More on perception of conscious will
Sep. 21st, 2009 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anhinga_anhingaThe perception of conscious will is an inference. Daniel Wegner demonstrated a while ago, that it is easy to create experimental setups, where the subject has illusion of freely causing events, which are completely independent of his actions or intentions.
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cognitivedaily is reporting on an experiment, which sheds some extra light on the inference of conscious will:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/09/free_choice_may_not_be_as_free.php
Here, the subject presses the button, and the beep sounds as a result, but a random delay is added between pressing the button and the resulting beep sound. Then the subject is asked to pinpoint the moment of time, when the decision to press the button was made. It turns out that subjects on average estimate that moment as approximately 130 milliseconds before the beep sound (and that the estimate depends very weekly on the actual time when the subject pressed the button).
So this is another illustration how the inference of conscious will uses the observation of the physical event which is (apparently, and in this case, actually) caused by the subject. Wegner's experiments were also based on this, only in his case the event only seemed to be caused by the subject, while in this case the causation is real, but a random delay is inserted.
I was trying to interpret the 130 millisecond number, which seems to be pretty close to the characteristic time intervals for visual perception, or motor control signal propagation. Of course, it is difficult to say anything conclusive. But this time interval might be close to the "correct estimate" of the interval between the initiation of motor control neural circuits and the actual movement in "naturally occurring situations".
cognitivedaily is reporting on an experiment, which sheds some extra light on the inference of conscious will:http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/09/free_choice_may_not_be_as_free.php
Here, the subject presses the button, and the beep sounds as a result, but a random delay is added between pressing the button and the resulting beep sound. Then the subject is asked to pinpoint the moment of time, when the decision to press the button was made. It turns out that subjects on average estimate that moment as approximately 130 milliseconds before the beep sound (and that the estimate depends very weekly on the actual time when the subject pressed the button).
So this is another illustration how the inference of conscious will uses the observation of the physical event which is (apparently, and in this case, actually) caused by the subject. Wegner's experiments were also based on this, only in his case the event only seemed to be caused by the subject, while in this case the causation is real, but a random delay is inserted.
I was trying to interpret the 130 millisecond number, which seems to be pretty close to the characteristic time intervals for visual perception, or motor control signal propagation. Of course, it is difficult to say anything conclusive. But this time interval might be close to the "correct estimate" of the interval between the initiation of motor control neural circuits and the actual movement in "naturally occurring situations".
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 08:00 am (UTC)Regardless, what this experiment really does show is not that our choice is not free (or is), but that it is a construction of our mind, which shouldn't come as a surprise :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:17 pm (UTC)yes. I actually prefer to think about various worldviews (philosophies) as coordinate systems, given that we don't have a way to determine which of them is "really true".
This makes it easier to use them at will and to avoid ideological confrontations over them.
> Also, isn't the free will about "not choosing" rather than "choosing" ?
A lot of neuroscientists certainly think so. (Basically, many of them think that the "free will" is really to interrupt certain "automatic actions" before they happen, or, alternatively, to allow these actions to go through.)
> Regardless, what this experiment really does show is not that our choice is not free (or is), but that it is a construction of our mind
Yes, it shows that the choice as we perceive it is a construction of our mind.
It does not tell us much about the underlying reality (whether there is really a free choice under this, or what might be its mechanisms).
С днём!
Date: 2009-10-02 11:31 pm (UTC)Re: С днём!
Date: 2009-10-05 01:26 am (UTC)Re: С днём!
Date: 2009-10-05 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-03 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 01:37 am (UTC)