new research suggests that our idea of 'conscience choice' might not play out like we think it does on the short-scale, and hints that free will might be nothing more than a cruel, cruel trick our brains play on us. In other words, we're not actually making decisions, we're just telling ourselves we did.

The new study was performed by neuroscientists from Yale University, and only applies to choices made over short periods of time (we're talking a few seconds here). But they found evidence that people aren't actually making split-second decisions before an action happens, even though they think they are ...

Wikipedia wrote:One significant finding of modern studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Researchers have found delays of about half a second (discussed in sections below). With contemporary brain scanning technology, other scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice.

Clark et al (2014) wrote:Free to Punish: A Motivated Account of Free Will Belief

Belief in free will is a pervasive phenomenon that has important consequences for prosocial actions and punitive judgments, but little research has investigated why free will beliefs are so widespread. Across 5 studies using experimental, survey, and archival data and multiple measures of free will belief, we tested the hypothesis that a key factor promoting belief in free will is a fundamental desire to hold others morally responsible for their wrongful behaviors. In Study 1, participants reported greater belief in free will after considering an immoral action than a morally neutral one. Study 2 provided evidence that this effect was due to heightened punitive motivations. In a field experiment (Study 3), an ostensibly real classroom cheating incident led to increased free will beliefs, again due to heightened punitive motivations. In Study 4, reading about others’ immoral behaviors reduced the perceived merit of anti-free-will research, thus demonstrating the effect with an indirect measure of free will belief. Finally, Study 5 examined this relationship outside the laboratory and found that the real-world prevalence of immoral behavior (as measured by crime and homicide rates) predicted free will belief on a country level. Taken together, these results provide a potential explanation for the strength and prevalence of belief in free will: It is functional for holding others morally responsible and facilitates justifiably punishing harmful members of society.

jamest wrote:This is a load of hairy you-know-whats. Before you can talk about free will, you need to talk about the ontology of 'that' which has free will. Clearly, if we assume human consciousness to be some sort of by-product of a 'real' physical brain, then free will is off the agenda regardless. That's a no-brainer. So what's the point in spending £$£$ to prove that humans don't have free will as long as the brain is doing all of the work? FFS, these guys should be locked up for wasting valuable resources.

The issue of free will will never be proved or disproved within the research lab, squires. It's purely a philosophical issue.

A Simple Task Uncovers a Postdictive Illusion of Choice
Do people know when, or whether, they have made a conscious choice? Here, we explore the possibility that choices can seem to occur before they are actually made. In two studies, participants were asked to quickly choose from a set of options before a randomly selected option was made salient. Even when they believed that they had made their decision prior to this event, participants were significantly more likely than chance to report choosing the salient option when this option was made salient soon after the perceived time of choice. Thus, without participants’ awareness, a seemingly later event influenced choices that were experienced as occurring at an earlier time. These findings suggest that, like certain low-level perceptual experiences, the experience of choice is susceptible to “postdictive” influence and that people may systematically overestimate the role that consciousness plays in their chosen behavior.

logical bob wrote:

jamest wrote:This is a load of hairy you-know-whats. Before you can talk about free will, you need to talk about the ontology of 'that' which has free will. Clearly, if we assume human consciousness to be some sort of by-product of a 'real' physical brain, then free will is off the agenda regardless. That's a no-brainer. So what's the point in spending £$£$ to prove that humans don't have free will as long as the brain is doing all of the work? FFS, these guys should be locked up for wasting valuable resources.

The issue of free will will never be proved or disproved within the research lab, squires. It's purely a philosophical issue.

As with the rest today's plethora of articles taken by the_5th_ape from ropey websites (this one talks about "conscience" instead of "conscious" choice), it helps to have a look at the abstract of the research paper. There's a link in the article, though the full paper is behind a pay wall.

logical bob wrote:Well, if someone posts a link for discussion but you choose not to read it then your contributions will inevitably be of limited relevance, perhaps the equivalent of spray painting PHILOSOPHY WOZ ERE across several fora. Have yourself a splendid evening.

crank wrote:Have any of you experienced anything like what I described? None of the very few I've asked has mentioned such incidences. i'm very curious about how common it is.

crank wrote:Have any of you experienced anything like what I described? None of the very few I've asked has mentioned such incidences. i'm very curious about how common it is.

zoon wrote:

crank wrote:Have any of you experienced anything like what I described? None of the very few I've asked has mentioned such incidences. i'm very curious about how common it is.

Almost any learned skill, such as solving crosswords at speed, is a series of complex decisions which we are largely unaware of, it's the difference between a newbie and a smooth operator? I learnt to drive late, and I remember relaxing somewhat after an incident where I was panicking as usual over whether I needed to slow down suddenly, but then realised I had already applied the brake correctly about a second earlier; I was still in the process of becoming a normal driver. The article on neuroscience of free will mentions that a decision to shoot a red light and the veto over that decision can both happen below the level of awareness, I'm not sure what the experimental procedure is.

felltoearth wrote:I'm not a musician but I'm guessing something like your experience is similar to playing jazz where people play off each other. A musician wouldn't ponder and decide what to play, though cognition and choice obviously is at play.

felltoearth wrote:This looks promising.

https://cml.music.utexas.edu/research-p ... ovisation/