The Limits of the Coded World

In an influential article in the Annual Review of Neuroscience, Joshua Gold of the University of Pennsylvania and Michael Shadlen of the University of Washington sum up experiments aimed at discovering the neural basis of decision-making. In one set of experiments, researchers attached sensors to the parts of monkeys’ brains responsible for visual pattern recognition. The monkeys were then taught to respond to a cue by choosing to look at one of two patterns. Computers reading the sensors were able to register the decision a fraction of a second before the monkeys’ eyes turned to the pattern. As the monkeys were not deliberating, but rather reacting to visual stimuli, researchers were able to plausibly claim that the computer could successfully predict the monkeys’ reaction. In other words, the computer was reading the monkeys’ minds and knew before they did what their decision would be.

The implications are immediate. If researchers can in theory predict what human beings will decide before they themselves know it, what is left of the notion of human freedom? How can we say that humans are free in any meaningful way if others can know what their decisions will be before they themselves make them?

Research of this sort can seem frightening. An experiment that demonstrated the illusory nature of human freedom would, in many people’s mind, rob the test subjects of something essential to their humanity.

If a machine can tell me what I am about to decide before I decide it, this means that, in some sense, the decision was already made before I became consciously involved. But if that is the case, how am I, as a moral agent, to be held accountable for my actions? If, on the cusp of an important moral decision, I now know that my decision was already taken at the moment I thought myself to be deciding, does this not undermine my responsibility for that choice?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/the-end-of-knowing/?th&emc=th

"In other words, the computer was reading the monkeys’ minds and knew before they did what their decision would be."

What the computer saw was the decision as it was being made.

That fact that it took a little while to carry the decision out should not come as a surprise.

If I decide to mow the lawn, it takes a while before the grass is actually cut. That does not mean that I didn't have free will in deciding what to do.

What this really points to is that some decisions are made in a part of our brain other than the concious one. That does indicate a conditioned response -- one that's been pre-set as the default -- but we already know about conditioned responses. That's not news.

When the monkeys were given a visual cue, they decided to look at one of either pattern? What does the statement: the monkeys were not deliberating mean? Does it mean that there were different visual patterns and the monkeys responded to specific cues by looking at a specific pattern? Or, when the monkeys were given a cue, they could choose to look at either pattern? And, just because the computer could predict which pattern the monkeys would look at before their eyes moved, how have they determined that the monkeys do not yet know where their eyes were going to move? It seems that the monkey has to decide where to move its eyes before moving them.

And, in the case of human being, I think our reflexive actions might well differ from our reflective actions. If we are taught to respond to a cue in a particular way, we might well react to the cue without any conscious reflection. However, that is a long way from establishing that when we are deciding what to do tomorrow, we do not consciously make the decision.

I'd like to know more details about this experiment to understand it better.

So, I'm not sure if the people who carried out the experiment disagree with any of us because we don't have any quotes from them.

...but the author of this article seems to be reading way too much into the implications of the monkey experiment. A simple matter of neural processing delay easily explains the results, unless there's far more to this study than the author mentions in his article.

Some of the philosophical discussion about free will that follows is still interesting, however, even if I think the excuse for launching into that discussion is a bit strained.

There is an enormous difference between real decision-making and learned responses to simple stimuli.

Also, unless you're volunteering to spend your life with electrodes stuck to your head, I don't see how anyone is going to be able to analyze your brainwave patterns.

Much ado about nothing, I think.

Part of his argument:



I don't think the column succeeds in refuting this argument, although I don't accept Strawson's argument either - I have to think about it.