Patrick Haggard - Is Free Will an Illusion?

Some philosophers and scientists claim that because every event is determined by prior events, including every event in our brains, free will cannot be real. What are the arguments and evidence? Key is the Libet experiment, which seems to show that our brains have already made a decision—we see electrical activity—before we are conscious of making the decision.



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.


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[ReynaSingh]

I think this is a problem of semantics. Every conversation about free will should begin with a definition.

[GamesEngineer]

I occasionally suffer from temporal lobe seizures. So, the results of the Libet experiment do not surprise me. When I have a temporal lobe seizure, I feel like I'm able to predict what is about to happen in the next second or two because I've somehow already experienced it. My "prediction" feels like a memory of a past event. And the illusion is totally convincing. During the seizure, which lasts a minute or two, every little detail of my experience, including senses and internal thoughts, feel as if they happened long before, and I'm recalling them like a memory just a second or two before they actually happen. Unfortunately, the seizure is also accompanied pain and discomfort that starts in my head and travels down through my digestive tract. But amazingly, I remain fully conscious and interactive. People around me have no idea what I'm experiencing. I've even had conversations with people while a seizure is in progress. I felt as if I was predicting (with 100% accuracy) how the conversation would evolve. But what is crucial to note is that I felt as if I still had free will, and yet I never deviate from my "memory" of the "prediction." That seems like good anecdotal evidence that free will is just an illusion.

[Lillianachimp]

So he didn't freely choose to do this interview. He had to.

[svperuzer]

The Libet experiment and the conclusion that it demonstrates humans lack free will is extremely problematic. I am told that even Daniel Dennett has criticized it. So to hear this guy talk about it in this way, that the Libet experiment "clearly" shows humans lack free will, as if it were a foregone conclusion, is in my opinion, really stupid. Surely he must be aware of these criticisms as well as the modified Libet experiments which seem to require a different interpretation of what is occurring. Like, c'mon man...really??

[Jinxed]

Is it just me or does this argument against freewill prove freewill? First we have a random task such as spontaneously twitching your hand. Isn't the obvious question going to be, who (or what) is creating the initial cascade of brain function to twitch the hand? The way he explains it, it makes perfect sense to me that processing the desire to twitch the hand, through the brain, in order to report the intention through language, would cause the report to follow the decision by, in this case, 800 milliseconds. It would seem, according to his explanation, that the process could equally reasonably be that our consciousness decides to do something, triggers the brain to begin the physical process, which sends chemical and electrical signals through the body, triggers the pathways for physical awareness, prepares our language centers, and then executes the action and the reporting at the same time ending up with a "decision to total execution time" of about 1 second.

[piggypiggypig]

You’re asked to signal your intent and it’s a surprise that your brain activity is slightly ahead in the process. The thought process must be built like a computer program from the ground up. It’s not until the program is finished that you can then signal its completion.

[bariizlam]

the real question is "is he ever getting closer to truth!??"

[arifabd]

This feels like drawing the wrong inference from the experiment. What if the physical action that indicates intent is just generally slower to manifest, so much so that it overshoots the time which indicates the subsequent "potential buildup" in the brain ? That would indicate agreement to the "Cartesian" view.

[diversityofideasnotidentit]

the Libet experiment showed that the mind is ready to do any act, not to specifically raise an arm. unless you're dead, you are always ready to make an act and produce those electrical impulse. but a specific readable impulse to raise your arm you cannot find. this neuropsychologist is so sure of himself.

[evanjameson]

well uh.. that was a waste of my time. there's always the next time!

[giorgirazmadze]

The problem of scientists is that they have to interpret data.

And scientists are terrible at it.
This scientist has just destroyed whole justice system 🙄

[GetawayFilms]

We CANNOT consider reality to be deterministic AT ALL. Not until we can conclusively demonstrate that quantum physics is at it's core deterministic. From what we've seen so far, the moment and outcome when the wave function collapses is a probabilistic event.

[caramel]

I've watched a bunch of these, and I feel this is the first person who wasn't even worth interviewing.

[sundareshvenugopal]

This guy's closer to the truth definitely is an illusion.

[peterells]

I'm deleting my original comment from here. There is another, much fuller, version of this interview, in which Patrick Haggard describes his work in greater detail. This version is here:
"Patrick Haggard - Free Will: Where's the Problem?"
I will write an amended comment there.

[jgarbo]

Free Will is a Christian cop out for God. "Well, you did it, after I gave you Ten Commandments. You hang." Childish. There's no Free Will because there's "decision". Previous experience acting on the current situation produces a response.

[jalosor]

Even if the mind was completely independent of the brain and body, you still have to make decisions based on nothing that came before to consider free will a thing. But that is just completely impratical and pointless. And also, can we just call it "will" instead of "free will". Will already implies "free" in and of itself. We can't keep asking egoic questions and expect non-egoic answers. Instead, maybe ask what is "will"?

[baigish]

It seems as though Libit was testing a free will urge for compulsive behavior, rather than other generally accepted types of free will. Perhaps the word free will needs a better definition.

If someone decided to lose weight over the next six months by sheer devotion and tenacity, how does the Libet model detract from say a Cartesian version of free will in this example? The Libet model might be accurate for short-term or immediate actions but it does not account for long-term goals or will to act with willful intention.

There is a good argument to be made about where random thoughts come from and how those influence our "free will" decisions.

I do not believe that Patrick Haggard actually believes the argument he is making. If you removed responsibility for people's actions, many people would behave very differently in society. That would be an intentional choice based upon the long-term incentives.

[commandvideo]

So if an animal or human feel pain does it make a different than a robot that mimics the brain completely but couldn't feel anything and is not conscious?!
Could Consciousness affect how the brain decides and reacts to the environment? In the other word consciousness reverse back to the brain system?!

[thomasrubbery]

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