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Risto Koivula
29.10.2023 01:58:38
410556
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Joko Massachusetts Institute of Techology (MIT) alkaa oikoa vanhoja järjettömyyksiään?
... Ja niitähän piisaa: Noam Chomsky, Streven Pinker, Irene Pepperberg, Böngt Hölmstöm... jne.
Donald Trumpin sedän tutkasysteemien ja syövän sädehoidon kehittäjän John G. Trumpin maakuntakaupungin sähköteknisestä opistosta sotateollisuuden yliopistoksi nostamalla putiikilla, joka sittemmin on selvastikin erikoistunut infosotaan "tieteessä", on tota "parantamisen varaa"...
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/determinism-classical-argument-against-free-will-failure/
The MIT Press Reader
Why the Classical Argument Against Free Will Is a Failure
Despite bold philosophical and scientific claims, there’s still no good reason to doubt the existence of free will.
By: Mark Balaguer
n the last several years, a number of prominent scientists have claimed that we have good scientific reason to believe that there’s no such thing as free will - that free will is an illusion. If this were true, it would be less than splendid.And it would be surprising,t oo, because it really seems like we have free will. It seems that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make.
We need to look very closely at the arguments that these scientists are putting forward to determine whether they really give us good reason to abandon our belief in free will.But before we do that, it would behoove us to have a look at a much older argument against free will — an argument that’s been around for centuries.
This article is adapted from Mark Balaguer’s book “Free Will,” an MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series title.
The older argument against free will is based on the assumption that determi-nism is true. Determinism is the view that every physical event is completely caused by prior events together with the laws of nature. Or, to put the point differently, it’s the view that every event has a cause that makes it happen in the one and only way that it could have happened.
If determinism is true, then as soon as the Big Bang took place 13 billion years ago, the entire history of the universe was already settled.Every event that’s ever occurred was already predetermined before it occurred. And this includes human decisions.If determinism is true,then everything you’ve ever done — every choice you’ve ever made — was already predetermined before our solar system even existed. And if this is true, then it has obvious implications for free will.
Suppose that you’re in an ice cream parlor, waiting in line, trying to decide whe-ther to order chocolate or vanilla ice cream. And suppose that when you get to the front of the line, you decide to order chocolate. Was this choice a product of your free will? Well, if determinism is true, then your choice was completely caused by prior events.The immediate causes of the decision were neural events that occurred in your brain just prior to your choice. But, of course, if determinism is true, then those neural events that caused your decision had physical causes as well; they were caused by even earlier events — events that occurred just before they did. And so on, stretching back into the past. We can follow this back to when you were a baby, to the very first events of your life. In fact, we can keep going back before that, because if determinism is true, then those first events were also caused by prior events. We can keep going back to events that occur-red before you were even conceived, to events involving your mother and father and a bottle of Chianti.
If determinism is true, then as soon as the Big Bang took place 13 billion years ago, the entire history of the universe was already settled.
So if determinism is true, then it was already settled before you were born that you were going to order chocolate ice cream when you got to the front of the line. And, of course, the same can be said about all of our decisions, and it seems to follow from this that human beings do not have free will.
Let’s call this the classical argument against free will. It proceeds by assuming that determinism is true and arguing from there that we don’t have free will.
There’s a big problem with the classical argument against free will. It just as-sumes that determinism is true. The idea behind the argument seems to be that determinism is just a commonsense truism. But it’s actually not a commonsense truism. One of the main lessons of 20th-century physics is that we can’t know by common sense, or by intuition, that determinism is true. Determinism is a contro-versial hypothesis about the workings of the physical world. We could only know that it’s true by doing some high-level physics. Moreover — and this is another lesson of 20th-century physics - as of right now,we don’t have any good evidence for determinism. In other words, our best physical theories don’t answer the question of whether determinism is true.
During the reign of classical physics (or Newtonian physics), it was widely belie-ved that determinism was true. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, phy-sicists started to discover some problems with Newton’s theory, and it was even-tually replaced with a new theory - quantum mechanics. (Actually, it was replaced by two new theories, namely, quantum mechanics and relativity theory. But relati-vity theory isn’t relevant to the topic of free will.) Quantum mechanics has several strange and interesting features, but the one that’s relevant to free will is that this new theory contains laws that are probabilistic rather than deterministic. We can understand what this means very easily. Roughly speaking, deterministic laws of nature look like this:
If you have a physical system in state S, and if you perform experiment E on that system, then you will get outcome O.
But quantum physics contains probabilistic laws that look like this:
If you have a physical system in state S, and if you perform experiment E on that system, then there are two different possible outcomes, namely, O1 and O2; moreover, there’s a 50 percent chance that you’ll get outcome O1 and a 50 percent chance that you’ll get outcome O2.
It’s important to notice what follows from this. Suppose that we take a physical system, put it into state S, and perform experiment E on it. Now suppose that when we perform this experiment, we get outcome O1. Finally, suppose we ask the following question: “Why did we get outcome O1 instead of O2?” The impor-tant point to notice is that quantum mechanics doesn’t answer this question. It doesn’t give us any explanation at all for why we got outcome O1 instead of O2. In other words, as far as quantum mechanics is concerned, it could be that nothing caused us to get result O1; it could be that this just happened.
Now, Einstein famously thought that this couldn’t be the whole story. You’ve probably heard that he once said that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”
What he meant when he said this was that the fundamental laws of nature can’t be probabilistic. The fundamental laws, Einstein thought, have to tell us what will happen next, not what will probably happen, or what might happen. So Einstein thought that there had to be a hidden layer of reality, below the quantum level, and that if we could find this hidden layer,we could get rid of the probabilistic laws of quantum mechanics and replace them with deterministic laws, laws that tell us what will happen next, not just what will probably happen next. And, of course, if we could do this — if we could find this hidden layer of reality and these determi-nistic laws of nature — then we would be able to explain why we got outcome O1 instead of O2.
But a lot of other physicists - most notably, Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr - disagreed with Einstein. They thought that the quantum layer of reality was the bottom layer. And they thought that the fundamental laws of nature - or at any rate, some of these laws — were probabilistic laws. But if this is right, then it means that at least some physical events aren’t deterministically caused by prior events. It means that some physical events just happen. For instance, if Heisen-berg and Bohr are right, then nothing caused us to get outcome O1 instead of O2; there was no reason why this happened; it just did.
The debate between determinists like Einstein and indeterminists like Heisenberg and Bohr has never been settled.
The debate between Einstein on the one hand and Heisenberg and Bohr on the other is crucially important to our discussion.Einstein is a determinist.If he’s right, then every physical event is predetermined - or in other words,completely caused by prior events. But if Heisenberg and Bohr are right, then determinism is false. On their view, not every event is predetermined by the past and the laws of na-ture; some things just happen, for no reason at all. In other words, if Heisenberg and Bohr are right, then indeterminism is true.
And here’s the really important point for us. The debate between determinists like Einstein and indeterminists like Heisenberg and Bohr has never been settled. We don’t have any good evidence for either view.Quantum mechanics is still our best theory of the subatomic world, but we just don’t know whether there’s another layer of reality, beneath the quantum layer. And so we don’t know whether all physical events are completely caused by prior events. In other words, we don’t know whether determinism or indeterminism is true. Future physicists might be able to settle this question, but as of right now, we don’t know the answer.
But now notice that if we don’t know whether determinism is true or false, then this completely undermines the classical argument against free will. That argu-ment just assumed that determinism is true. But we now know that there is no good reason to believe this. The question of whether determinism is true is an open question for physicists. So the classical argument against free will is a fai-lure - it doesn’t give us any good reason to conclude that we don’t have free will.
Despite the failure of the classical argument, the enemies of free will are undeter-red. They still think there’s a powerful argument to be made against free will. In fact, they think there are two such arguments. Both of these arguments can be thought of as attempts to fix the classical argument, but they do this in completely different ways.
The first new-and-improved argument against free will - which is a scientific argu-ment - starts with the observation that it doesn’t matter whether the full-blown hy-pothesis of determinism is true because it doesn’t matter whether all events are predetermined by prior events. All that matters is whether our decisions are pre-determined by prior events. And the central claim of the first new-and-improved argument against free will is that we have good evidence (from studies perfor-med by psychologists and neuroscientists) for thinking that, in fact, our decisions are predetermined by prior events.
The second new-and-improved argument against free will - which is a philosophi-cal argument, not a scientific argument - relies on the claim that it doesn’t matter whether determinism is true because indeterminism is just as incompatible with free will as determinism is. The argument for this is based on the claim that if our decisions aren’t determined, then they aren’t caused by anything, which means that they occur randomly. And the central claim of the second new-and-improved argument against free will is that if our decisions occur randomly, then they just happen to us, and so they’re not the products of our free will.
My own view is that neither of these new-and-improved arguments succeeds in showing that we don’t have free will. But it takes a lot of work to undermine these two arguments. In order to undermine the scientific argument, we need to explain why the relevant psychological and neuroscientific studies don’t in fact show that we don’t have free will.And in order to undermine the philosophical argument, we need to explain how a decision could be the product of someone’s free will - how the outcome of the decision could be under the given person’s control - even if the decision wasn’t caused by anything.
So, yes, this would all take a lot of work. Maybe I should write a book about it.
Mark Balaguer is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books, including “Free Will,” from which this article is adapted. "
Muokannut: Risto Koivula, 10/29/2023 2:01:06 AM
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Risto Koivula
29.10.2023 02:12:36
410557
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Joko Massachusetts Institute of Techology (MIT) alkaa oikoa vanhoja järjettömyyksiään?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/
How a Flawed Experiment “Proved” That Free Will Doesn’t Exist
It did no such thing — but the result has become conventional wisdom nevertheless
By Steve Taylor on December 6, 2019
Credit: Getty Images
In the second half of the 19th century, scientific discoveries — in particular, Darwin’s theory of evolution — meant that Christian beliefs were no longer feasible as a way of explaining the world. The authority of the Bible as an explanatory text was fatally damaged. The new findings of science could be utilized to provide an alternative conceptual system to make sense of the world — a system that insisted that nothing existed apart from basic particles of matter, and that all phenomena could be explained in terms of the organization and the interaction of these particles.
One of the most fervent of late 19th century materialists, T. H. Huxley, described human beings as “conscious automata” with no free will. As he explained in 1874, “Volitions do not enter into the chain of causation…. The feeling that we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause."
This was a very early formulation of an idea that has become commonplace amongst modern scientists and philosophers who hold similar materialist views: that free will is an illusion. According to Daniel Wegner, for instance, “The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one’s thought as the cause of the act.” In other words, our sense of making choices or decisions is just an awareness of what the brain has already decided for us. When we become aware of the brain’s actions, we think about them and falsely conclude that our intentions have caused them. You could compare it to a king who believes he is making all his own decisions, but is constantly being manipulated by his advisors and officials, who whisper in his ear and plant ideas in his head.
Many people believe that evidence for a lack of free will was found when, in the 1980s, scientist Benjamin Libet conducted experiments that seemed to show that the brain “registers” the decision to make movements before a person consciously decides to move. In Libet’s experiments, participants were asked to perform a simple task such as pressing a button or flexing their wrist. Sitting in front of a timer, they were asked to note the moment at which they were consciously aware of the decision to move, while EEG electrodes attached to their head monitored their brain activity.
Libet showed consistently that there was unconscious brain activity associated with the action—a change in EEG signals that Libet called “readiness potential” — for an average of half a second before the participants were aware of the decision to move. This experiment appears to offer evidence of Wegner’s view that decisions are first made by the brain, and there is a delay before we become conscious of them — at which point we attribute our own conscious intention to the act.
However, if we look more closely, Libet’s experiment is full of problematic issues. For example, it relies on the participants’ own recording of when they feel the intention to move. One issue here is that there may be a delay between the impulse to act and their recording of it — after all, this means shifting their attention from their own intention to the clock. In addition, it is debatable whether people are able to accurately record the moment of their decision to move. Our subjective awareness of decisions is very unreliable. If you try the experiment yourself — and you can do it right now, just by holding out your own arm, and deciding at some point to flex your wrist—you’ll become aware that it’s difficult to pinpoint the moment at which you make the decision.
An even more serious issue with the experiment is that it is by no means clear that the electrical activity of the “readiness potential” is related to the decision to move, and to the actual movement. Some researchers have suggested that the readiness potential could just relate to the act of paying attention to the wrist or a button, rather the decision to move. Others have suggested that it only reflects the expectation of some kind of movement, rather being related to a specific moment. In a modified version of Libet’s experiment (in which participants were asked to press one of two buttons in response to images on a computer screen), participants showed “readiness potential” even before the images came up on the screen, suggesting that it was not related to deciding which button to press.
Still others have suggested that the area of the brain where the "readiness potential" occurs—the supplementary motor area, or SMA — is usually associated with imagining movements rather than actually performing them. The experience of willing is usually associated with other areas of the brain (the parietal areas). And finally, in another modified version of Libet’s experiment, participants showed readiness potential even when they made a decision not to move, which again casts doubt on the assumption that the readiness potential is actually registering the brain’s “decision” to move.
A further, more subtle, issue has been suggested by psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist. Libet's experiment seems to assume that the act of volition consists of clear-cut decisions, made by a conscious, rational mind. But McGilchrist points out that decisions are often made in a more fuzzy, ambiguous way. They can be made on a partly intuitive, impulsive level, without clear conscious awareness. But this doesn't necessarily mean that you haven't made the decision.
As McGilchrist puts it, Libet’s apparent findings are only problematic "if one imagines that, for me to decide something, I have to have willed it with the conscious part of my mind. Perhaps my unconscious is every bit as much 'me.'" Why shouldn't your will be associated with deeper, less conscious areas of your mind (which are still you)? You might sense this if, while trying Libet’s experiment, you find your wrist just seeming to move of its own accord. You feel that you have somehow made the decision, even if not wholly consciously.
Because of issues such as these — and others that I don’t have space to mention — it seems strange that such a flawed experiment has become so influential, and has been (mis)used so frequently as evidence against the idea of free will. You might ask: why are so many intellectuals so intent on proving that they have no free will? (As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead pointed out ironically, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”)
This is probably because the nonexistence of free will seems a logical extension of some of the primary assumptions of the materialist paradigm — such as the idea that our sense of self is an illusion, and that consciousness and mental activity are reducible to neurological activity. However, as I suggest in my book Spiritual Science, it is entirely possible that these assumptions are false. The mind may be more than just a shadow of the brain, and free will may not be an illusion but an invaluable human attribute, which can be cultivated and whose development makes our lives more meaningful and purposeful. "
Muokannut: Risto Koivula, 10/29/2023 2:28:16 AM
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Risto Koivula
29.10.2023 02:39:09
410558
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Tämä onkin täällä jo aikaisemminkin ollut esillä...
http://keskustelu.skepsis.fi/Message/FlatMessageIndex/363882?page=2#364093
Se parhaiten nauraa, joka puoskaritieteelle kuoppaa kaivaa:
New brain research refutes results of earlier studies that cast doubts on free will.
Tässä tutkimusuutisessa esitelty tutkimus kumoaa nk Libetin kokeen tulokset. Benjamin Libet tulkitsi 80-luvulla tekemiensä kokeiden osoittavan, että aivoissa tapahtuu ensin tietoisuuden ulkopuolella päätös, ja vasta tämän jälkeen tulemme tietoiseksi jo "puolestamme tehdystä" päätöksestä. Tämän hän teki sillä perus-teella, että EEG-mittauksissa näkyi negatiivinen vaste jo ennen tietoista päätöstä ("päätöksestä tietoiseksi tulemista"). Uuden tutkimuksen valossa tämä negatiivi-nen vaste liittyy tietoiseen päätöksentekoprosessiin yhteydessä olevaan spontaaniin neuraaliseen aktivaatioon. Vasten Libetin arvausta tämä EEG-vaste liittyy siis kuitenkin tietoisiin prosesseihin, ei alitajuisiin.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-brain-refutes-results-earlier-free.html
August 7, 2012
New brain research refutes results of earlier studies that cast doubts on free will
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
(Medical Xpress) -- When people find themselves having to make a decision, the assumption is that the thoughts, or voice that is the conscious mind at work, deli-berate, come to a decision, and then act. This is because for most people, that’s how the whole process feels. But back in the early 1980’s,an experiment conduc- ted by Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist with the University of California, cast doubt on this idea.
He and his colleagues found in watching EEG readings of volunteers who had been asked to make a spontaneous movement (it didn’t matter what kind) that brain activity prior to the movement indicated that the subconscious mind came to a decision about what movement to make before the person experienced the feeling of making the decision themselves. This, Libet argued, showed that people don’t have nearly the degree of free will regarding decision making, as has been thought. Since then, no one has really refuted the theory.
Now new research by a European team has found evidence that the brain activi-ty recorded by Libet and other’s is due to something else, and thus, as they write in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that people really do make decisions in their conscious mind.
To come to this conclusion, the team looked at how the brain responds to other decision forcing stimuli, such as what to make of visual input. In such instances, earlier research has shown that the brain amasses neural activity in preparation for a response, giving us something to choose from. Thus the response unfolds as the data is turned into imagery our brains can understand and we then interpret what we see based on what we’ve learned in the past. The researchers suggest that choosing to move an arm or leg or finger, works the same way. Our brain gets a hint that we are contemplating making a movement, so it gets ready. And it’s only when a critical mass occurs that decision making actually takes place.
To test this theory, the team built a computer model of what they called a neural accumulator, then watched as it behaved in a way that looked like it was building up to a potential action. Next, they repeated the original experiment conducted by Libet et al but added another element, a click noise. Each volunteer was asked to make a decision right away if they heard the click while they were mulling over their choices. The thinking was that for those who had built up a neural response already and were near the threshold, a faster response should come about, and in looking at the EEG data and comparing them to clicks, that’s exactly what they found. This, the team says, proves that it was still the conscious mind making the decision; the subconscious was just doing background work to get ready.
More information: An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement, PNAS, Published online before print August 6, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1210467109
Abstract
A gradual buildup of neuronal activity known as the “readiness potential” reliably precedes voluntary self-initiated movements, in the average time locked to move-ment onset. This buildup is presumed to reflect the final stages of planning and preparation for movement. Here we present a different interpretation of the pre-movement buildup. We used a leaky stochastic accumulator to model the neural decision of “when” to move in a task where there is no specific temporal cue, but only a general imperative to produce a movement after an unspecified delay on the order of several seconds. According to our model, when the imperative to pro- duce a movement is weak, the precise moment at which the decision threshold is crossed leading to movement is largely determined by spontaneous subthreshold fluctuations in neuronal activity. Time locking to movement onset ensures that these fluctuations appear in the average as a gradual exponential-looking increase in neuronal activity. Our model accounts for the behavioral and electro-encephalography data recorded from human subjects performing the task and also makes a specific prediction that we confirmed in a second electroencephalo- graphy experiment: Fast responses to temporally unpredictable interruptions should be preceded by a slow negative-going voltage deflection beginning well before the interruption itself, even when the subject was not preparing to move at that particular moment.
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
© 2012 Medical Xpress "
Muokannut: Risto Koivula, 10/29/2023 2:39:48 AM
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Risto Koivula
30.10.2023 06:54:37
410562
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Tämä onkin täällä jo aikaisemminkin ollut esillä...
https://skepdic.com/freewill.html
" free will
Free will is probably located in the pre-frontal cortex, and we may even be able to narrow it down to the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. --Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works
We don't have free will, but we do have free won't.--Richard Gregory (quoted in Blackmore, Consciousness: An Introduction, p. 131)
We must believe in free will, we have no choice. Isaac Bashevis Singer
Free will is a concept in traditional philosophy used to refer to the belief that human behavior is not absolutely determined by external causes, but is the result of choices made by an act of will by the agent. Such choices are themselves not determined by external causes, but are determined by the motives and intentions of the agent, which themselves are not absolutely determined by external causes.
Traditionally, those who deny the existence of free will look to fate, supernatural powers, or material causes as the determinants of human behavior. Free will advocates, or libertarians, as they are sometimes called, believe that while everything else in the universe may be the inevitable consequence of external forces, human behavior is unique and is determined by the agent, not by any god or the stars or the laws of nature.
The traditional concept of free will enters the mainstream of Western Philosophy in metaphysical questions about human responsibility for moral behavior. Many modern debates about free will are often couched in terms of responsibility for moral and criminal behavior. In the Christian tradition, which has framed the issues surrounding free will, the belief hinges on a metaphysical belief in non-physical reality. The will is seen as a faculty of the soul or mind, which is understood as standing outside of the physical world and its governing laws. Hence, for many, a belief in materialism is taken to imply a denial of free will.
The modern view of determinism and free will does not see the two concepts as mutually exclusive. This view began to take shape with arguments such as those offered by Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, XXI). The one god is the ultimate cause of every action, argued Hobbes, but as long as a person is not physically forced to do an act, the act is free. Hobbes couched the argument in terms of liberty vs. necessity, rather than free vs. externally determined will. The sequence of causes leading to a person being blown off a cliff by the wind would be said to have led to an event which was the necessary effect of a series of causes. A person jumping off the cliff would also have a series of causes which led up to it, but if the person was not chased off the cliff and jumped without any immediate material cause necessitating the jump, then the act is one of liberty.
Hobbes’ view shows progress for reconciling materialism, determinism and free will, but it is unsatisfactory. While it makes the case that materialism and determinism do not imply that humans have no metaphysical liberty, it does not address the issue of internal determining causes. It is unlikely a modern materialist would make the argument that regardless of a person’s neurochemical state, if the person is not pushed or chased off the cliff, but jumps, say, while under the delusion that she can fly, the act is one of liberty.
A modern view, which sees no contradiction between believing in free will and materialism, would be couched in neurological terms. The key issue stemming from the free will/determinism debate is the issue of responsibility for one’s actions. Responsibility, however, has at least two essential components: control and understanding. Even early Christian philosophers, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, considered infants, young children and imbeciles, as lacking in control or understanding, not lacking in some metaphysical entity needed for free acts. It is an obvious absurdity to ascribe free will to infants, young children or the insane. Traditional libertarians held that only when a child had reached "the age of reason" did free will kick in. For those who never attained the capacity for adult rational thinking, free will never kicked in.
All our concepts of praise and blame, punishment and reward, depend upon our belief in human responsibility. A person who has an undeveloped or damaged brain or a neurochemical disorder is not responsible for her thoughts or actions if the condition causes an inability to understand or control them. Being able to control one’s behavior is not a sufficient condition for holding a person responsible for her actions. A mentally ill or retarded person or a child may be incapable of understanding the nature of their actions, though capable of controlling their behavior. The incapacity to understand the nature of an act absolves one of responsibility for the act, if not for the behavior. For example, a person might intentionally jump off a cliff but not intend to kill himself. He may have been responsible for jumping off the cliff, but it would a mistake to say he committed suicide if he thought he could fly and did not intend to kill himself.
Since brain development, damage, and disorders occur in degrees, it follows that understanding and control of thoughts and actions occur in degrees. At one extreme, a person may have little or no control over his or her thoughts and actions. Such a person would be a paradigm case of someone lacking free will. At the other extreme, a person may have an apparent superhuman ability to control his or her thoughts and actions. Someone with such self-discipline would be the paradigm of truly free person in the metaphysical sense of 'free'. To claim that to be truly free one must not be bound by laws of cause and effect is absurd and unnecessary. It is unnecessary for the reasons just given. It is absurd, for it requires free acts to be uncaused acts. On this notion, the only free person would be the one who had no clue as to what his or her next thought or action would be. Such a person would be as unfree as one could imagine.
Today, the focus of the debate over human responsibility is on the capacity to control one’s thoughts and actions, rather than on the metaphysical presence or absence of a non-physical entity with will. Determinism is compatible with ‘free will’, though the term should be abandoned to indicate that the issue is one of capacity for controlling one’s thoughts and actions. That capacity is independent of the truth of materialism or dualism. Certain neurophysical and neurochemical conditions must hold before one can enjoy whatever freedom our species is capable of. A better understanding of these issues will not come from traditional philosophers debating free will vs. determinism. Neuroscientists will provide the knowledge, neurophilosophers the understanding.
See also determinism, dualism, memory , mind, naturalism and soul.
ohn Locke's views Book II - Chapter XXI, "Of Power," from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Thomas Aquinas's view
Blackmore, Susan. Consciousness: An Introduction (Oxford University Press 2003).
Churchland, Patricia Smith. Neurophilosophy - Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).
Dennett, Daniel Clement (2004). Freedom Evolves. Penguin Books.
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, Vt.: Bradford Books, 1978).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Consciousness explained illustrated by Paul Weiner (Boston : Little, Brown and Co., 1991).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Kinds of minds : toward an understanding of consciousness (New York, N.Y. : Basic Books, 1996).
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Elbow room : the varieties of free will worth wanting (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1984).
Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Daniel C. Dennett The mind's I: fantasies and reflections on self and soul (New York : Basic Books, 1981).
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes and Noble: 1949).
Sacks, Oliver W. An anthropologist on Mars : seven paradoxical tales (New York : Knopf, 1995).
Sacks, Oliver W. Awakenings, [1st. ed. in the U.S.] (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1974).
Sacks, Oliver W. The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (New York : Summit Books, 1985).
Sacks, Oliver W. A leg to stand on (New York : Summit Books, 1984).
Wegner, D.M. (2003). The Illusion of Conscious Will. Bradford Books.
Last updated 27-Oct-2015
Muokannut: Risto Koivula, 10/30/2023 7:05:09 AM
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Risto Koivula
01.11.2023 05:23:28
410565
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Filosofi Jyri Puhakainen: "Persoonan kieltäjät", 1998, TamY, ennusti "neurotieteen" salaliiton
Tässä ei sinänsä ollut mitään kauhean uutta alla Auringon:jo 1870-luvulla aikansa johtavina varmaan moninaalla pidetyt Wienin yliopiston neurofysilogit joukossaan tiedekunnan johtaja tohtori Teodor Meinert ja aivojen kuuloalueelle nimensä antanut Carl Wernicke systemaattisesti syöttivät väärentämäänsä neurofysiologiaa psykiatrioppilaille, joihin kuului myös suurta kuuluisuutta saavuttaneita kuten Sigmund Freud ja Moskovan keskusmielisairaalan tuleva johtava yliklääkäri Sergei Korsakov. Väärennös kohdistui aivoihin kokemuksen oppimisen myötä kertyvän ns. valkean aineen jakautumista ja käyttäytymoistä aivoissa. Mikä tuon oudon operaation tarkoitus oli, jäänee ikuiseksi arvoitukseksi. Eikä sillä esimerkiksi venäläisiä kuten juuri Korsakovia kauan kusetettukaan. Se krnaatti räjähti saksalaisella kielialueella omaan taskuun...
En arvostele tässä Puhakaisen kirjaa, jonka heti silloin kyllä luin, kun se ilmestyi, ihan hyvä, vaan tarkastelen antipavlovistikansalaisjärjestön Skepsiksen pääideologin, "sosiobiologi" Risto Selinin vihaista "arvostelua" kyseisestä kirjasta järjestön lehdessä samana vuonna. Nyt on tilaisuus katsoa, kuka oli oikeassa:
http://www.skepsis.fi/lehti/1999/1999-2-skeptikko.pdf
Risto Selin (Höpsis ry, pääideologi, ainaisjäsen, ""(Höpspstikön) Ihmeellisen Maailman" päätoimittaja):
" Jyri Puhakainen: Persoonan kieltäjät – Ihmisen vapaus ja vastuu
Ihmisinä olemme erittäin uteliaita tietämään, miksi me ja kanssaihmisemme toimimme kuten toimimme. Yrittäessämme ymmärtää inhimillistä toimintaa tärkeimmässä keskiössä on ajattelun, tunteiden sekä tavoitteellisuuden tutkiminen. Pa- remmin aivotutkimuksen nimellä tunnettu kognitiivinen neurotiede on perehtynyt juuri näiden tekijöiden hermostollisen perustan selvittämiseen. Perusinhimillinen halumme tietää ihmisten toiminnasta, aivokuvantamismenetelmien teknologi- nen edistys ja aivotutkimuksen menestykset niin empirian kuin teoriankin puolella ovat tehneet siitä genetiikan ohella tämän hetken kuumimman tutkimusalan. Tämä näkyy tutkijoiden, julkaisujen ja tutkimusten määrässä, rahoituksessa, sekä aiheen saamassa julkisuudessa.
Mutta paikalle saapuu filosofi. Tampereen yliopistossa vaikuttavan Jyri Puhakaisen mielestä aivotutkimuksen käsitys ihmisestä ei ole tieteellinen edistysaskel, vaan ”tämän vuosikymmenen ja kenties ensi vuosituhannen suurin älyllinen huijaus.”
Uusimmassa kirjassaan Persoonan kieltäjät: Ihmisen vapaus ja vastuu aivotutkimuksen ja lääketieteen puristuksessa Puhakainen ruotii aivotutkimusta ja sen filosofisia ulottuvuuksia.
Suomalaisista tutkijoista tulilinjalle joutuvat muun muassa Jorma Palo, Paavo Riekkinen ja Risto Näätänen.
Aivotutkimus ei ole Puhakaisen kirjan ainoa kohde, vaan ”Persoonan kieltäjät" viit-taa koko siihen länsimaisen filosofian traditioon, joka on hyökännyt ihmisen vapautta ja vastuuta ja hänen itseohjauksellisuuttaan vastaan. Luonnontieteellinen materialismi ja positivismi, marxismi ja Freudin oppeihin nojaava psykoanalyysi, sosiobiologismi ja psykologismi, strukturalismi ja postmodernismi, behaviorismi ja konstruktionismi ja niin edelleen ovat kukin peittäneet persoonan omiin intellektuaalisiin ja tieteellisiin selityksiinsä. Jokainen ’ismi’ on vuorollaan terrorisoinut sitä ajatusta, että ihminen on herra omassa talossaan”.
Kirjan saaman julkisuuden myötä Puhakaisesta on tullut uusi valtakunnanfilosofi, jonka kriittistä ääntä on kuultu muun muassa Helsingin Sanomissa, Tieteessä tapah-tuu -lehdessä, Ylioppilaslehdessä, ja jopa Nuorsuomalaisten verkkolehti LIVE!:ssä.
Mutta missä kritiikki?
Aiheuttamaansa julkisuuteen nähden Persoonan kieltäjät on suuri pettymys. Vilpittömän toiveikkaana odotin aivotutkimuksen terävää kritiikkiä, mutta Puhakainen ei kertaakaan kyseenalaista erityisiä tutkimuksia tai teorioita. Kirjalle, joka yrittää pommittaa aivotutkimuksen ihmiskäsityksen kivikaudelle, tämä on yksinkertaisesti anteeksiantamatonta.
Olisi esimerkiksi ollut mukava kuulla, millä argumenteilla Puhakainen kumoaa Michael Gazzanigan empiirisiin tutkimuksiin perustuvan näkemyksen, jonka mukaan ihminen ei tajuisesti ohjaa toimintaansa, vaan ainoastaan jälkikäteen rationalisoi sitä.
Entä millä argumenteilla hän kumoaisi Benjamin Libetin tutkimukset, joiden mu-kaan aivomme tietävät tajuntaamme ennen, mitä aiomme seuraavaksi tehdä, ja tajunnalla on ainoastaan halujamme säätelevä tehtävä?
***Minä tiedän, miksi nämä tulkinnat eivät ole oikeita, mutta miksi Puhakainen ei ole puuttunut näihin (tai muihin) aihepiirinsä kannalta täysin keskeisiin teorioihin?***
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Aivotutkijoiden salaliitto
Puhakaisen tärkeimpänä päämääränä ei ole aivojen ja mielen suhteen esittäminen, vaan hänen tarkoituksenaan on kertoa, että ”aivotutkijoilla on oma poliittinen toimin-taohjelmansa ja yhteiskunnalliset päämääränsä” (s.115).Lisäksi hän pyrkiiohjelman luonteen ja valheellisuuden” (s. 122).
”Väitteeni on, että neurotieteiden uuden tiedon ja teknologian kaapuun puetulla retoriikalla on yksi keskeinen päämäärä. Sen pyrkimyksenä on korvata ihmistä koskeva eettinen ja poliittinen keskustelu ’tieteellisellä’ puheella ihmisen aivoista ja mahdollistaa tätä kautta tiedemiesten ja heitä kannattavien byrokraattien ja politiikkojen valtava halu kontrolloida ihmisten elämää ja käyttäytymistä. Suoraan sanoen: aivotutkijat eivät ainoastaan tutki ihmisaivoja, vaan pyrkivät vaikuttamaan yksityisten ihmisten ja ihmisryhmien toimintaan, organisaatioissa ja instituutioissa vallitseviin käsityksiin ihmisestä ja lopulta koko ihmiskunnan elämään” (s. 20–21).
Ilmeisesti oikeusjuttujakin on tulossa, sillä jos aivotutkijoiden rahoituksen määrä tulee kasvamaan Puhakaisen mukaan ”kyseessä on suuri poliittinen ja tieteellinen huijaus ja konkreettinen kasinotaloudellinen petos” (s. 125).
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Uutta onkin nähdäkseni vain se, että valtakunnassa on taas uusi julkkisfilosofi, joka on tällä kertaa pakkopullaa jokaisessa aivotutkimusta käsittelevässä TV-ohjelmassa (s. 137):
”Monien ihmisten elämässä huomion saamisen tarve on hallitseva motiivi. Tämä selittää osaltaan sen, miksi ihmiset viihtyvät julkisuudessa. Ei ole väliä, mitä sanon tai teen, kunhan saan olla huomion keskipisteenä. Tällaisen ihmisen maan pinnalle pudottaminen on ainakin yksi keino. Jos hän ei osaa nauraa itselleen, on muiden aika nauraa hänelle.”
Risto Selin ”
RK: Näin "sosiobiologien" kansalaisjärjestöideologi Risto Selin.
Herää kysymys, että MITÄ RISTO SELIN ”TIESI” VUONNA 1998 LIBETIN JA GAZZANIGAN (JÄRJETTÖMIEN) ”HAVAINTOJEN” ”OIKEASTA SELITYKSESTÄ”!!!
Jos pannaan Höpsiksen keskustelupalstalta hakuun ”Libet” ja poistetaan minun (RK) viestini, saadaan pelkkää YLISTYKSEN SUITSUTUSTA Libetin höpötuloksille NIIN SKEPTIKKOJEN KUIN MM.KREATIONISTIENKIN TAHOLTA!
Ainakaan TÄTÄ TODELLISTA ”SELITYSTÄ”, johon tämä viesti on vastaus, SELIN EI MISSÄÄN TAPAUKSESSA TARKOITTANUT.
http://hameemmias.vuodatus.net/blog/3003405/libetin-koe-tiedostamattomasta-paatoksesta-ennen-tiedostettua-tukee-tosiasiassa-kielellista-ajatteluteoriaa/
Tämän tieteellisen ihmiskuvan psykologinen tieto ei nimittäin ole periaatteessakaan selvitettävissä VAIN AIVOJA tutkimalla (ja ”tutkimalla”)!
https://netn.fi/sites/www.netn.fi/files/netn991-03.pdf
http://keskustelu.skepsis.fi/Message/FlatMessageIndex/149197?page=5#150186
https://www.is.fi/urheilulehti/parhaat/art-2000006532856.html
Muokannut: Risto Koivula, 11/1/2023 7:03:07 AM
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