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

[ruby sparks]

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

Well it's certainly uncontaminated by cheese.

 

[ruby sparks]

Here, for those with the time and inclination to read through it, is a fairly long paper outlining a number of potential flaws with free will experiments:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2942748/

When I read through it, I did wrinkle my forehead quite a few times at some of the things he said, because they seemed a bit odd to me, and above all it seemed to me a good illustration of what I said above, that those who dispute either (a) the 'anti conscious control' conclusions or (b) the 'anti free will' conclusions drawn from such experiments tend to focus on possible flaws rather than presenting an alternative or better model, for either (a) or (b), which itself has been clinically tested, rather than relying on common sense or anecdote.

The author, a neuroscientist, does at least outline possible future experiments which he feels might be better.

My impression was that the author is very pro free will, although trying to be neutral. As such, his broad conclusion is, 'so far, not convinced' (that we don't have it).

I don't mean to conflate conscious control and free will. I know they're related, but separate. My tuppenceworth is that I can see how we might have some of the former (possibly via 'downward causation') but I can't see how we could have the latter. I note that the OP is more about the former (conscious control) although that said, it might actually be said to be about conscious knowledge (of what is happening or about to happen) which is itself arguably a slightly different issue to control over it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

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 understand that the machine here detects the subject's decision to initiate the physical movement of pushing a button, not his "logical" decision of which button to press.

The machine would still beat the subject to it if it merely detected the initial movement of the subject's hand.

Having two buttons here is misleading in this respect. You may come to think the machine detects the logical decision.

It's not even clear on any occasion that the buzz really starts before the subject makes any physical movement.

So, not terribly convincing.
EB

 

[untermensche]

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.

The robot gets hopelessly stuck constantly. Heads right for situations that trap it over and over. And it bumps into everything. Real clever! The idea is to avoid the predator.

It has no foresight or memory or judgement.

Even the most expensive rovers on mars need a human consciousness to make sure they don't do something stupid.

 

[untermensche]

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.

It is nothing but a stupid parlor trick.

It tells us absolutely nothing about how any activity arises.

Consciousness in the experiment is subjective guesses about inklings. Real scientific!

Totally worthless nonsense.

 

[untermensche]

If the animal did not make some use of the consciousness it would not exist.

It exists because it is a sophisticated decision making device that helps with survival.

First it just helped with navigation. Avoid predators and catch prey, find food.

After hundreds of millions of years and sheer chance it developed the ability to make decisions using ideas.

Some even use it to claim it can't do anything.

If it can't act it has no reason to exist.

If some mechanisms below consciousness make all final decisions there is absolutely no reason for consciousness, awareness, or thinking to exist.

The people that claim the consciousness makes no decisions in the absence of any objective understanding of consciousness and only based on absurd studies that are nothing but cheap tricks don't have a clue what they are talking about.

 

[ruby sparks]

The robot gets hopelessly stuck constantly. Heads right for situations that trap it over and over. And it bumps into everything. Real clever!

Fuck me but you cannot even seem to get one thing right. There are robot vacuum cleaners that now use 360 degree optical sensors to avoid obstacles, not bump into them.

And of course current technology was not even the point. But you seem to be adept at missing the point, as so often.

 

[ruby sparks]

The machine would still beat the subject to it if it merely detected the initial movement of the subject's hand.

Possibly. But it's not waiting for movement. You can see in the video that in many cases it lights up before he has moved. It acts on brain activity that precedes a move, a pattern of brain activity that it has learned beforehand precedes the subject moving.

 

[untermensche]

The robot gets hopelessly stuck constantly. Heads right for situations that trap it over and over. And it bumps into everything. Real clever!

Fuck me but you cannot even seem to get one thing right. There are robot vacuum cleaners that now use 360 degree optical sensors to avoid obstacles, not bump into them.

And of course current technology was not even the point. But you seem to be adept at missing the point, as so often.

Can the vacuum run for it's life?

Can is care if it does a good job?

 

[Speakpigeon]

The machine would still beat the subject to it if it merely detected the initial movement of the subject's hand.

Possibly. But it's not waiting for movement. You can see in the video that in many cases it lights up before he has moved. It acts on brain activity that precedes a move, a pattern of brain activity that it has learned beforehand precedes the subject moving.

Yes, sure, but I suspect the machine detects the brain state that's going to initiate the movement of the hand or arm, which may come sooner or later than the decision as to which button to press. I'm not sure we could tell precisely enough when we decide.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

Yes, sure, but I suspect the machine detects the brain state that's going to initiate the movement of the hand or arm, which may come sooner or later than the decision as to which button to press. I'm not sure we could tell precisely enough when we decide.
EB

Well the Haynes experiments claimed to be able to predict (better than chance) which hand by reading left and right hemisphere activity separately. But that does not seem to be part of the set up in the video above and I'm not sure if Haynes predictions were done in real time or by analysis after.

Here's another cool video. It doesn't really add anything to our discussion, being off topic, but it's a fun watch. I just came across it while googling the other one.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQNi5sAwuc[/YOUTUBE]

 

[DBT]

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.

It's not only the experiments. Consider the process of cognition from the perspective of physics.....vision/sight, for example, cannot physically precede information input (wavelength, shape,shade,etc) via the eyes. Responding to what is seen cannot physically precede perception, reflex response may bypass thought, etc, etc.

That sensory input and processing precedes thought and response cannot be otherwise in terms of physics and physical processes, never mind the experiments.

 

[DBT]

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.

It is nothing but a stupid parlor trick.

It tells us absolutely nothing about how any activity arises.

Consciousness in the experiment is subjective guesses about inklings. Real scientific!

Totally worthless nonsense.

Nope, the evidence supports the proposition that it is the brain that forming and generting conscious activity.

Consciousness is a form of brain activity.

Consciousness, sensory experience and all its related thoughts and feelings, is a form of brain activity based on input from the senses, processed and represented in conscious form.

The cited experiments, technically still in the early stages, can only reflect the necessity of the physical process beginning with input and culminating in awareness.

 

[untermensche]

A lot of what we "see" is only what we think we see. Color of course is the perfect example. Color is only something that exists in minds. It is not out in the world. And the color we see can be altered by the mind.

Anticipation can also cause you to see things that are not there.

Physics isn't involved in the things that occur in the mind due to anticipation.

Vision is not nearly as mechanical as you imply.

 

[untermensche]

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.

It is nothing but a stupid parlor trick.

It tells us absolutely nothing about how any activity arises.

Consciousness in the experiment is subjective guesses about inklings. Real scientific!

Totally worthless nonsense.

Nope, the evidence supports the proposition that it is the brain that forming and generting conscious activity.

This is a mindless mantra.

An incredible decision making device has evolved. Consciousness.

Yes the brain generates this device but is a willing and wanting slave to it's feedback.

That is why the device is there. To make decisions and inform the brain of them.

That is why the brain creates a visual experience for the consciousness. So the brain can get feedback.

Your delusions remove any purpose for consciousness. Yet it is there and robust.

Your "ideas" are dismissed with the wave of the hand.

 

[ruby sparks]

It's not only the experiments. Consider the process of cognition from the perspective of physics.....vision/sight, for example, cannot physically precede information input (wavelength, shape,shade,etc) via the eyes. Responding to what is seen cannot physically precede perception, reflex response may bypass thought, etc, etc.

That sensory input and processing precedes thought and response cannot be otherwise in terms of physics and physical processes, never mind the experiments.

Hm. Caveat: anticipation, sometimes accompanied by mental imagery.

So if you drop a raw egg onto the floor while cooking an omelette, I believe the way it works is that your brain anticipates the smash before it happens. The actual smash may of course act as confirmation information after. Whether there is time, in that scenario, for mental imagery to be consciously-experienced or not I don't know, but if you dropped the egg from the top of a 20-storey building I'd say there was enough time in that case.

Perhaps you allowed for such 'internal' processes but just didn't explicitly mention them in your post.

This sort of thing, which in other, non-accidental or other than merely reactive scenarios, might be called 'forward (or indeed backward) planning by running virtual imagery' (aka exercising our imagination) is, I think, a fascinating human capacity, and arguably one not very well addressed in Libet-type experiments. That said, I don't think I've yet heard a good case for an alternative model which doesn't in the final analysis run aground on much the same essential issue, namely that no matter what mental imagery or virtual forward planning takes place, it would be hard to get around the suggestion that conscious awareness of something as it is being done is nonetheless possibly preceded by non-conscious activity.

In other words, as I opined earlier, my thinking this morning that I am going to drive to the beach this afternoon may, since it is arguably just a 'might or might not' until I enact it, still end up with a decision to put the key in the car ignition in a Libet-type situation. I'm not entirely sure that makes sense. For one thing it is splitting events up into moments in a Zeno sort of way and of course the hare does overtake the tortoise even if it's hard to see how in the paradox.

In some ways, it does not seem common-sensical for us to have evolved a capacity if it is just a non-causal epiphenomenon (with the supposed homunculus just eating virtual popcorn while watching it all unfold 'on the screen') even if this is still theoretically possible, on the basis of the experience being a byproduct, a neutral trait or indeed a detrimental trait that has yet to inflict itself on our survival chances.

My best provisional guess is that consciousness is causal and does play a (non-free will) role, but that we routinely way overestimate the control and causality involved, vain little control-freak homunculi that we 'are'. That said, even that 'illusion' could itself be useful. Imagine what it would feel like if you didn't think you had any conscious control. How would that affect your navigating the world? If consciousness is a non-causal epiphenomenon, the answer might be 'oddly though it might seem, not at all', but we don't know. I would doubt it though. Would there be personality disorders or depersonalisation disorders if a robust sense of self didn't matter? Chicken and egg sort of question, I think. One to ask a p-zombie, if you ever meet one.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I've said it before, but not for a while: for most people a belief in freewill is actually a belief that their beliefs (and other such intentional states) are causal. It's only from that context that things like akrasia make sense.

 

[DBT]

It's not only the experiments. Consider the process of cognition from the perspective of physics.....vision/sight, for example, cannot physically precede information input (wavelength, shape,shade,etc) via the eyes. Responding to what is seen cannot physically precede perception, reflex response may bypass thought, etc, etc.

That sensory input and processing precedes thought and response cannot be otherwise in terms of physics and physical processes, never mind the experiments.

Hm. Caveat: anticipation, sometimes accompanied by mental imagery.

So if you drop a raw egg onto the floor while cooking an omelette, I believe the way it works is that your brain anticipates the smash before it happens. The actual smash may of course act as confirmation information after. Whether there is time, in that scenario, for mental imagery to be consciously-experienced or not I don't know, but if you dropped the egg from the top of a 20-storey building I'd say there was enough time in that case.

But we understand the consequences of dropping an egg onto a hard surface, so the moment that the egg slips out of your hand you are aware of it, memory enables anticipation, recognition and understanding. Without memory function, none of it is possible.....being physical, all of these events follow an order of progression. The eggs slips from your hand, you become aware of it, you follow its trajectory, perhaps try to grab it, miss and it impacts and smashes.

Perhaps you allowed for such 'internal' processes but just didn't explicitly mention them in your post.

I'm only saying that internal processes are physical and must always follow the event, the egg slipping from your fingers, etc, and the internal processes themselves, being physical, must also have a progression, albeit measured in microseconds and not being linear, the brain being a parallel rather that a linear information processor.

 

[DBT]

Nope, the evidence supports the proposition that it is the brain that forming and generting conscious activity.

This is a mindless mantra.

An incredible decision making device has evolved. Consciousness.

Yes the brain generates this device but is a willing and wanting slave to it's feedback.

That is why the device is there. To make decisions and inform the brain of them.

That is why the brain creates a visual experience for the consciousness. So the brain can get feedback.

Your delusions remove any purpose for consciousness. Yet it is there and robust.

Your "ideas" are dismissed with the wave of the hand.

There is no consciousness without brain activity. There is no decision making without brain activity. Face the facts.

 

[untermensche]

Nope, the evidence supports the proposition that it is the brain that forming and generting conscious activity.

This is a mindless mantra.

An incredible decision making device has evolved. Consciousness.

Yes the brain generates this device but is a willing and wanting slave to it's feedback.

That is why the device is there. To make decisions and inform the brain of them.

That is why the brain creates a visual experience for the consciousness. So the brain can get feedback.

Your delusions remove any purpose for consciousness. Yet it is there and robust.

Your "ideas" are dismissed with the wave of the hand.

There is no consciousness without brain activity. There is no decision making without brain activity. Face the facts.

Consciousness is a subsection of brain activity.

And as brain activity it makes decisions based on the objects of the mind, not some kind of programming. Ideas have power. Literally.

That is how humans have done what they have done. With ideas and the conscious will.

A dumb brain might build the same nest over and over.