free will revisited

[Guest guest]

This was a recent news article about a research finding that I think

will be of interest to the majority of advaitin readers - this is a

topic that has been discussed at length in this forum of course.

 

[The actual article is in Nature Neuroscience May 2008 and is titled

" Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.

The 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. " ]

 

I reproduce the news article below which makes for easy and

nontechnical reading.

 

Pranams to all

 

Shyam

 

************************************

 

So is free will really just an illusion?

 

What does it mean to be human, to be in control of one's own mind?

 

What is the nature of consciousness, the mysterious property of

self-awareness that we all have and yet which no scientist understands?

 

Is there any such thing as free will, or are our minds at the mercy of

some unknown force?

 

These are the fundamental questions that have perplexed philosophers

and, increasingly, scientists for centuries.

 

Until recently they seemed utterly unfathomable; after all, how do you

test for something like free will in the laboratory?

 

But now science is coming up with some fascinating - and deeply

uncomfortable - answers.

 

This week, for instance, Professor John-Dylan Haynes and colleagues at

the Max Planck Institute in Germany report the findings of an

extraordinary experiment which seems to show that " free will " - the

most cherished tenet of humanity, which decrees that Man has total

control of his own actions - may, in fact, be little more than an

illusion.

 

For in their experiment, the scientists found that we may not be

making conscious choices at all.

 

Rather, our subconscious minds may be dictating our actions, long

before we realise.

 

It is a troubling suggestion. As Prof Haynes says: " The impression

that we are freely able to choose between different possible courses

of action is fundamental to our mental health. "

 

If we are not in control after all, then that makes humans little more

than automatons.

 

In his experiment, volunteers were asked to view a stream of letters

on a computer screen and told, at some point, of their choosing, to

press a button either with their left or right index finger - and

remember the letter that was on the screen when they did so.

 

The volunteers were also connected to brain-scanning MRI machines

which were able to monitor and analyse brain patterns.

 

These " mind-reading " scanners could recognise when the brain had

decided on a course of action.

 

To the researchers' astonishment, it turned out that the volunteers'

brains would reach a decision about pressing one of the buttons

several seconds before the volunteers actually thought they had made

up their minds.

 

The implications are hugely significant, because the experiment

suggests that what we think of as a " conscious decision " may, in fact,

be no such thing.

 

The traditional " folk science " picture of the mind has our " conscious

self " as a little man sitting in our heads, pushing buttons and

pulling levers, filing " thoughts " , receiving messages from eyes and

ears and making our muscles move.

 

What Prof Haynes's experiment seems to show is that we need a new

picture; instead of that little man pushing and pulling levers, he is

merely a passive observer, lazing back in his chair and watching it

all happen.

 

It is as though what we are actually aware of is no more than a film

show, and the decision-making is made purely unconsciously.

 

It is a disturbing picture, because it reinforces the view that we are

mere machines, pieces of biological clockwork that have no more free

will than a Swiss watch.

 

This sounds counter to common sense, but the more you think about it

the more it is clear that much of what we do is done on " autopilot "

and that free will is rarely necessary.

 

If you regularly drive to work, for instance, at the end of your

commute tomorrow try to remember the details of your journey.

 

The chances are you will not be able recall more than the basics. When

top tennis players are asked to think, consciously, about every stroke

and every movement, their game falls to pieces.

 

Studies of elite sportsmen show that at the top of their game they are

performing in a sort of semi-conscious fugue, purely on autopilot.

 

The " will " , if there is any, comes during the training process, not

during the match.

 

Of course, if we really do not have free will, this opens a can of

worms about human morality.

 

If the brain is a machine, whose decisions are entirely out of our

conscious control, then can a criminal be held responsible for his

actions?

 

This is a dangerous road to go down. As Prof Haynes admits: " It would

lead to no one being held responsible for anything. "

 

But this isn't the first time science has given a worrying insight

into the workings of our brains.

 

Earlier this year, Nature magazine reported an extraordinary

experiment in mind-reading technology.

 

No stage magic, smoke or mirrors here - just the clever use of

brain-scanning machines and computers to pinpoint and identify actual

thoughts as they arise in the brain.

 

The scientists, led by Dr Jack Gallant of Berkeley University in

California, again used MRI scanners to monitor brain activity when

volunteers were shown various black and white photographs of everyday

scenes - a house and garden, various countryside views and so on.

 

The scanner and the computer it was attached to first had to " learn "

how the brain reacted to thousands of images - what electrical

patterns arose when the volunteer was looking at a picture of, say, a

house or a car.

 

The volunteer was then shown photographs and the " mind-reading system "

had to work out, from the patterns of electrical activity detected in

the brain, what the subject was looking at.

 

Astonishingly, nine times out of ten the machine was able to work out

what the person was looking at.

 

As the authors freely admit, the way is now open to a general

mind-reading machine, " perhaps even to access the visual content of

purely mental phenomena, such as dreams and imagery " .

 

If we can read minds, and even dreams, and prove that free will is a

nonsense, then what does that say about the mystery of our minds?

 

In fact, the human brain, for all this, remains by far the most

mysterious object known to science.

 

It is still completely unknown how 3lb of wet jelly, plus tiny

electrical currents powered by the energy we release from our food,

can give rise to consciousness. But it does.

 

Few modern people believe that the brain is pervaded by some sort of

mysterious " soul " ; but how the neurones and synapses of the mind can

generate subjective experiences of colour, smell, hate, fear and love

is an utter mystery.

 

In fact, many scientists believe it is the greatest mystery of all.

 

But unless we want to believe in " souls " or " auras " , we must believe

that the brain is a machine - a very complicated machine, but a

machine nonetheless.

 

And that means its workings must, in principle, be deducible, that we

can predict its every move, as this freewill experiment seems to show.

 

Does that mean we will one day be able to calculate what powers love,

creates artistic masterpieces, sows awe, and experiences both great

sorrow and utter joy?

 

Maybe one day science will have an explanation for all this, but one

suspects that even after the questions of the atoms and quarks, the

planets and galaxies are finally answered, the deep puzzle of what

exactly is going on in our heads will remain forever unsolved.

 

And perhaps that's the way it should be.