The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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SteveKlinko
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The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

Post by SteveKlinko »

When the topic of Volition is discussed the Libet Experiment will always need to be addressed. Libet first conducted this Experiment 50 years ago and other researchers have conducted many more variations of it in the following years. The Philosophical implications of the Experiment have been hotly debated ever since. It seemed like there was Measurable Brain Activity (the Readiness Potential) 200 or more mSec before the subject even knew they wanted to move their finger. At first, the conclusion was that Free Will is not a Conscious Choice, but is embedded in the deterministic Physics of the Neurons. Many other researchers have debunked this result for various technical reasons.

I think there may have been a more fundamental flaw in the Experiment, due to a basic Brain Operation that was not taken into account at that time. The basic unaccounted for Operation was that a Brain can execute a Program, which can perform at Sub-Conscious Levels. A Brain Program, as we will call it, is not anything like a Computer Program in how it is stored or how it is executed. A Brain Program must be stored in the Neural Plasticity of the Brain, similar to how the Information of Knowledge is stored. Anytime we are learning some new sequence of movements we will need to be slow and deliberate, because we have to think about each movement. After a while we won't need to think as much about each step, and after a longer time we might be able to perform that sequence without much thought at all. Our Brains can be configured to execute Movement Sequences or other Activities using a Brain Program. This is how we can drive for a time period and then think back realizing we were not aware of driving over that time period. This is how Musicians play their instruments while playing memorized music. Musicians certainly cannot think about each note, when they are playing a fast Sequence. Playing Music is obviously accomplished, in part, by executing Brain Programs.

Libet did not take into account that the subjects were executing a Brain Program while at the same time deciding when to move their fingers. This particular Brain Program is related to what I will call the Pounce Program that seems to become a Brain Program early in the life of Humans and Animals. An Animal will creep up to it's prey and when within striking distance still wait for the right moment to Pounce. The Animal is executing a Brain Program that is generating the urge to, Go Pounce Now, over and over again. The Program gives the Animal the urge to Pounce, but the Animal can resist the urge until the right moment. That moment will be a Conscious Decision of Volition to Pounce. The Pounce Moment will be driven by all kinds of Sensory input factors, but especially the Visual Experience for movement of the Prey. Humans have incorporated such Pounce Programs too. These Programs probably developed through early childhood game playing. Now think about your Experiences when you have Fly Swatter in hand and are ready to Swat (Pounce) a Fly. We can call this Brain Program the Swat Program. You will feel internal Urges to Swat, which you hold back until you make a Conscious Decision to Swat. So if a Readiness Potential was Measured during this Swatting activity, there would certainly be Readiness Potential increases before the Conscious Volition to actually Swat. But this is only because the Swat Program was running in your Brain generating these Readiness Potentials.

Now back to the Libet Experiment. It is probably easy for the Brain to adapt the Swat Program for other activities that are similar to Swatting. Randomly deciding when to move your finger, as in the Libet Experiment, probably used the Swat Program right from the start. In fact, the subjects commented that they felt an Urge to move their fingers and were able to hold the Urge off until they actually wanted to move their fingers. The Readiness Potential was being generated by a Brain Program and not by Volition or Free Will. This is the basic flaw in the Experiment. The Experiment was Measuring the Readiness Potential generated by a Brain Program. It had little to do with Volition or Free Will. Libet was aware that the subjects were getting Urges to move their fingers before they actually moved them, but he did not recognize that they were in fact executing Brain Programs. I think that Brain Programs will always interfere with any kind of Experiment like this, because we probably use Brain Programs for most of the things we do. It was actually never reasonable to expect that mSec timed Random Finger Movements have anything to do with Volition or Free Will. These kinds of Experiments are obviously more in the category of Neuro-Mechanistic timing studies.

Volition is always linked to Free Will in Philosophical discussions. I will attempt to uncouple Volition from Free Will, and develop a way of thinking about the concept of Volition that does not have the Philosophical baggage of Free Will, although I will make a quick comment at the end about Free Will. With the Perspective of the Inter Mind Model (IMM), we can ask the question: Is Volition a process in the Conscious Mind (CM) or is it simply Neural Activity of the right kind in the Physical Mind (PM)?

If an Animal is going to Seek out the Good and Avoid the Bad, as described in a previous section, then the Animal is going to have to generate Movement Commands to its Muscles to Move toward the Good and away from the Bad. But the Good and the Bad are Conscious Experiences in the CM, so the Desire and the Volition to Seek and Avoid must originate in the CM. The PM does not Experience the Good or the Bad, so it is not Coherent to think that the Desire or the Volition to Seek and Avoid are rooted in the PM. The Desire and the Volition to Seek and Avoid must Logically originate in the CM. The CM will Experience Desire to move toward the Good or away from the Bad. It is more proper to say that these are Conscious Desires and Conscious Volitions. The Inter Mind will Detect these Conscious Desires and, through Conscious Volition, will generate the appropriate movements or execute the appropriate Brain Program to satisfy the Conscious Desires.

We can also explore a higher level Conscious Desire that only a Human Mind could have. Let's consider the Desire for Knowledge. This Desire is clearly a Conscious Experience in the Conscious Mind. This Conscious Desire will be satisfied over the time period of a Human Lifetime. It is a slow acting Conscious Desire that gets fulfilled by incremental acts of Conscious Volition to get the new Knowledge. It is easy to understand that Conscious Volition will always be the mechanism for satisfying Conscious Desires, even higher level Conscious Desires.

We might expect that there will be some Neural Activity associated with these Conscious Desires. That Neural Activity will be the Neural Correlates of the Conscious Desires. But Neural Activity is not a Consciously Experienced Desire. The Experience of a Desire must be in the Conscious Mind. So if there is Neural Activity in the Brain, but there is no Experienced Conscious Desire, then there is no Desire at all.

The Human Brain cannot Desire anything, because the Human Brain is a Physical thing, and Desire happens as a Conscious Experience in a CM. Since the Human Brain cannot have Desires we can conclude that it has no Volition capability to satisfy Desires. Clearly, Volition is a purely Conscious Phenomenon that has to flow from the CM back through the Inter Mind and to the PM. We can abstract this further and say, that since the Human Brain cannot exercise Volition, that it also has no Free Will. If there is any Free Will, it is in the CM and not in the PM. Since we know that Computers have no Connections to an Inter Mind or to a CM, it is obvious that there are no Volition inputs to Computers as they are constructed today. Without Consciousness there is no Volition. This statement must still apply even if you Believe that Consciousness "Is In The Neurons" or "Emerges From The Neurons", because there has to be some implementation of the functionality of Consciousness, somewhere, somehow.
Impenitent
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Re: The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

Post by Impenitent »

some human brains are even less equipped ...

animal "brain programs" unfortunately take the place of "higher functions" in many human brains (by training or design) ...

moral judgements about good or bad which are applied extraneously to objects of hedonism are misnomers ...

animal "brain programs" that direct actions to the pleasurable and direct actions to avoid the opposite are not necessarily functions of the conscious mind... could they be and could conscious actions develop the existing "brain programs" be even more pronounced? arguably...

pineal glands holding the ghost in the machine...

-Imp
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Terrapin Station
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Re: The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

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SteveKlinko wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 3:52 pm The Human Brain cannot Desire anything, because the Human Brain is a Physical thing,
Oy vey.
RogerSH
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Re: The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

Post by RogerSH »

SteveKlinko wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 3:52 pm This is the basic flaw in the Experiment. The Experiment was Measuring the Readiness Potential generated by a Brain Program. It had little to do with Volition or Free Will.

Volition is always linked to Free Will in Philosophical discussions. I will attempt to uncouple Volition from Free Will, and develop a way of thinking about the concept of Volition that does not have the Philosophical baggage of Free Will, although I will make a quick comment at the end about Free Will. With the Perspective of the Inter Mind Model (IMM), we can ask the question: Is Volition a process in the Conscious Mind (CM) or is it simply Neural Activity of the right kind in the Physical Mind (PM)?

I clearly need to read your IMM paper sometime to make real sense of this, but a couple of quick responses…
(1) I read once in New Scientist (ref. lost, sorry) that later researchers had looked through Libet’s tapes and found there were many spikes of readiness potential before the one that always preceded the recorded conscious decision. This would fit with your account quite well. My interpretation was that every time the subject’s wandering attention returned to the question “now?” there was a spike. Only when that mental question was followed by a mental “yes” was the spike followed by a recorded decision. (In any case, this was a study of Free Whim, not Free Will, since all deliberation about the decision was prohibited.)
(2) I take it you are saying that volition is one of the inputs to will formation, so if volition requires consciousness, so does free will. Makes sense to me. The philosopher Gary Watson has highlighted the difference between volition and motivation. An addict may feel an irresistible urge to drink alcohol or whatever (motivation) while wishing he didn’t (volition). Although he may be conscious of those two inputs “fighting it out”, you could say that motivation doesn’t actually need consciousness, because that sort of urge can drive actions in unconscious creatures (insects maybe?), whereas volition does.
SteveKlinko
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Re: The Human Brain Is Incapable Of Volition Or Free Will

Post by SteveKlinko »

RogerSH wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:59 pm
SteveKlinko wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 3:52 pm This is the basic flaw in the Experiment. The Experiment was Measuring the Readiness Potential generated by a Brain Program. It had little to do with Volition or Free Will.

Volition is always linked to Free Will in Philosophical discussions. I will attempt to uncouple Volition from Free Will, and develop a way of thinking about the concept of Volition that does not have the Philosophical baggage of Free Will, although I will make a quick comment at the end about Free Will. With the Perspective of the Inter Mind Model (IMM), we can ask the question: Is Volition a process in the Conscious Mind (CM) or is it simply Neural Activity of the right kind in the Physical Mind (PM)?

I clearly need to read your IMM paper sometime to make real sense of this, but a couple of quick responses…
(1) I read once in New Scientist (ref. lost, sorry) that later researchers had looked through Libet’s tapes and found there were many spikes of readiness potential before the one that always preceded the recorded conscious decision. This would fit with your account quite well. My interpretation was that every time the subject’s wandering attention returned to the question “now?” there was a spike. Only when that mental question was followed by a mental “yes” was the spike followed by a recorded decision. (In any case, this was a study of Free Whim, not Free Will, since all deliberation about the decision was prohibited.)
(2) I take it you are saying that volition is one of the inputs to will formation, so if volition requires consciousness, so does free will. Makes sense to me. The philosopher Gary Watson has highlighted the difference between volition and motivation. An addict may feel an irresistible urge to drink alcohol or whatever (motivation) while wishing he didn’t (volition). Although he may be conscious of those two inputs “fighting it out”, you could say that motivation doesn’t actually need consciousness, because that sort of urge can drive actions in unconscious creatures (insects maybe?), whereas volition does.
Just some thoughts: I usually use the word Desire, which I think will always be a Conscious Experience. Maybe Insects don't actually have Desires. An Urge seems like it has to be a Conscious Experience. I'm not sure if a Motivation can be Unconscious. I think I would use the word Reflex to describe an Unconscious Motivation.
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