I was very lucky to have a very tolerant family, who taught me not to disdain the uneducated, the beggars or the poor thieves, since they are just unlucky persons, struggling to survive somehow. However, this belief has evolved somehow in my head and without being aware, the idea of determinism took shape in my thoughts, but in a latent form. This thought was triggered in my conscious during a geography class, when some students from a low rated high school passed next to our window, listening to loud music, singing and swearing. The teacher and my colleagues were extremely intrigued by their impudent behavior and classified them as "animals". That second, watching all the group discussing, a thought stroke me: what if we were born in the same medium with a substantial lack of education and culture? would we be any better? After just a week, a friend told me about chaos theory, about the butterfly effect, which states that a system evolves according to its initial conditions and we are conforming to a statistical process. Then I realized that human beings must also be caught in this chaos, and all their actions are results of their interactions with their peers. So, a person is like a particle in a gas. Its momentum and its direction is due to its mass/charge/etc (that's the equivalent of the inherited genetic material) and the infinite knocks with the other particles.
This is how I caught interest on this subject. I became so enthusiastic of this new way of perceiving life( actually, enthusiastic is not the good word, since that theory was nothing more than a painful truth), that I made an essay for the common application based on it, task that made me ponder more on this concept.
What is written with red is the series of events that, like a domino effect shaped this idea in my mind, a series of events upon which, as you can see, I had no control, so the fact that I became interested was just...luck.
When I was assigned to make an essay for the English course about the ideals of persons, I presented my ideas( I found that this theory was actually pretty old, so I can't say it was my idea) to the class. What I did actually was to emphasize that one doesn't have any control upon his life, so that everyone is caught in a statistical game and that all his decisions are an output of the brain, who had processed the passed experiences. I was expecting the class to dislike my theory, since I was basically telling them that free will is a mith , but I was very disappointed when they, with the teacher ahead.... laughed. Honestly,their mocking reaction made me think I was stupid and that I made a fundamental logical mistake. I could't refute all their arguments like" if I want to run, I run, if I want to move my hand, I move it, I do what I want". For a month I simply dropped this subject out of my mind( as a chain reaction to their reaction!) Anyway, when searching for a math book in the library, I saw the words" Free Will" on the front cover of the " Scientific American" magazine. You can predict easily that I grabbed it instantly. The article stated that free will doesn't exist and ironically, I felt genuine joy reading this( you know the " I told you so" satisfaction). But the things were actually a lot" worse" than I had expected...
In 1980s, the Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet( picture) made an experiment in which several subjects were asked to move their wrists at random moments, while he monitored the brain and muscles activity. What was surprising is that the brain activity that caused the movements started more than a half of second before the subjects consciously decided to move their wrist! That means that the urge to move was kindled in the subconscious regions of our brain, upon which we can't exert any control and not in our consciousness. It means that we are not the initiators of our actions. Our brain is like a computer receiving inputs in the form of exterior stimuli and initiates responses that we are simply aware of, but not in control of! You can now infer the connection between this process and the theory of determinism.
in this image, the W moment is the moment when the subjects think they intended to move, M moment is the moment when subjects think the movement started and moving onset is the moment when the movement ACTUALLY started. The delay between M moment and movement onset is mysterious. Why do people feel moving before they move? This fact seems to support the idea that movement is not controlled by humans, and that they are merely observers of their acting. The most interesting line is the readiness potential( which measures the tension in the muscles) that begins to rise before the subjects decide consciously to move.
There is a neuronal disease that brings evidence for the determinism theory: the alien hand syndrome. Persons suffering of the alien hand syndrome have no control upon the movement of one of their arms. It is observed that they suffered a unilateral trauma in the region of the brain that causes awareness of movement. What is interesting is that, except for the moving awareness in the case of one arm, both arms are still controlled through the same mechanisms! However, the hand which movement is not consciously perceived, seems to move freely. This is way scientists believe that the conscious awareness creates the illusion of free will, which is a consequence of the introspection illusion.
I'll insist on the introspection illusion. Because of this phenomenon, people are biased to believe that they are smarter, less conventional, in a greater degree of control than the other people are. This impression is...spurious. For example, football fans watching the players fill that they are influencing somehow the team performance by being there ( by merely hoping for victory). This shows that every persons believes strongly (because of his consciousness) in his liberty of action and tends to neglect the free will of others.
This fact seems to be depressing. Our body moves "like having its own mind", but we can't see that unless we are ...sick! We say about animals that they are not like us. They aren't aware of their existence. I always wondered how can they move if they are not conscious that they exist. I mean, how is an animal feeling. Now I have the answer. Not the conscious sets the moving. The consciousness is something separate, something unique in nature. In this view, we are observers of our behavior, we have the gift of perceiving our life. "I think, therefore I am" Rene Decartes
Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.
If we accept the that we don't have free will, some imminent questions are to be raised. Why should we punish people who did something bad? Why shouldn't I stay and do nothing if I can't control my life anyway?
This questions are answered by Sam Harris, the author of " The Illusion of Free Will" He says that the decision to do nothing is still an uncontrolled reaction to the past occurrences( like discovering that you do not have free will).Also he says that punishment is still necessary,since"it led people to behave better than they otherwise would.
However, there might still be hope for the free will. During his experiment, Libet observed that a conscious process occur before the movement takes place. It is believed that the awareness of intention correlates with the choice of which movement will be made, rather than simply that a movement of some kind will be made. This suggests that the conscious experience of control may be linked to the brain process that selects how we will use a particular movement to achieve a general goal. For example, the experience that precedes turning on the light might be linked to the decision about which hand to use to reach for the switch. Although the results of Libet cast doubt on whether conscious processes cause actions, these data remain consistent with the idea that conscious processes could still exert some effect over actions by modifying the brain processes already under way. The fact that conscious awareness of intention precedes movement by a couple of hundred milliseconds means that a person could still inhibit certain actions from being made. Libet apparently replaced free will with free won't.
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/51/13919.full.pdf+html?sid=875c253b-71bc-42be-912a-487f3e1f3edf
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/34/9141.full.pdf+html?sid=875c253b-71bc-42be-912a-487f3e1f3edf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-free-will-an-illusion
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22tier.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
This is how I caught interest on this subject. I became so enthusiastic of this new way of perceiving life( actually, enthusiastic is not the good word, since that theory was nothing more than a painful truth), that I made an essay for the common application based on it, task that made me ponder more on this concept.
What is written with red is the series of events that, like a domino effect shaped this idea in my mind, a series of events upon which, as you can see, I had no control, so the fact that I became interested was just...luck.
When I was assigned to make an essay for the English course about the ideals of persons, I presented my ideas( I found that this theory was actually pretty old, so I can't say it was my idea) to the class. What I did actually was to emphasize that one doesn't have any control upon his life, so that everyone is caught in a statistical game and that all his decisions are an output of the brain, who had processed the passed experiences. I was expecting the class to dislike my theory, since I was basically telling them that free will is a mith , but I was very disappointed when they, with the teacher ahead.... laughed. Honestly,their mocking reaction made me think I was stupid and that I made a fundamental logical mistake. I could't refute all their arguments like" if I want to run, I run, if I want to move my hand, I move it, I do what I want". For a month I simply dropped this subject out of my mind( as a chain reaction to their reaction!) Anyway, when searching for a math book in the library, I saw the words" Free Will" on the front cover of the " Scientific American" magazine. You can predict easily that I grabbed it instantly. The article stated that free will doesn't exist and ironically, I felt genuine joy reading this( you know the " I told you so" satisfaction). But the things were actually a lot" worse" than I had expected...
" Related experiments showed that neurostimulation could affect which hands people move, even though the experience of free will was intact. Ammon and Gandevia found that it was possible to influence which hand people move by stimulating frontal regions that are involved in movement planning usingtranscranial magnetic stimulation in the left or right hemisphere of the brain.
Right-handed people would normally choose to move their right hand 60% of the time, but when the right hemisphere was stimulated they would instead choose their left hand 80% of the time (recall that the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere for the right). Despite the external influence on their decision-making, the subjects continued to report that they believed their choice of hand had been made freely. In a follow-up experiment, Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues found similar results, but also noted that the transcranial magnetic stimulation must occur within 200 milliseconds, consistent with the time-course derived from the Libet experiment" Wikipedia
There is a neuronal disease that brings evidence for the determinism theory: the alien hand syndrome. Persons suffering of the alien hand syndrome have no control upon the movement of one of their arms. It is observed that they suffered a unilateral trauma in the region of the brain that causes awareness of movement. What is interesting is that, except for the moving awareness in the case of one arm, both arms are still controlled through the same mechanisms! However, the hand which movement is not consciously perceived, seems to move freely. This is way scientists believe that the conscious awareness creates the illusion of free will, which is a consequence of the introspection illusion.
I'll insist on the introspection illusion. Because of this phenomenon, people are biased to believe that they are smarter, less conventional, in a greater degree of control than the other people are. This impression is...spurious. For example, football fans watching the players fill that they are influencing somehow the team performance by being there ( by merely hoping for victory). This shows that every persons believes strongly (because of his consciousness) in his liberty of action and tends to neglect the free will of others.
This fact seems to be depressing. Our body moves "like having its own mind", but we can't see that unless we are ...sick! We say about animals that they are not like us. They aren't aware of their existence. I always wondered how can they move if they are not conscious that they exist. I mean, how is an animal feeling. Now I have the answer. Not the conscious sets the moving. The consciousness is something separate, something unique in nature. In this view, we are observers of our behavior, we have the gift of perceiving our life. "I think, therefore I am" Rene Decartes
Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.
That is hardly a new thought. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, as Einstein paraphrased it, that “a human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants.”Einstein, among others, found that a comforting idea. “This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals,” he said.
Albert Einstein also believed in determinism and was not satisfied of Heisenberg incertitude principle. According to the Heisenberg Principle, the moment at which a measurement takes place is the moment at which the randomness lying at the heart of quantum reality expresses itself.[3] Up to that point, everything is fine. Amplitudes change in a completely predictable, and more importantly, calculable way. The observer changes the state of what is being observed. Outcomes can be predicted according to governing probabilities, but the actual outcome cannot be known in advance.This was something Einstein could not live with. Einstein, as a determinist, felt that the world is a structured and rigid web where effects follows cause and all things should be predictable, given the right information. "God does not play dies" He said
If we accept the that we don't have free will, some imminent questions are to be raised. Why should we punish people who did something bad? Why shouldn't I stay and do nothing if I can't control my life anyway?
This questions are answered by Sam Harris, the author of " The Illusion of Free Will" He says that the decision to do nothing is still an uncontrolled reaction to the past occurrences( like discovering that you do not have free will).Also he says that punishment is still necessary,since"it led people to behave better than they otherwise would.
However, there might still be hope for the free will. During his experiment, Libet observed that a conscious process occur before the movement takes place. It is believed that the awareness of intention correlates with the choice of which movement will be made, rather than simply that a movement of some kind will be made. This suggests that the conscious experience of control may be linked to the brain process that selects how we will use a particular movement to achieve a general goal. For example, the experience that precedes turning on the light might be linked to the decision about which hand to use to reach for the switch. Although the results of Libet cast doubt on whether conscious processes cause actions, these data remain consistent with the idea that conscious processes could still exert some effect over actions by modifying the brain processes already under way. The fact that conscious awareness of intention precedes movement by a couple of hundred milliseconds means that a person could still inhibit certain actions from being made. Libet apparently replaced free will with free won't.
The dorsal fronto-median cortex (dFMC), located in the center of the brain behind the forehead, becomes active when we inhibit an action, according to the authors of a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard think this may explain why some people are less adept at restraining their impulses.
“The capacity to withhold an action that we have prepared but reconsidered is an important distinction between intelligent and impulsive behavior,” said Brass, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and of Ghent University. This could have significant neuroethical implications, the authors state in their paper, since the inability to restrain impulses has been linked to antisocial and criminal behavior.
The frontal lobes have long been recognized as the seat of judgment, foresight, planning and other distinctly human abilities. Damage to this area of the brain can produce a striking loss of impulse control, resulting in inappropriate, belligerent or even aggressive behavior. For example, one man with a tumor impinging on his frontal lobes suddenly began visiting prostitutes and making inappropriate sexual advances toward his stepdaughter. When the tumor was removed his behavior immediately returned to normal.
Brass and Haggard, of University College London, detected the impulse control area of the frontal lobes by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They studied the images of 15 right-handed people who were told to press a button on a keyboard at times they chose, and to occasionally hold back or veto their decision to press the button. The decision to refrain from pressing the button consistently produced activity in the dFMC—activity that never appeared when they followed through on their decision to press the button.( taken from Dana foundation Website)
So, what's the conclusion after all? I think the determinism theory has some good points, but there is a big flaw in it: the conscious process that can alter the the normal outputs that would come. In quantum theory is also stated that the observer interfere with the experiment. After all, by our conscious process, that's what we are, observers. Humans have the power to imagine and veto the impulses. Even if we don't really initiate our actions, at least we have a freedom to do them if we want to.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_willhttp://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/51/13919.full.pdf+html?sid=875c253b-71bc-42be-912a-487f3e1f3edf
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/27/34/9141.full.pdf+html?sid=875c253b-71bc-42be-912a-487f3e1f3edf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-free-will-an-illusion
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22tier.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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