You don't have Free Will.

- You are running late for work,

- As you are leaving, your elderly next door neighbour is struggling with some shopping bags,

- You are now faced with a decision, a conscious decision you have to make, hence we have 'free will'.

I do appreciate the OP, it isn't a black and white answer as we certainly do spend most of our lives on autopilot. Our subconcious is barraged everyday by the elite- TV, music, all designed to mold us into the sheep masses that we are

We still have free will though IMO, what would be the point in this phycical experience if we were not tested and faced with decisions to make?

All its saying is you don't have full "control" of yourself and in some cases no control over yourself.

Well no crap. addictive behaviors from smoking to skinning human beings for sport falls under that.

Unfortunately making the leap beyond the biological impulses and stimuli into the realms of personal integrity and saying a subliminal message will have you eating your children for lunch is blurring the integral and important line between Who you are/what you are.

There is torture, mind control, and even psychotropics that can make the most wonderful of people turn into complete monsters.

But the fact you are able to make decisions against these stimuli against craving IS free will. you could vary much sum up all the articles in the op's post as Free will* -Your results may vary.

reply to post by NorEaster

And in yet another study, this one by Stefan Bode, his detailed fMRI experiments showed that it was possible to actually decode the outcome of free decisions for several seconds prior to it reaching conscious awareness.

Specifically, he discovered that activity patterns in the anterior frontopolar cortex (BA 10) were temporally the first to carry information related to decision-making, thus making it a prime candidate region for the unconscious generation of free decisions. His study put much of the concern about the integrity of previous experiments to rest.

Another experiment elaborating what you were speaking of.

io9.com...

I don't think it's true we don't have free will. Because if we don't then how can we stop doing bad or foolish things?
Wouldn't we be basically like animals? They don't have free will!
I take what Scientists and researchers say as a pinch of salt. Not everything they say is true!

reply to post by Covertblack


Oh yes, that's the experiment I was looking for. Thanks Covertblack!

For example, a study by John-Dylan Haynes in 2008 showed a similar effect to the one revealed by Libet. After putting participants into an fMRI scanner, he told them to press a button with either their right or left index fingers at their leisure, but that they had to remember the letter that was showing on the screen at the precise moment they were committed to their movement.

The results were shocking. Haynes's data showed that the BP occurred one entire second prior to conscious awareness — and at other times as much as ten seconds.

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain

Abstract

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

reply to post by TheBandit795


Even with a 10s delay. It's still left or right, there's only so many choices one can make at any given time. Yes, most will make the same choice but what bases that decision is Free Will, as each person may have a different view on why they chose what they did but have different reasoning for doing so.

reply to post by TheBandit795


That's like sitting in a boat and looking down through the water at a sunken boat and a sandbar and saying, "Hey, those look like the same shapes and sizes. They must both be boats!" Similarly, an MRI only picks up similar patterns that we interpret as being related to one another, when in reality, they might simply be different thoughts that triggered comparable emotional reactions or conjured similar impressions within us.

Originally posted by Covertblack
reply to post by NorEaster

 

And in yet another study, this one by Stefan Bode, his detailed fMRI experiments showed that it was possible to actually decode the outcome of free decisions for several seconds prior to it reaching conscious awareness.

Specifically, he discovered that activity patterns in the anterior frontopolar cortex (BA 10) were temporally the first to carry information related to decision-making, thus making it a prime candidate region for the unconscious generation of free decisions. His study put much of the concern about the integrity of previous experiments to rest.

Another experiment elaborating what you were speaking of.

io9.com...

What's surprising is the interpretation of the indications by the researchers (as well as the tech press). If you understand that your experience of a decision is delayed (up to 7 seconds) then it becomes clear to you that it was you who made the decision, even if your memory of having made that decision begins after a brief lag time, which your brain/mind survival system uses to process ongoing conscious awareness as experience memory.

Like I said, it's complicated. If you lose your memory completely - including immediate memory - you'd have no conscious awareness at all. This is because you'd have each instant of awareness immediately replaced by the next instant of awareness, with no instant of awareness surviving that replacement. It wouldn't even be a jumble of disconnected impressions as it is when the short term memory is obliterated. In that case, the brain/mind system has the immediate memory function to give it ongoing existence awareness, and even if it's easily scrambled, the "self" can still be experienced.

What you see, feel, smell, taste, hear, and sense happened at least a half second ago. The brain/mind processing system requires at least that much time to configure all incoming data, internally generated data, and compare-contrast recognition/response data before you're allowed to experience it as yet another frame in your life movie. Yes, it's a delay, but for the most part, your survival is better served by a slight delay than by allowing you to experience a completely unprocessed existence progression.

It's too bad that most researchers haven't got the well-rounded perspective it takes to accurately interpret the data they get from their studies.

"Fate cleverly disguises itself as free will." -- Haruki Murakami

Originally posted by NazcaP
"Fate cleverly disguises itself as free will." -- Haruki Murakami

It's called Destiny if you win and Fate if you lose, but it's always declared in retrospect to either rob you of the credit or absolve you of the blame.

reply to post by NorEaster


Upon further review of your postings..... Well I'll be a Monkey's Uncle.... You have this down to a ~T~ I'm just in
/applauds~ I just can't dispute.... I agree 1000% with you. Might not mean much but bravo~

There is a book called Incognito: The secret lives of the brain. By David Eagleman.
And he talks about this very thing and goes into super detail to explain it. A very good read it was so interesting I burned through the book in one afternoon!

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain is a New York Times bestselling[1] non-fiction book by American neuroscientist David Eagleman, who directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action at Baylor College of Medicine.[2] In Incognito, Eagleman contends that most of the operations of the brain are inaccessible to awareness, such that the conscious mind "is like a stowaway on a transatlantic steam ship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot." Incognito remained on the New York Times bestsellers list from 2011 through 2012. It was named a Best Book of 2011 by Amazon,[3] the Boston Globe,[4] and the Houston Chronicle.[5] The book was reviewed as "appealing and persuasive" by the Wall Street Journal[6] and "a shining example of lucid and easy-to-grasp science writing" by The Independent.[7] A starred review from Kirkus described it as "a book that will leave you looking at yourself--and the world--differently."[8]

Originally posted by sulaw
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Upon further review of your postings..... Well I'll be a Monkey's Uncle.... You have this down to a ~T~ I'm just in

/applauds~ I just can't dispute.... I agree 1000% with you. Might not mean much but bravo~

Thanks. I just do what I can, citizen.

Im surprised no one here has mentioned the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Looks as though God does roll the dice. ( sorry Einstein) we do have free will!

I like to think of predetermined events as if they are laid out in a series of paths following a diamond pattern.

Simple Example:
The shape of a diamond where the upper point(D) is the end result and the bottom point(A) is the beginning.
The right point(B) and left point(C) are the free will choices we make getting to the end.

You can expand this diamond into several others making life very complex and impossible to not feel free.

reply to post by TheBandit795


> In other words, we are often not even consciously aware of why we want what we want.

Okay, we may want/desire (and not know why) but when we act its always based on a belief... and all belief, even those which are unexamined, are evidence of free will (albeit one which is unconscious). I maintain that belief determines behavior. If you want to change a behavior you must change your beliefs, and doing this is not always such an easy thing to accomplish.

I'm sure you've read this quote before: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates said that at his trial for heresy. He was on trial for encouraging his students to challenge the accepted beliefs of the time and think for themselves. Kurt Vonnegut asked, "But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?” That is a funny quote, but why is it funny? Because our belief suck. That's why.

The problem is most people don't know what the believe or why? Their beliefs are hidden even from themselves like any other undue influence. So then, a belief is just an influence, but it is one we trust and obey. When other people effect our beliefs they are getting us to accept an alien idea as our own. One we host a meme, it is no longer just a meme, it has become a belief. When we look objectively at our actions (that is, IF we do) then we may see a belief we have that we didn't know we had... at that point we can consciously work to change our beliefs and there by discipline our behavior. In other words, we may be meme machines to a large degree, it does not then follow that we have no free will. When a person is determined to release, let go, and drop their memes (the influences of belief) at that point awareness grows and conscious self-determination flowers.

Having free will requires the courage to question everything, but how many people does this describe? Not many. How about you? Do you live intentionally or are among the masses of people who live conditionally? Where is your focus? What do you give your attention to? What are your beliefs and where did they come from? Are these beliefs valid or are the result of some outside influence? That is the real question.

We have liberty to choose, but that does mean we are free.
Real freedom means we can stop allowing outside influences
to effect the choices we make... or at lease take back our
power from those false authorities.

reply to post by colbe


And on that day, not a single fart was given...

The key word here is " will" The will decides . The choice is to decide or not . Thus you are free to do, only within the law of nature.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by TheBandit795

 

You seem to be suggesting that because 98% of my actions are subconsciously motivated, they do not constitute free will. If they are not free will, then they are against my will, implying that I am to some extent possessed or influenced against my will by an outside force.

The truth is, nothing can force me to do something against my will without making its presence known. And since I don't sense anything that would indicate a foreign influence deliberately guiding my actions, I can safely conclude until further evaluation that I am operating under my own free will. Just because it is subconscious, doesn't mean it is not me. My subconscious is crafted and cultivated by my conscious, which is a real-time manifestation of my free will.

If you can refute this, I'd be interested in hearing it.

AfterInfinity,

You have stated what I've been thinking as I've read through this topic. Star for your statements.

I was thinking that the subconscious, regardless if it is the precursor to actual thought, is still you. The thought, feeling, desire, whatever, has to start somewhere in a person's mind before surfacing into a conscious thought.

Is the subconscious believed to be inferior to the conscious? Is it considered "primitive"? So what, it still comes from you. Semantics and jargon seem to be confusing the subject regarding free will.

Originally posted by colbe
PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION ONE
MAN'S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ARTICLE 3
MAN'S FREEDOM

1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."26


www.vatican.va...

The gift of free will makes sense. Everyone desires true love, God does too.