(Admittedly, I have been swamped in revision for the last few weeks so I didn't want to rush a blog and put something out there I didn't like. So, this week's blog is one of the essay's I submitted for my philosophy module. soz!)
The existence of free will questions whether we possess true freedom in our seemingly conscious decisions. In this essay, I will be discussing how Science has not disproved its existence. The focus will be largely on Benjamin Libet’s experiments, and the incorrect conclusions he draws from them.
One may define free will to mean that you are able to make an informed decision willingly. This definition is entwined with our sense of responsibility for our actions. When you perceive your actions as voluntary and conscious, you form an incentive to act in a way that doesn’t harm others. This was clearly exhibited in a study, (Bauemeister et. al. 2009) where students presented with the idea that free will doesn’t exist, were witnessed to behave more aggressively compared to others. This practically showed us that as our confidence of free will weakens so does our sense of accountability.
Libet, a neurobiologist, conducted an experiment which mapped conscious experiences and aligned them with quantifiable brain activity. Subjects were instructed to flex their wrist at any time. They simultaneously had to pinpoint the moment of conscious realisation of their intention to flex on a Libet clock. The muscle “bursts” initiating movement were monitored by readings from the wrist. The brain activity was measured by EEG readings from the scalp. Libet saw what other studies had shown previously; that there was increasing brain activity preceding intentional movements- called the Readiness Potential “RP”.
Libet detected RPs starting 550ms before the muscle burst. Yet, the participants first became aware of their intention to flex 220ms before the muscle burst. Libet interpreted these results to mean that the subject’s decision to flex was not a conscious one as they became aware of it approximately 200ms after the RP was detected. According to Libet, the participants did not possess free will as the decision to flex was not a conscious one.
Libet did not believe in free will, but rather “free won’t”. He argued that a 100ms time frame makes it possible to veto an intention as soon as we become conscious of it. He stated that we cannot willingly choose our intentions, but we are able to not fulfil them. To prove this, Libet asked participants to prepare to flex at a given time but to not follow through with it. Using EEG readings, he observed a rise in activity before the designated time, which fell around 150ms. Libet took this to be the power of vetoing an intention. This experiment is flawed. Preparing to flex at a given time is not the same as intending to flex at a given time. Libet’s experiment was criticised again when (Haggard and Magno 2010) discovered the average time from the “go-signal” and the muscle burst was 231ms. Proving Libet was incorrect when testifying that the proximal intention arises at around 550ms. Therefore, what happens in the brain preceding the wrist movement in Libet’s experiment is only a fraction along the way to a proximal decision to flex a wrist. This disproves Libet’s idea that we make our decisions unconsciously. Now that I have outlined Libet’s experiment. I will bring forth my arguments to demonstrate that science has not, and probably will never, disprove free will.
Libet understood the RP to mean that an unconscious decision was already made. He failed to consider that this increased brain activity might not have a direct relationship with the conscious feeling of willing at all. They could just be early brain events detected, which influence you to lean one way or another. The RP’s could also signify random/non-random biases detected by the EEG. If the RP is not causally related to the activation of movement or execution, then judgements about them could not show conscious willing playing a role in movement. The RP can instead be the process that potentially leads to a decision later- might not be the actual decision itself but preceding whether or not that decision occurs.
Libet was not thorough in his experiment. He did not investigate whether brain activity can occur without a subsequent corresponding action. This situation would have shown a rise in brain activity, but not in the wrist. Libet only made records of electrical activity when muscle activity was present, so if decisions were made after the rise they might have been made consciously, they would have matched with the standard consciousness reports the participants provided. This undermines Libet’s argument that conscious willing followed the movement.
Libet’s generalisation is far-fetched and not supportable. Participants were instructed to flex without consciously thinking about when to do it. Therefore, if Libet wanted to study how conscious reasoning plays a role in forming decisions, he should not have instructed the participants to not think about their actions. They did not truly experience free will as they were following a command. This time lag of 200ms does not disprove free will. Instead, it demonstrates how efficient our brain is that is prepares ahead of time. Similar to other bodily functions- almost a sort of feed-forward mechanism.
Science cannot disprove free will as free will varies from one person to another. It would be highly improbable for a sole experiment to defy all these definitions of free will. The arbitrary and insignificant movement of flexing your wrist cannot be generalised to all other conscious decisions. More complex and consequential choices are debated more. Without free will, humans would be similar as we would all respond to the same stimuli in a comparable way. Libet oversimplifies free will, his study does not englobe all the diverse choices we have to make in our lives. Admittedly, there are a variety of external factors that influence our decisions, such as environment, experience and according to Sir Francis Galton even our genetics. Yet this does not weaken the feeling of liberty we sense when making choices, therefore not undermining free will.
Science has also brought forward arguments in favour of free will. Martin Heisenberg discovered that fruit flies respond to stimuli by actively initiating their response- thus proving the existence of free will. Furthermore, patients with basal ganglia dysfunction lose the ability to consciously control their movements. Libet’s arguments would suggest that these patients have lost free will, but have they? To compare physical movement with free will is flawed. (Sirigu et. al 2004) and (Desmurget et al. 2009) repeated Libet’s experiments using patients with lesions in the parietal cortex. It was concluded that their awareness of their intention coincided when the motor action itself was happening. Once again, does this mean that the patients do not have free will?
Humans do not experientially identify with neurophysiology. The neurophysiological activity in our brain is simply an abstraction particularly when related to our conscious experience. We are concretely grounded by our hopes, fears and our volitional states. Therefore, we identify with these, not with action potentials firing off inside our head. The presumed identity between neurophysiology and sense of willing is only an abstract – not a pragmatic- one.
Our entire existence is a felt one; the notion that this phenomenality ascends from something material, outside of our consciousness is a theoretic interference, not a lived reality; is just conceptual explanations, not something sensed. If neurophysiology is the image of mindful willing, not its birthplace—then we must possess free will; for our choices are determined by states we subconsciously regard as self-expression. Metaphysical materialism does not contradict free will. Science cannot disprove our feelings; our felt experiences are far more valid.
To conclude, science has not disproved free will. Libet drew bold assumptions from his study and then applied them too broadly. He gathered his results in a biased way to support his hypothesis- by only collecting EEG data when there was a flex in the wrist. To establish a true correlation between brain activity and motor movement, he should have looked at brain activity during different points. Libet oversimplifies free will to a series of inconsequential hand movements. Our brain’s efficiency should not be underestimated, it is possible that our decision to flex is registered beforehand and the decision is planned- almost similar to quantum borrowing.
We recognise ourselves as free and conscious agents, so why should a slight time lag extinguish the immeasurable concept of free will? We should not discount the legitimacy of our own, personal and subjective experiences, therefore if we feel free, we should consider that we are. Quantum mechanics has demonstrated that the world is not straightforwardly deterministic. Hofstadter mentions that searching for freewill on the sub-second neural level is parallel to looking for a traffic jam inside of a car. It is necessary to zoom out to a higher order of organisation in order to locate voluntary action. Something which Libet failed to do. Science cannot disprove all the different definitions of free will as consciousness saturates this universe, different entities are capable of interacting with it at different levels.
- sham x
also here is my poem of the week (guess this is becoming a regular thing now?)
Time to be slow:
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall,
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best as you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
and your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
time will come good ;
and you will find your feet
again in fresh pastures of promises,
where the air will be kind
and blushed with beginning .
- John O' Donohue
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