How can brain activity precede conscious intent?

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In summary, Benjamin Libet and Bertram Feinstein found that there is a half second delay between the cortical stimulation and the reported sensation. There are also pre-conscious signals associated with a person's chosen motor task that precede the conscious intent to act.
  • #141
loseyourname said:
That's a compulsion, not an impulse. Subtle difference.

Yes, but the salient difference isn't made explicit by your definition. Consc. awareness is not enough -- consc approval is also required.

I made a decision to take any given particular action.

the problem of defining FW is to 'unpack' it, not just substitute synonyms.


There's nothing willed about it, either.

How do you know? Can you demonstrate that FW is not just a particular complex combination of deterministic and undetermined events and processes?
Do you insist, along with MF that it must involve a ghost ?
 
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  • #142
I am determined to inform those who give a difference that reality does not.
As for sub/conscious decisions being determined the subconscious is programmed beforehand both by experience and conscious deliberation and reasoning.
 
  • #143
Tournesol said:
Can you demonstrate that FW is not just a particular complex combination of deterministic and undetermined events and processes?
Do you insist, along with MF that it must involve a ghost ?
The determinist can demonstrate that the "feeling of free will" which many humans claim to possesses is easily explainable on the basis of pure determinism, with no need to invoke any metaphysical concepts of libertarian free will. This then becomes a scientific "hypothesis", based on accepted understanding of how the world works, which explains the human feeling of free will. It is accepted scientific practice that scientific hypotheses are not proven true, they are only ever proven false.

See, for example : http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/%7Ewegner/pdfs/Wegner&Wheatley1999.pdf

The defender of libertarian free will is also free (no pun intended) to propose an hypothesis of how libertarian free will is supposed to work (ie how the human feeling of free will is explained based on the real existence of some kind of libertarian free will) - but as in the case of the determinist hypothesis, such a libertarian explanation should be based on accepted understanding of how the world works, and be free of metaphysical "sleight of hand" (otherwise it risks being branded as incoherent). Can the libertarian do this?

Best Regards

MF

If one pays attention to the concepts being employed, rather than the words being used, the resolution of this problem is simple (Stuart Burns)
 
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