The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158223   Message #3748513
Posted By: Bill D
04-Nov-15 - 10:52 AM
Thread Name: BS: The Pope in America
Subject: RE: BS: The Pope in America
DMcG.... I wrote only the 1st third or so of my paper, describing the issue and the flaws in the standard attempts to explain why it 'feels like' we have free will. If I had finished it, I would no doubt have been continuously revising it as quantum physics and brain chemistry...etc. were advanced in the last 40 years.
   The point is that it 'may' be that science can actually describe how choice actually happens, and at the same time show that certain categories are free.



"For example one experiment asks people.to choose between say blue and green and we can now determine how a subject will decide by monitoring brain.activity and hence obtain their decision before they have decided. That's why they concluded free will appears to be a construct of the conscious mind."

However..IF the very elements that make the mind not only conscious, but also self-aware, deliberative and reflective/contemplative can be shown to be related to the same phenomenon that makes photons passing thru a grating behave randomly, then it becomes possible to theoretically describe how the very randomness becomes, by definition, subject to interruption by ...ummm... it's own processes. (much like the theory of Hawking radiation contradicting the idea that nothing can escape black holes.)
   There have been recent studies in how memory is actually stored and accessed in the brain that may provide additional evidence that 'choosing' among memories is not necessarily deterministic.

[You can see that whatever form this idea takes needs more than a few paragraphs to develop]

"It is rare for a single experiment to be a game changer so.this can't either. But the evidence is building that science may disprove free will at that fundamental level."

So... it will be interesting to see just how we can define fundamental level as more experiments are done.