Thalia Wheatley - Big Questions in Free Will

Free will is a perennial conundrum. The ‘Big Questions in Free Will’ project brought together scientists, philosophers and theologians in a novel interdisciplinary initiative to develop new data and catalyze innovative ways of thinking. Here are the concluding thoughts of some of the participants. Has progress been made?

Thalia Wheatley is currently an associate professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[brianlebreton]

Great interview. Interesting work. Curious to see the next steps in these experiments.

[pindexter]

very interesting.

excellent questions !

[aren]

The whole conversation doesn’t matter.
They are arguing about a point that whether true or false, wouldn’t prove the existence of free will.

[StopFear]

I am not sure using hypnosis helps get definitive research results

[mickeybrumfield]

Our consciousness of our activities could be much more dynamic, complex, and variable than we realize. It will be interesting to see how things turn out when tests become more consequential for those being tested.

[gettaasteroid]

I agree with Dr. Wheatley there at the end, the Libet signal is supposed to have a prior causal history before 'In statu nascendi', because otherwise it's Delboeuf hypno-complaisance

[jamesruscheinski]

under hypnosis, does anything different happen in brain than when not under hypnosis? are any areas of brain suppressed under hypnosis, which might be areas of awareness or agency?

[edwardtutman]

In neuroscience, there are 3 subjective levels of awareness: autonomous, subconscious, conscious. The first two almost always supersede the later one in time domain, however, conscious awareness can program in an intention to the point of aligning bodily actions with and even superseding the intrinsic-embedded states. Some yogis, Buddhists, marshal artists and other mindfulness experts are know for that. Try to run your tests on that group, and without hypnosis.

[abduazirhi]

I dont see any link between the experiment (hypnosis) and the big question re free be I need to re-watch 🙂

[davidblack]

‘It doesn’t seem like you need an experience of consciously deciding in the moment to create an action…’ I could’ve told them that for free! I constantly turn the steering wheel of my car without consciously deciding to do it 😄

[XOPOIIIO]

The part of consciousness that make the decision is not the same part that communicates. It doesn't mean that the decision was made unconsciously. It shown by multiple experiments that different part of neocortex are responsible for different types of consciousness.

[hvm]

Maybe the sense of free will is correlated to how much what we predict we will do is correlated to what we actually do. In that case, the readiness potential is correlated to suggestions our brain makes of what we should do and the process of carrying out that action. We sense free will by predicting that our brain will let the action happen, or that it will prevent the action from being carried out. In the case of letting the action happen, the sense of free will is correlated to our capacity of predicting that the brain would indeed carry out that action. If the brain makes something happen that we didn’t consciously predict it would make happen, we feel like we lost our sense of free will. We also get a sense of agency from predicting that the brain would prevent the action from occuring. There must be two layers to the predictive mechanism. What the brain predicts will occur, which is what it bases the decision to act or not act on. And then there must be what we predict that our brain will predict and hence how it will act. By allowing the brain to carry out its predictive mechanisms but turning off the meta-predictive mechanisms, we let the brain carry out the action, but prevent the brain from predicting what it itself will do. We somewhat remove self-awareness or self-understanding from the brain. So it carries out the action, but doesn’t understand the why it took the action, and hence, does not attribute a sense of ownership or will to that action, because perhaps the sense of free-will is tied to accurately predicting what our brain will do, with our sense of control being more tied with the unconscious prediction of our brain accurately predicting outcomes of actions and picking the right actions to take.

[penultimatename]

If the past, present and future are all occurring at the same time. The experiment may suggest not free will for actions of the person. The possibility of everything including the test had to occur is something we may not be able to test.

[jamesruscheinski]

conscious experience might have role that can be part of or separate from action with readiness potential?

[RedGuy-wygg]

Free will is planning ahead

Manifest that destiny

[davidskelding]

How can anyone make a non-consequential decision by exercising free will? If there are no consequences, then the choice would feel arbitrary and the subconscious would make the choice based on criteria of which we are not consciously aware. I do not believe I can make a random choice without the aid of an external source of randomness. I suspect that conscious choice, if it exists, requires context.

[scott-qksm]

If hypnotizing works as accepted as fact here, why are such results not looked at for people claiming alien abductions? Double standard?

[jamesruscheinski]

could there be something happening in brain before the readiness potential for an action?

[ParentHWL]

Hypnosis conveys sleepiness. Has there been any study on the contrast between wakeful and sleeping state neuro-transmission or a similar kind for our reference? Thanks.

[jamesruscheinski]

does readiness potential association with decision making have something to do with free will, even without conscious awareness? can have free will without consciousness?