Is "Free Will" Just The Result Of Background Noise In The Brain?

[Perspicuo]

Free Will May Just Be the Brain's 'Background Noise,' Scientists Say
http://www.livescience.com/46411-free-will-is-background-noise.html

It's a question that has plagued philosophers and scientists for thousands of years: Is free will an illusion?

Now, a new study suggests that free will may arise from a hidden signal buried in the "background noise" of chaotic electrical activity in the brain, and that this activity occurs almost a second before people consciously decide to do something.

Though "purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment," study co-author Jesse Bengson, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, wrote in an email to Live Science. "This random firing, or noise, may even be the carrier upon which our consciousness rides, in the same way that radio static is used to carry a radio station."

 

[Kharakov]

Chaos farmers? That's an old concept (and even QM hints at it). Consciousness selects options from the primordial chaos.

 

[Juma]

Free Will May Just Be the Brain's 'Background Noise,' Scientists Say
http://www.livescience.com/46411-free-will-is-background-noise.html

It's a question that has plagued philosophers and scientists for thousands of years: Is free will an illusion?

Now, a new study suggests that free will may arise from a hidden signal buried in the "background noise" of chaotic electrical activity in the brain, and that this activity occurs almost a second before people consciously decide to do something.

Though "purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise within any given moment," study co-author Jesse Bengson, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, wrote in an email to Live Science. "This random firing, or noise, may even be the carrier upon which our consciousness rides, in the same way that radio static is used to carry a radio station."

A very well ordered signal as DMA transfers in a computer would look like noise if you dont know what you are looking at...

 

[Juma]

"
Though "purposeful intentions, desires and goals drive our decisions in a linear cause-and-effect kind of way, our finding shows that our decisions are also influenced by neural noise "

Either that signal is noise, and thus not does not depend on what the person wants, or it carries information about what the person wants. In neither case it opens for whatever "free will" is supposed to mean.

 

[DBT]

Chaos farmers? That's an old concept (and even QM hints at it). Consciousness selects options from the primordial chaos.

How does consciousness itself make choices when consciousness itself is formed from prior information processing? Information input interacting with memory, propagation, readiness potential, etc, then conscious representation in the form of perception, feelings, thoughts and decisions.

 

[rousseau]

I've said for a while that 'free will' is a useless, man-made concept that has no direct correlation with human experience. It's existence says that we are trying to define whether or not we are free, which is a question without an objective answer. We could both learn of the same phenomena as mentioned in the original post and one person could say it points to free will, and another could say it doesn't.

What we can say is that 'humans have human experience'. Within human experience is a feeling of freedom, so we are for all practical purposes free. Until you feel like you are nothing but an unthinking automaton with no conscious choice, you are free.

 

[Perspicuo]

I agree, Rousseau. Free will means a decision that came from neurologically nowhere and for no actual reason. It's a useless concept. It will probably be around for some time in "science journalism" for reasons of news marketing. It's a term that stirs passions for and against, thus raising "view" ticks.

 

[Togo]

Isn't this just the same old Libet experiment, only looking at electrical wave propagation rather than tracing individual fibre bundles?

It's interesting in that electrical wave propagation has largely been ignored as random background, and now appears to be following a regular pattern, but it's hard to tell given the style of the article.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Isn't this just the same old Libet experiment, only looking at electrical wave propagation rather than tracing individual fibre bundles?

It's interesting in that electrical wave propagation has largely been ignored as random background, and now appears to be following a regular pattern, but it's hard to tell given the style of the article.

Well most of our genetic code was waste... well until they determined that it wasn't.

 

[blastula]

Randomness does not equate to free will.

 

[Togo]

If the 'noise' is following a pattern based on decision making, then it's not random. That's the interesting bit. The link to free will is a bit more dubious I think.

 

[fromderinside]

Interposing noise (random neural activity associated with all things neural) will have no effect on the convinced.