Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will | MyScienceAcademy

,,, historically speaking, philosophers have had plenty to say on the matter. Their ruminations have given rise to such considerations as cosmological determinism (the notion that everything proceeds over the course of time in a predictable way, making free will impossible), indeterminism (the idea that the universe and our actions within it are random, also making free will impossible), and cosmological libertarianism/compatibilism (the suggestion that free will is logically compatible with deterministic views of the universe).

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As the early results of scientific brain experiments are showing, our minds appear to be making decisions before we’re actually aware of them — and at times by a significant degree. It’s a disturbing observation that has led some neuroscientists to conclude that we’re less in control of our choices than we think — at least as far as some basic movements and tasks are concerned.
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German scientists Hans Helmut Kornhuber and Lüder Deecke discovered a phenomenon they dubbed “bereitschaftspotential” (BP) — a term that translates to “readiness potential.” Their discovery, that the brain enters into a special state immediately prior to conscious awareness, set off an entirely new subfield.

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Needless to say it was a discovery that greatly upset the scientific community who, since the days of Freud, had (mostly) adopted a strictly deterministic view of human decision making. Most scientists casually ignored it.

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More recently, neuroscientists have used more advanced technologies to study this phenomenon, namely fMRIs and implanted electrodes. But if anything, these new experiments show the BP effect is even more pronounced than previously thought.

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“At some point, things that are predetermined are admitted into consciousness,” he told Nature, suggesting that the conscious will might be added on to a decision at a later stage.

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But not everyone agrees with the conclusions of these findings. Free will, the skeptics argue, is far from debunked,,,[t]he jury, it would appear, is still out on the question of free will. While the neuroscientists are clearly revealing some important insights into human thinking and decision making, more work needs to be done to make it more convincing.

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Moreover, there’s also the whole issue of how we’re supposed to reconcile these findings with our day-to-day lives. Assuming we don’t have free will, what does that say about the human condition? And what about taking responsibility for our actions?

Daniel Dennett has recently tried to rescue free will from the dustbin of history, saying that there’s still some elbow room for human agency,,,

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Indeed, Sam Harris has made a compelling case that we don’t have it, but that it’s not a problem. Moreover, he argues that the ongoing belief in free will needs to come to an end:

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But as Dennett correctly points out, this is an issue that’s far from being an open-and-shut case. Advocates of the “free will as illusion” perspective are still going to have to improve upon their experimental methods, while also addressing the work of philosophers, evolutionary biologists — and even quantum physicists.


Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will | MyScienceAcademy