Patrick Haggard - Free Will: Where's the Problem?

Why is free will such a complex puzzle, enough to drive philosophers slightly mad? Free will probes consciousness, examines what it means to pick, choose, select, decide. But some say that 'free will' is just a trick of the brain. How to discern the key issues of free will, scientifically and philosophically?



Patrick Haggard is a neuroscientist and current Deputy Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, where he is a professor in the department of Psychology.


Closer to Truth 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.

[mikecardan]

This is by far the best conversation on this subject i've ever listened to in my life. Patrick Haggard is a genius.

[DusanPavlicek]

I really like that he explained the experiment and the interpretation of the results in such detail. I really enjoyed this video.

[zd]

I don’t understand what anyone is saying in these episodes but I like to listen to them before I go to sleep. It’s like a nerd white noise machine.

[mediocrates]

Excellent explanation of a difficult and technically complex subject; thanks!

[Bill..N]

Well done! Patrick and his colleagues have obviously made important contributions with this excellent research. He was overly redundant in describing that one hemisphere of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, but so be it..Robert seems right in his suggestion that our sense of free will is STILL illusory and emergent since the process begins X number of milliseconds BEFORE the conscious "Decision"..Whether conscious decision is contributory or not, Patrick himself correctly points out that DEEP mysteries still remain..Great show..!

[Rammbriel]

That was really hard and really interesting.

[defenderofwisdom]

The concept of a limited, conditional will is better. Less catchy... But "free" will carries such a common ambiguity to it, it adopts too many meanings in different contexts without indicating anything causal or explanatory. Will should be defined by what bounds it, because although it has degrees of freedom, those degrees are not known and become assumed to be fully free by that common ambiguity fallacy.

[DrFuzzyFace]

It's humbling to think that we are, in fact, little more than conscious automatons. An important part of the illusion that we are free to will our behavior is the sense of self illusion: That "I" am deciding the behaviors my brain should initiate. But the intractable sense of self - what Ryle called the "ghost inside a machine" - is an autobiographical and immaterial construction to make sense of the conscious, observational experience. Immaterial agents cannot affect material systems ... to do so violates a fundamental law of physics: the conservation of energy. And if "I, " too, am an illusion, what becomes of the clergymen's promise for life after death? If "I" was "never here, " how could I possibly be found "over there"? Great lecture. Thanks, Lawrence.

[afriedrich]

1) You need to decide that your are going to make a decision before you make a decision. If you try to run the experiment without telling the subject that they have to make a decision, the subject will probably not make a decision to push any buttons.
2) Your consciousness needs to access random number generator(s) to engage in THESE TYPES OF EXPERIMENTS. The random number generator (1 or 0) is not part of consciousness, and there will be a delay in informing consciousness of the random number.
3) It may be the case that consciousness DECIDES to hook up the random number generator directly to the finger in THESE TYPES OF EXPERIMENTS, bypassing consciousness, in order to quicken the response!

[Balefulmoon]

It’s amazing that he describes the experience of watching a dubbed movie like someone who has never watched a dubbed movie. Everyone I know notices the mismatch in mouth and sound, even in well done movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Lion. It’s probably because his own mouth seems to move out of time with his speech.

[millerk]

What this suggest to me is that free-will is a substrate that resides in the subconscious or the part of consciousness that is closed to personal introspection and our conscious self-perception supervenes on the subconscious. In a more general sense, the deterministic nature of the physical world is undeniable. But it isn't the case that everything could not have been otherwise. I would argue that free-will occurs anytime a conscious agent effects a causal change that could have been otherwise.

[ishtarmuz]

Just because we have an overlay telling a story on the thin veneer of consciousness does not say anything about the nature of a deeper self

[ericjohnson]

Yeah, I don't buy his argument that we become conscious of the arm moving after the fact. Just look at the list of planned activities for the day. Nowhere on there, is a point of becoming conscious of what one has done, unless it's a consciousness of having committed a faux pas. Planning an activity precedes the activity.

[melchormagdamo]

Patrick Haggard forgot the conscious free decision of the subject in consciously deciding to join the experiment.

[credterfe]

So what causes the brain waves to lateralize to one hemisphere? The brain does it or decides by itself automatically ?

[morphixnm]

What is missing in these experiments is that they are focused on very low level, physical reactions to stimuli where choice in that moment is really not of much import. Where the question of free will becomes interesting and significant in terms of the kinds of beings that we are is where reflection and analysis takes place on present and past behavior that then changes our response in similar future situations. In other words, where there is deliberation and evaluation involved. These other kinds of knee jerk laboratory measurements are interesting but don't address the areas where the question of free will really matters.

[alandunlap]

Ever stub your toe and yell "OW!" before the pain hits?

[uremove]

Great experiment! Unless you believe we are a conscious soul occupying a body as separate things, it makes sense that the contra lateral brain activity and conscious decision should mirror each other, both prior to the action. IMO conscious awareness is not a binary, but a sliding scale that exists at many levels. Figure and Ground.

[danielpaulson]

It sounds like some parts of the brain are simply faster than other parts of the brain. What action to take may simply precede our awareness of the electro-chemical signal for the action. We often signal intentions before taking the action. Perhaps it's simply another layer of that?

[misterhat]

Anyone else see the thumbnail and think it was Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia?