The strange neuroscience of free will - BBC REEL

Do we really have free will? In a three part series, BBC Reel explores the hidden powers behind the choices we make.

All episodes are available now on the BBC Reel website.

A series by Melissa Hogenboom and Pierangelo Pirak.

#bbcreel #bbc #bbcnews

[imverithus]

Whenever I see a video about free will, I have no choice but to watch it

[askikowski]

BBC, good job for watering down the facts to make it confusing for the intellectuals, not hurting and kind of heartwarming for the masses. You as scientists must be ashamed of yourself.

[bmdecker]

Peter Tse has done some phenomenal work in the field of neuroscience. Glad the BBC reel had him on.

[epicbehavior]

Free will isn’t the idea that your mind can control your body, it’s the idea that there’s an “I” that can control your brain.

[leafboy]

The Dylan Haynes experiment only had about 55% predicting power making it not much better than chance

[marcobiagini]

I am a physicist and I will provide solid arguments that prove that consciousness cannot be generated by the brain (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Many argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, but it is possible to show that such hypothesis is inconsistent with our scientific knowledges. In fact, it is possible to show that all the examples of emergent properties consists of concepts used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is in itself, which means how the object is independently from our observation. In other words, emergent properties are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are conceptual models based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes; emergent properties consist of ideas through which we describe how the external reality appears to our conscious mind: without a conscious mind, these ideas (= emergent properties) would not exist at all.

Here comes my first argument: arbitrariness, subjectivity, classifications and approximate descriptions, imply the existence of a conscious mind, which can arbitrarily choose a specific point of view and focus on certain aspects while neglecting others. It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. Nothing which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness.

Here comes my second argument: our scientific knowledge shows that brain processes consist of sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes; since consciousness is not a property of ordinary elementary physical processes, then a succession of such processes cannot have cosciousness as a property. In fact we can break down the process and analyze it step by step, and in every step consciousness would be absent, so there would never be any consciousness during the entire sequence of elementary processes. It must be also understood that considering a group of elementary processes together as a whole is an arbitrary choice. In fact, according to the laws of physics, any number of elementary processes is totally equivalent. We could consider a group of one hundred elementary processes or ten thousand elementary processes, or any other number; this choice is arbitrary and not reducible to the laws of physics. However, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrary choices; therefore consciousness cannot be a property of a sequence of elementary processes as a whole, because such sequence as a whole is only an arbitrary and abstract concept that cannot exist independently of a conscious mind.

Here comes my third argument: It should also be considered that brain processes consist of billions of sequences of elementary processes that take place in different points of the brain; if we attributed to these processes the property of consciousness, we would have to associate with the brain billions of different consciousnesses, that is billions of minds and personalities, each with its own self-awareness and will; this contradicts our direct experience, that is, our awareness of being a single person who is able to control the voluntary movements of his own body with his own will. If cerebral processes are analyzed taking into account the laws of physics, these processes do not identify any unity; this missing unit is the necessarily non-physical element (precisely because it is missing in the brain), the element that interprets the brain processes and generates a unitary conscious state, that is the human mind.

Here comes my forth argument: Consciousness is characterized by the fact that self-awareness is an immediate intuition that cannot be broken down or fragmented into simpler elements. This characteristic of consciousness of presenting itself as a unitary and non-decomposable state, not fragmented into billions of personalities, does not correspond to the quantum description of brain processes, which instead consist of billions of sequences of elementary incoherent quantum processes. When someone claims that consciousness is a property of the brain, they are implicitly considering the brain as a whole, an entity with its own specific properties, other than the properties of the components. From the physical point of view, the brain is not a whole, because its quantum state is not a coherent state, as in the case of entangled systems; the very fact of speaking of "brain" rather than many cells that have different quantum states, is an arbitrary choice. This is an important aspect, because, as I have said, consciousness is a necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness. So, if a system can be considered decomposable and considering it as a whole is an arbitrary choice, then it is inconsistent to assume that such a system can have or generate consciousness, since consciousness is a necessary precondition for the existence of any arbitrary choice. In other words, to regard consciousness as a property ofthe brain, we must first define what the brain is, and to do so we must rely only on the laws of physics, without introducing arbitrary notions extraneous to them; if this cannot be done, then it means that every property we attribute to the brain is not reducible to the laws of physics, and therefore such property would be nonphysical. Since the interactions between the quantum particles that make up the brain are ordinary interactions, it is not actually possible to define the brain based solely on the laws of physics. The only way to define the brain is to arbitrarily establish that a certain number of particles belong to it and others do not belong to it, but such arbitrariness is not admissible. In fact, the brain is not physically separated from the other organs of the body, with which it interacts, nor is it physically isolated from the external environment, just as it is not isolated from other brains, since we can communicate with other people, and to do so we use physical means, for example acoustic waves or electromagnetic waves (light). This necessary arbitrariness in defining what the brain is, is sufficient to demonstrate that consciousness is not reducible to the laws of physics. Besides, since the brain is an arbitrary concept, and consciousness is the necessary preliminary condition for the existence of arbitrariness, consciousness cannot be a property of the brain.
Based on these considerations, we can exclude that consciousness is generated by brain processes or is an emergent property of the brain. Marco Biagini

[abhishekshah]

Who is will and why does he need to be freed?

[kippen]

I think that what might be considered as free will is heavily influenced by messages we play in our heads, that we may or may not be aware of. These messages are the results of our histories and perceptions. I argue that there is no reality, just perception. That the messages in our heads and our perceptions can be changed. Not easy but possible.

[kendrickjahn]

Peter Tse talks about this "Virtual" part of our minds is where free will resides, yet it isn't difficult to imagine how even our most complicated, long and drawn out decision making processes are also not free, at least not without completely re-defining what we've traditionally seen as free will to begin with.

[inaugurated]

Free will is an illusion. Your mind is an illusion. Your mind is just a consequence of brain activity, not the cause of it. The choices you make are just a consequence of thoughts and emotions you had prior to it. Which are themselves consequences of prior thoughts and some random "thought noise". If free will were not an illusion, you'd need to choose your own thoughts, which is an absurd idea. Imagine you want to choose your next thought. To want to have a particular thought, you already have to be thinking about it. Otherwise, how do you know what you want to think about? See the problem here? At no point does free will come in in the process of thinking and in the process of making choices. The only things that happen is chain reactions of thoughts and emotions, and you becoming aware of a portion of those thoughts.

[dungeon-wngw]

I fond it absoluyely hilarious how they said that all conscious brain activity is the result of processes that we arent aware of that decide what we think, and then they turn around and try to make it seem ambiguous as to whether or not free will exists. Hilarious.

[jinglejangle]

Your body is your mind.
You are your body.
Unconscious processing is faster.
Conscious processing is slower.
And you and your environment influence each other so continuously that it is useful to say that you are one with your environment.

[nupurshinde]

I came here after listening to talks on advait vedanta. Consciousness is a fundamental property, and there is only one consciousness. 🤯

[glomerol]

What happens when the universe looks at and affects itself?

My tentative hypothesis:

Infinitiy breaks determinism. Free will is a product of infinity, assuming the universe is infinite of course.
Free will is like a feedback loop when consciousness interacts with matter and energy in the universe and (therefore) where prediction breaks down. (Absolute prediction is impossible if you are a conscious being, can affect matter and so have the potential to change the prediction.)
The feedback loop is like an escape-valve away from pure determinism.
Pure determinism in an infinite universe becomes essentially meaningless. Think about it: What happens if infinity goes into determining you, and universal forces like gravity, that 'come out of nowhere', and produce such things as black holes, go into determining you and may be part of you insofar as being part of the universe and entangled with it?
If you are entangled with the universe, then you more than inherit it.
In a sense, you are it.
So, if the universe is conscious and has free will in a manner of speaking, then likely so do you.
Besides, can we understand the universe without understanding consciousness? I doubt it.

We appear very much like the universe looking at and affecting itself. When the universe does that, is that the universe's free will? Are we one-and-the-same? Entangled? One with everything and everyone else at the moment of the Big Bang? What was that like?

Again, what happens when the universe looks at and affects itself?

[er]

in the experiment, how was the time of the conscious decision recorded?

[drews]

Free will is a fascinating yet problematic idea linked to the idea of choice. Most think we have it. I often think of it in relation to knife edge binary decisions: do I; don't I? Of course a classical physical universe would make the outcome determined. A Copenhagen style quantum mechanical universe would make the outcome stochastic, a function of probability. Decisions where we simply don't have any information to make a choice but a choice is required are weird. Imagine that you are consuming the oxygen in a sealed room so you will eventually die if you do nothing. There are two doors. You are told one leads to the outside and fresh air, one to another room filled with nerve agent, but you are not told which. We are able to make a decision in this case despite not having enough information. My limited understanding of neural networks is that they would hang (unless we jiggled them up with some pseudorandom process). Our decision feels like a choice that we make with free will. Perhaps all that pre-processing is setting up an appropriately weighted deck of neuronal cards for us to make our "choice", essentially as an act of measurement producing a collapse of the wave equation and a therefore a "choice".

[jekyllchan]

When we overthink the complexity of free will, it can't be free anymore. Isn't it?

[antifapup]

Frankly, I have questioned the rational of separating the brain from the rest of the body. It seems like a holdout in old thinking.

[howardzhu]

Does anyone notice the left upper corner at 2:14? A white light spot?

[jeffg]

Great ending! Top notch content. Well done.