I wish there were a neuroscience section, or is there? Here is this I've had it open for days but have been sick so just read it. It seems important.

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ ... -free-will

Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Not knowing the background research there, how it is done and on what presuppositions, this immediately crossed my mind:

It seems like they where thinking:
let's monitor the brain
- if we find action potentials which we can correlate to actual movement
...
before or even without action potentials which we correlate to intentional decision-making
then we can infer that there is no intentional decision-making
and thus no free will.

Which in turn - to me - looks like a flawed approach because of the second "assumption" about that correlation being valid is just that - an assumption.

I had noticed the old "brain is fundamental" error myself but thought it got past it. I could be mistaken. I think what they need is to just consider data coming in rather than going out. Sensory data.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I read that link, they think because there is a delayed action in the response, that there is no freewill. Ben Libet came up with the notion that there is no freewill, do to this discovery. and people i think just got stuck in that belief trap. That is just wrong, it is the signature of VR for that to happen, the materialist still think reality is objective and still think they are going to find the keys under that light. Tom does a great job of describing our response time in correlation with the delayed response on some of his videos. Somethings in my exploration of consciousness i get stuck on, freewill is not one of them, of course consciousness is free to choose, it is the only way this model (MBT) could work. And it works for me that way also. Sabby

My point in posting this is that it is current, they are talking about it, and coming to see it like it is just seeming to need to make a couple logical connections.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Honestly Bette, when people start bringing up freewill and try to logically explain why we do not have freewill, it just seems like nonsense to me, i have heard on you tube, and read about this discussion through the years, and still have a hard time accepting these people are serious. It is like they are ridding a hobby horse and think they are going somewhere. I agree with these Darwinian types that Darwin had a good theory, but to try and correlate all of our subjective experiences with that is just incomplete and wrong, and really goes nowhere in my view. Even Einstein got stuck in thinking there had to be an objective cause to consciousnesses. Toms model explains my past and present experiences so well i would be crazy not to think in terms of a subjective reality. I have studied past and current science all of my life, and i will continue to do so by choosing with my freewill. basing this reality on nonphysical information just answers and explains the data much better. Sabby

I was just in a friendly debate about this subject on another forum. It kept me up late really thinking about this...... and I really think I have now shown that the physicalist's notion that freewill is an 'illusion' is total nonsense and self contradictory.Check it out,I'll post my main arguments below:

This is my original argument:

"An illusion is generally meant to be a false perception and something unreal.In the case in question it is referring to a physical brain state that is *somehow* identical to an internal illusion or that an internal illusion supervenes on a physical brain state.Can there be a false brain state? If there is a brain state it is a real one I suppose...(However,any such brainstate is not really equal to the phenomenal experience of will and agency,ownership and sensory binding.Qualia,etc.I can elaborate later)

So what about supervenience? The causality is one way from matter to the phenomenal illusion aspect that matter supposedly supports.You can't have it both ways with materialism,maybe you guys want to bring in substance dualism?.....So this reduces back to identity theory:The (false?)brain state that you guys believe makes up the self has inputs and outputs.If the self/brainstate produces an output (out of presumably other possible outputs) that causes a future brainstate/behavior ultimately resulting in a desired or an undesired outcome,then a 'self' has caused something.Brain-mind identity theory (that supervenience can reduce to)says that the phenomenal experiences of freewill and agency are equal to physical brainstates,so I think that it could be by materialism's own definitions that the self (brain state) is not an illusion and it has limited causal efficacy."


Here's a thought experiment that I modified from the book "The Quantum Brain"

"A thought experiment:It is generally agreed upon that certain experiments in quantum mechanics (which provides a more complete explanation of matter) yield results that are not fully predictable.For instance,in certain experimental set ups it cannot be known which detector will 'click' , it can be set up to be a 50/50 chance.A detector's result is considered to be 'random' .However, true randomness means a causeless cause,which is nonsense.So one can say that nature chooses 'which path' a 'particle' takes.

One can simply commit one intention to act if a 'particle' is found at one detector and another intention to a different act upon the results of the other.Though you can use infinite regress to claim that some prior event in a closed chain of causality caused your decision to set up the experiment,this is washed away by the truly 'indeterminate' act of information creation upon the supposed 'collapse of the wavefunction'.If you later carry out your intention to act upon the result then you have amplified an indeterminate quantum event (no story inside of space-time can explain it) into a macroscale action. This looks like a free act to me......"


Here are some further points:
"Why should some event determined at the big bang match the 'illusory' sense of will at any particular moment? If it is an illusion then nature should not care.And like I said an illusion (internal) should have no ability to affect brain matter if we're consistent....So there's no reason for nature to evolve or naturally select such a glucose wasting brain function.An organism needs only to respond to it's environment in the rightway,reflexes will do just fine for this,no need for consciousness or illusions of agency and will...."

http://forum.obe4u.com/index.php?topic=1061.0

Could you post a link to one of these videos? I'd love to watch it.

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"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them"
George Orwell

AA, Ted or Bette or someone else with more data at their disposal could i am sure. I will look in the meantime. Sabby

Much appreciated :-)

_________________
________________

"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them"
George Orwell

The TMI Keynote Speaker video(s) have a good reference.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

When it comes to free will, I simply just love Toms "decision space" and free will. The example about the toddler in the back seat is such a good example on what space we can make decisions within, and how growth widens our possibilites and our free will.

Agreed. Also, I like the fact that if we didn't have free will we would just be like characters in a book, playing out a pre-written script with no opportunity to learn.

__
AA

_________________
________________

"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them"
George Orwell