If the subject is made aware of what is being tested, well you can’t get a clear picture or result from the automatic behavior measure.

Top down processing (combined with affect) is a powerful conscious strategy in cognitive and behavioral therapy.

Top down strategies are by nature exercises in free will.

Ben, I’m curious about your thought: “I fail to see how science isn’t simply fully accepted superstition and religion.” I’m uncertain what you are saying.

The Scientific Method is the lynchpin of full acceptance in the science community because it demands rigorous testing and unfailing repeatability. If a theory or a hypothesis can not stand up against the Scientific Method, it remains a theory or a hypothesis. In the science community, as with religion and superstition, theory and hypothesis are attempts at explaining some inexplicable reality. If the theory or hypothesis cannot be tested with invariable repetition, it requires faith and belief; some degree of subjectivity, which means not everyone is going to accept it. When a theory or hypothesis can be tested and the results support the theory or hypothesis with nauseating redundancy, it is accepted as sound science, as fact, as a nugget of Knowledge, as Truth. When this is the case, it really doesn’t matter how one wants things to be, how viscerally one reacts, or how comforting it is to society. It is a reality one must adjust to, because reality and Truth will not adjust to us.

Soon and colleagues’ study satisfied the Scientific Method and therefore it must be digested; it must be assimilated; society must soberly address their findings. I have many pet beliefs, many of which probably qualify as superstitions, but as best as I am able I strive to recognize them and suppress their emotional appeal when I am considering my life’s foundations. When establishing ones foundations, if the options are, faith and belief, or Truth and Knowledge, I’ll always use Truth and Knowledge. Faith and belief are the stuff of religion and superstition. Truth and Knowledge are the stuff of authentic science. In this sense, authentic, fearless science will always incorporate religion and superstition into its metabolic structure. Like a living organism, authentic science will devour a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, process it, use what is useable, and dispose of the rest. Authentic science will consider new ideas, devise a test and thoroughly test it. Whatever portions of the new idea repeatedly satisfy the Scientific Method; these become part of the structure. Those portions that fail the test are disposed of.

The crucial difference between faith and belief, and Truth and Knowledge is, not every one must accept that which is founded on faith and belief, whereas, what has tested and proven to be Truth and Knowledge must eventually be accepted if one is to live harmoniously with nature. The tragic irony for mankind is that what seems so intuitively real, free-will, is founded on faith and belief, while what assaults our egos and pride, a determined universe, is founded on Truth and Knowledge. For all of its existence, mankind’s societies have been dissonant with nature. The consequences are all around us. When a species overwhelmingly opposes nature; when a society continually functions in opposition to nature’s Truth and Knowledge, there can be only one result: Extinction.

Blessings,

ron

I know those unwilling to release their grasp on their free-will mindset are going to focus on this sort of a conundrum. Just recently, I was pushing the button on my car radio that selects the next available station; the search button. One push and it searches…the next push selects. I would push the search button, hear the song, go through my brain’s storage of songs, remember if I liked it, or not, and then if I liked it, push the button once; if I didn’t like it, push the button twice to find the next station. This happened so fast sometimes it was frightening! I beleive it was Daniel Wegner of Harvard in his book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, in which it was stated that all the processes necessary to produce our behaviors are impossibly complex even with a state of the art brain, man would not be able to consciously manipulate the data and produce our incredibly choreographed behaviors, whether that behavior be thought or motor related. Oddly enough, both behaviors are physical in nature because they demand physics-based interactions within our skull. But your are right! All this stuff would be delightful to test. The odd thing is, as intriguing as this mind/body thing is in light of the brain function/conscious awareness discoveries, it was an astounding twenty-five years between Benjamin Libit’s study (1983) and Soon and colleagues’ study (2008).

Steve Pinker and Daniel Wegner, both of Harvard, are connundrums in and of themselves. Both have thoroughly put the cabosh on free-will. Both are certain that free-will does not exist, but they don’t seem to have any curiosity regarding how determined universe principles applied ot mankind’s societies should look like. Daniel Wegner actually stated, (paraphrased in my words) I know free-will is a lie, but it can actually be a rather useful lie! When is it ever useful to build any structure on a false concept? That’s the stuff of superstition and religion. From the beginning of human history to the present mankind has established its social interaction on a false concept, on an intuitive free-will social mindset, on a lie! Mathematics, the physical and natural sciences have experienced stable and continuous growth because they are established on determined universe principles as stated in the Scientific Method. The social sciences have experienced cyclic collapse and horrific destruction [war, bigotry, genocide, social stratification, insane distributions of wealth, etc.] because they have insisted that man possesses a free and independent, an autonomous free-will. As there is no scientific support for free-will, free-will is a faith-based system of belief. In the common vernacular, faith-based systems of belief are called religions. While bashing free-will-based theologies, these Harvard boys are just as deeply entrenched within the Free-Will Religion as those they are bashing. Of such is the free-will mentality.

The end of the intuitive free-will social mindset and the beginning of a world-wide effort to adhere to the empiricism-based determined universe mindset is the next epoch in mankind’s history…that is assuming, of course, mankind doesn’t extinct itself!

March 15, 2009
Sunday
12:03 p.m.
Brain Function’s Self-destruct Phenomenon

In both Libet’s and Soon’s papers, they mention there is associated with the SMA a sort of emergency off switch attached to the workings of brain function. Initial brain function occurs, .327 second before awareness the preparatory directives are held in escrow in the SMA, seven to ten seconds after the initiation of brain function we become consciously aware of the prepared behavior stored in the SMA, and shortly thereafter the preparations become behavior. During this last step, somewhere after awareness and before implementation of the directives, when verbally cued, the brain seems to have the ability to, at the very last moment, negate all previous preparation and abort the behavior. The directives short circuit and self-destruct. Free-will advocates point to this as evidence of some sort of self autonomy; of the presence of a free-will; some sort of choice phenomenon housed within the concept of contingency. In one essay, this phenomenon was referred to as free-won’t as opposed to free-will.

On the PBS program, Closer To Truth, one of the brain scientists described thought processes this way. The brain is obsessively assessing data and anticipating future needs. He explained that the brain assesses and anticipates so as to create scenarios that have potential for future use. At any one point in time, the brain has a maelstrom of predictive behavioral strings going so as to be prepared to respond to whatever nuance the incoming data eventually presents as the stimulus requiring some sort of a response. The human, being subject to the restrictions of a single entity, can only do one thing at a time, and so only one of these scenarios will reach fruition. To this end, each of these strings has a “self-destruct” capability. When incoming data begins to provide a more precise picture of the stimulus it must respond to, these strings gradually self-destruct until there is only one string left. This becomes the response. Being surprise intolerant, the brain is obsessively beginning and terminating a constant flow of potential scenarios created from an unimaginably massive reservoir of thoroughly cross-referenced data from past experience, plus all the incoming data from the present on-going contemporary experience. According to data from Soon’s study, each of these strings of potential behavioral scenarios has a life-span of no more than ten seconds.

In Libet’s and Soon’s studies, they noted that if at the last moment the individual was told not to perform the action brain function had prepared them to perform, the individual could quickly respond and not perform the action. It seems entirely logical that the concept of stop, having been experienced to the point of mind numbing redundancy, has a well established neural pathway which is capable of responding at the speed of an electron and thus the “self-destruct” mechanism attached to the scenario which is about to become behavior is triggered and the behavior is aborted. This self-destruct mechanism is almost always a function of brain activity performed while the data is stored in the pre-awareness realm of SMA. Should the surviving behavioral string pass through the moment of awareness, this self-destruct mechanism is still intact and subject to current experiential demands. Ordinarily, what physics-based brain function has determined to be inappropriate for the occasion is destroyed while what physics-based brain function has determined to be the most appropriate response carries the day.

Experience and practice improve the brain’s ability to predict scenarios which are more likely to meet the individual’s behavioral needs. An individual often does not have the luxury of a seven to ten second period of time to develop an appropriate response. Driving is one of these instances. The individual must create an arsenal of experience so that when an emergency presents itself, brain function is ready with an appropriate response. This helps explain why fatal accidents are more common among teenagers than older experienced drivers. In Libet’s study, he found that onset of RP (readiness potential, roughly equating to Soon’s SMA, or supplemental motor area) averaged .535 millisecond before actuation of the behavior. Awareness of the upcoming activity occurred at .204 millisecond before actuation of the behavior. As these are averages, it is assumed there were times when RP was less than half a second before actuation of the behavior making awareness of the behavior less than two tenths of a second before the action. This is split-second timing! While driving, individuals often find themselves making avoidance maneuvers before they even know they are doing it; a reality that both affirms the validity of brain function preceding conscious awareness and saves lives! Repetitive practice can prepare even the less than average brain for events requiring a split-second response, but those with top of the line hardware are the individuals capable of producing and manipulating a massive number of potential scenarios and are thus the ones who excel. Those with the economy model make do.

The brain is constantly fine-tuning its bank of pertinent data into more quickly accessable and increasingly appropriate potential scenarios. In a study in which an individual played a video game, rested for two hours, and then played the same game again, the individual’s skill level always increased. It is hypothesized that while the individual was sleeping the brain was sifting through the experiential debris, sellecting successful scenerios and eliminating unsuccessful scenarios. Having processed the data, the individual’s brain was better prepared for the second video game session and that experience then provided the brain with more data which the brain again processed during the individual’s rest period. That those who excel at a task are almost always are of superior intelligence is no accident. Fine-tuning ones game requires a phenomenal amount of brain activity and only the best brains are capable of such behavior. A professional must have a plethora of finely tuned potential scenarios flooding their SMA. This ability demands a pristine state of the art brain (genetics) and years of intense practice (experience).

Here’s why. Quite simply, the decision to press one key or another was completely *arbitrary*. That is, subjects had no reason to press one key or the other. In particular, there were no criteria for subjects to weigh up, nor were any consequences riding on their decision. This scenario is obviously completely unlike everyday scenarios where free will is alleged to operate. (The same criticism applies to Libet’s original experiment.)

Moreover, what did subjects base their decision to press one key or another on? They must have based it on *something*: after all, a decision can be haphazard, but never random. I submit that subjects based their decision on a capricious mental bias for left or right, rooted in some sort of fluctuating dominance in perception (as with a Necker cube). Presumably, this bias had its own neural roots. I submit that these roots drove the physiological signatures identified in the study.

Looked at in this way, the study merely shows that the *basis* on which *arbitrary* decisions are made has a neural correlate that emerges several seconds before the decision itself.

Is that a reason, per se, to disbelieve in free will?

Red LED in visual sight of the experiment.

Subjects are instructed to take their actions, however if the LED is lit to take no action.

LED is set to light at random intervals.

There will be corresponding times when the LED is lit between RP and the action itself. Action or inaction of the subject during these times would indicate if a conscious veto exists or not.

I think that if we are making decisions 7-10 seconds before they actually occur however then it’s pretty obvious that conscious veto has to exist however. Otherwise busy crosswalks would be pretty dangerous places. That is unless this report is making the claim that we’re all perceiving reality 7-10 seconds in the past. Now that would be quite the claim.