The mind and the concept of free will Flashcards
What factors contribute to us making a ‘free’ choice?
Genetic Previous experience Social experience Culture Neuroanatomy
How much information can a human store at any one time?
7 pieces - MILLER
This is very low, but there are things going on that we aren’t aware of - e.g. cocktail party effect. brain is receiving sensory information but can’t relay everything
What was the Wegner and Erskine experiment on free will?
asked people to do simple actions such as answer phone or pick up brick and ask if they did that or if it just happened.
Discovered that if you tell people to do something and then make them do it again when thinking very strongly about something else and feels less like you did it when thinking about the other thing
Why can it not possibly be us making the choice to do something?
In order for you to have a thought the brain has to change - but in order for the brain to change you have to have already changed the brain. So therefore cant possibly be you doing it, as the brain has changed already in order t have the thought.
What was the Libbet experiment on free will?
Was a simple experiment on this where got people to try and move one finger. Sitting in chair which minimised movement in front of a clock which made movements not every second but went round whole clock once a second. Scanned the brains of these people seeing which area was active in making the movement happen.
As there is the clock in front of them they can record the position of the clock when they have the intention to move the finger. Said to move the finger randomly when feel like it, record time on the clock and say whether it is right or lef.t data showed that in terms of the clock position and the intention to move the finger, the intention incurred after the brain area had already caused the movement.
Brain has done the action before you become aware of the fact that you’re going to do it. This is problem as tend to equate ourselves with consciousness, and although its still us doing it, it is just our unconscious mind. This makes its less intentional.
Humans aren’t vey comfortable with this idea. The experiment also found that after the brain area responsible for the movement occurs first, then become aware of the intention, and then the movement. May not have free will but said that you may be able to stop it as you become aware of it just before it happens.
The problem with this is that when he told people to try and do this in front of the clock (stop the movement) found that the inhibition area of the brain fires after the area of intention still before the area of awareness and then movement. This is hard for people to believe because none of us are aware of the area of the brain with the intention, only of the awareness and the movement.
Also showed that the brain messes around with the timings and puts some experiences before other experiences.
Brain only allows certain information form processing through to consciousness - know this because of things like the cocktail party effect.
What is an example of not having free will through the media?
‘Bad is stronger than good’ - why we are sensitised to notice bad things. Media is a good example of this - negativity catches our attention so hardly any stories in papers are positive. Why is it the case that we are programmed to notice the bad things - evolutionarily it is more important for us to notice these things as they are potential threats. This has developed to enable us to survive. The problem with the brain deciding what it will pay attention to is that this is clearly not free will.
About feelings accompanying actions (free will/agency)…
- Intentions, goals and plans are often experiences yet actions can still be unwilled as long as the individual reports they are
- Consciously willing an action requires that one feels they were consciously willing it
- Many and possibly most actions are accompanied by this feeling
- But not all…
Some that may not feel willed could include spending more or drinking more than you has anticipated. These things can be done without awareness.
What is alien hand syndrome?
- Often results following damage to middle of the frontal lobe or Corpus Callosum.
- Patients report one hand operates as if it has a mind of its own
- The ‘alien’ hand operates autonomously
- Eg a patient reports their right hand ‘automatically’ reaching out to pinch an attractive nurses bum while their left hand restrains it
- Another reports their left hand unbuttoning a shirt they are trying to put on
Corpus callosum gives 80-90% of the hemispheric communication. Can be severed to try and lessen the effects of epilepsy because means that the electrical storm occurs only in one hemisphere as it cant spread across.
Alien hand syndrome is when one hand does things you don’t want it to do, and the other will try and stop it - eg buttoning shirt and unbuttoning with the other, trying to hurt self and the other hand trying to restrain it, etc.
This tells us that if you sever the corpus callosum you get two centres of human agency which can act against each other. Its almost like you have two brains which can want two different things and can act independently. Some animals can do this and shut down half their brain - dolphins and wales can do this allowing it to sleep half the brain and carry on swimming without getting air and then sleeps the other one - otherwise will drown. Can function normally with half its brain shut down.
What is frontal syndrome?
Frontal syndrome - can lose 30% of front portion of your brain and still be fine. Phineas gage for example who got the railroad spike through his brain. He was fine but had personality change with lack of inhibition. Whatever stops you from doing things in every day life, they don’t have this. Any attractive stimulus they will take it up and not be able to stop themselves.
What are some examples of involuntariness?
- The alien hand appears to act involuntarily
- Other examples:
- Hypnosis - things are happening but ‘you’ are not doing them - Lynn et al 1990, roughly 15% of people are responsive to this with subgroups within this. Lift study is a more simple version of this where people turn around to go along with the crowd, these people are more likely to be hypnotisable
- Everyday examples - Dostoyevsky’s protagonists, wrote about characters who constantly acted against their own best interest.
- Experiment - try another persons hands
Not your hand experiment - put someone elses arms through so looks like your arms and make them do simple actions for a few minutes and then at the end pull elastic band on their wrist and you feel the pain.
Phantom itch syndrome and phantom limb.
Shows that something even as radically as personal as pain isn’t necessarily your own. If we had an MRI scanner would see your brain acting exactly as if it was happening to you.
What are critical distinctions of agency?
Feeling, not feelings as doing
Doing, voluntary action, automatism
Not doing, illusion of control, normalnaction
How is will also a force?
- Will refers not only to an experience but can also be conceptualised as a force
- For example when e restrain ourselves we experience a perception of out consciousness as ‘causing’ the control of action
- While a dog may be brown or black we seem to have a power within that ‘causes’ our actions, but does it?
What is causality?
Hume - causality is not a property of object or things we cannot see causality we infer it
It is a judgement and a decision. we like causality because it allows us to explain the world around us.
How do we infer causality?
- Priority - causal events precede their effects in time (eg turning on the lights - Michotte 1963)
- Priority helps humans perceive causality as thoughts usually precede actions
- Consistency - the resulting action should be consistent with the prior motion or action-in the human terms the prior thought is consistent with the result
- Exclusivity -we discount causal inference if other potential causes are apparent (Kelly 1972) -
Usually don’t give people the benefit of the doubt when they do something odd -infer that is the characteristics of that person not the situation (fundamental attribution error?) which is useful to us because if say it’s the situation then cant say much about the person, but if say it’s the person we are able to predict and base our behaviour on what they are likely to be like.Milgram experiment with the electric shocks in other room and ~68% of normal people went right up to ‘chance of death’ due to command, the situation, power. The situation is a very powerful determinant of behaviour.
Situation is actually a better predictor of behaviour, but human prefer to belief it is more based on personality because we want to know ourselves and not feel that we change with situations.
What is human causal agency?
Causal agents ar goal seeking - we often feel a desire to describe phenomena in goal directed terms (Heider and Simmel video of shapes moving).
We understand the world around us by goal based terms - where things are headed. We look for goals within things.
