Citat:
Ursprungligen postat av
Befelhavaren
Marek Kus, professor of theoretical and mathematical physics:
Jag sökte igenom Youtube efter en särskild video men hittade den inte igen. Jag tror det var i England eller Skottland. Det fanns ett irl-experiment med frivilliga där de sattes på en stol utomhus i mörkret och fick trycka på olika knappar när de ville. Deras val var fria utifrån vad de upplevde och trodde men varje gång redan innan testpersonerna hade bestämt sig så kunde elektroderna på huvudet avslöja vilka färger som ett slott skulle lysas upp med med hjälp av vanliga spotlights i olika färger. Försökspersonerna grät efteråt och var chockade. Länka om någon hittar den videon.
"Many people believe that evidence for a lack of free will was found when, in the 1980s, scientist Benjamin Libet conducted experiments that seemed to show that the brain*“registers” the decision to make movements before a person consciously decides*to move. In Libet’s experiments, participants were asked to perform a simple task such as pressing a button or flexing their wrist. Sitting in front of a timer, they were asked to note the moment at which they were consciously aware of the decision to move, while EEG electrodes attached to their head monitored their brain activity.
Libet showed consistently that there was unconscious brain activity associated with the action—a change in EEG signals that Libet called “readiness potential”—for an average of half a second before the participants were aware of the decision to move. This experiment appears to offer evidence of Wegner’s view that decisions are first made by the brain, and there is a delay before we become conscious of them—at which point we attribute our own conscious intention to the act. ** *** *
However, if we look more closely, Libet’s experiment is full of problematic issues. For example, it relies on the participants’ own recording of when they feel*the intention to move. One issue here is that there may be a delay between the impulse to act and their recording of it—after all, this means shifting*their attention from their own intention to the clock. In addition, it is debatable whether people are able to accurately record the moment of their decision*to move. Our subjective awareness of decisions is very unreliable. If you try the experiment yourself—and you can do it right now, just by holding out your own arm, and deciding at some point to flex your wrist—you’ll become aware that it’s difficult to pinpoint the moment at which you make the decision.*
An even more serious issue with the experiment*is that it is by no means clear that the electrical activity of the “readiness potential” is related to the decision to move, and to the actual movement. Some researchers have suggested that the readiness potential could just relate to the act of paying attention to the wrist or a button, rather the decision to move. Others have suggested that it only reflects the expectation of some kind of movement, rather being related to a specific moment. In a modified version of Libet’s experiment (in which participants were asked to press one of two buttons in response to images on a computer screen), participants showed “readiness potential” even before the images came up on the screen, suggesting that it was not related to deciding which button to press."
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/
