Free will

Question 1

Milgram

Answer 1

The fact that most people comply, but only 1.2% of people think they’ll actually go that far

Social compliance is very strong, also seen in prison experiment and elevator

There is a discreprancy between mind and behaviour. First argument against free will

Question 2

Herd behaviour

Answer 2

Very typical for humans. We see people in line we want to go there to, showing people what to do etc

Main reasons for choices
- Greed (reward system)
- Fear (avoidance system)
- Herd (mirror neurons)

Question 3

Drives

Answer 3

Systems that work together and decide your choices, battling which one wins. Personality might affect your decisions, as in which your stronger driven by, but

You are not in control of which system you use

Question 4

Readiness potential (libet)

Answer 4

Movement (action potential) is preceded by the subjective intent to act (250 ms)

Conclusion of experiment Your brain decides before you ‘know’. Free will doesn’t exist

Question 5

Critique Libet

Answer 5

Clock issue
- perceived time of W can be influenced by events
- Getting awareness of urge takes time too

RP issue
- Is RP just attention to the clock
- Might be averaging caused by smearing ERP

Interpretation
- Free won’t is possible, wouldn’t that require a won’t RP?
- Too simple behaviour, not representative of actual will

Question 6

Predicting button press

Answer 6

Left or right could above chance be guessed 8 sec before it’s consciously felt

Busted RP averaging

• distribution visible in experiment recording w electrodes. Not averaged
• Did find two types of neurons that either increased activity or decreased activity before W (1.5 s before)
• Also: trained classifier to determine from set of neurons whether activity departed from baseline. Could predict the imminence of W about 1 sec before W.

Best in MFC, did not depend on whether increasing or decreasing were used
- Earliest activation in SMA

Question 7

Sunscreen experiment

Answer 7

Subjects viewed statements in fMRI, asked about intentions to use sunscreen. Given sample of sunscreen as thankyou

Actual experiment (will they use it) resulted that survey intentions did not correlate with actual use

What they SAY they’ll do says nothing about what they ACTUALLY do

Neural activity during the scan was a much better predictor of the outcome (even on large scale, predicting popular song, marketing, smoking etc)

Question 8

Counters to critique Libet

Answer 8

Clock
- solved by longer predictions, 8 seconds, weeks, year

RP issues
- solved by classification methods, electrode implantations

Interpretation;
- Solved by predicting more complex, real life decisions which were better predicted by brain data than conscious intentions/will