Our decision can be predicted a few seconds before we believe that it was accepted. Are we really deprived of will if our choice can really be predicted in advance? It is not that simple. After all, true freedom of will is possible in the fulfillment of desires of the second order.
Many philosophers believe that having free will means acting on their own arbitrariness: to act as an initiator of their decisions and be able to realize these decisions in life. I want to cite the data of two experiments that can be turned over, then at least he will divert the idea of our own freedom, which has long been fixed in our heads.
The first experiment more than a quarter of a century ago was conceived and put by the American psychologist Benjamin Libet. Volunteers were asked to make a simple movement (for example, raise a finger) when they want. The processes occurring in their
organisms were recorded: muscle movement and – separately – the process previous to him in the motor departments of the brain. In front of the subjects was a dial with an arrow. They had to remember where the arrow was at the moment when they made a decision to raise a finger.
First, the motor parts of the brain are activated, and only after that does a conscious choice appear
The results of the experiment became a sensation. They undermined our intuitive ideas about how free will. It seems to us that at first we make a conscious decision (for example, raise a finger), and then it is transmitted to the brain departments that are responsible for our motor reactions. The latter drive our muscles: the finger rises.
Data obtained during the libert experiment indicated that such a scheme did not work. It turns out that at first there is an activation of the motor parts of the brain, and only after that does a conscious choice appear. That is, human actions are not the result of his “free” conscious decisions, but are predetermined in advance by objective neural processes in the brain that occur even before the phase of their awareness.
The phase of awareness is accompanied by the illusion that the subject himself was the initiator of these actions. If we use the analogy with the theater of dolls, then we look like a half -bunch of the wound mechanism experiencing the illusion of freedom of will in their actions.