do honestly think that there are a number of important caveats to all these experiments, that they are inconclusive, for a variety of reasons, and that maybe future experiments will shed more light.

I would however say that all the issues that I have seen raised against the suggestion that such experiments undermine the idea of either (a) conscious control or (b) free will are of the 'pointing out possible flaws' sort, or the 'don't necessarily conclude this or that' sort. I don't think I've seen an alternative or better 'conscious control' model, either proposed or tested. As far as I can tell, the evidence for that side of the debate tends to be anecdotal, subjective and/or 'common sense'. I stand to be corrected on that and will gladly look at any clinical experiment.