yguy

I don't see how, since it's not news that free will can be overridden. Again, the question is whether such control is allowed by the soul - which would still be an act of free will.

Normal

Whoops, I misread your question. Disregard my previous answer.

In fact, I can't answer your question. All I've told you about how the soul works is all I know.

This obviously cannot happen at the same time due to slow down with reflex. Even if the brain makes a "choice", the brain still has to send a signal to the hand to fully enact the choice, so you will necessarily "experience" the choice after you have made it, even if the choice is in the brain.

Jesse

Yes, but it would be news to a soul-believer that the soul is unable to itself override the decisions of the brain. In fact you just said earlier that you expected that subjects would be free not to press the button after seeing the slide change, a prediction which was apparently incorrect, if the descriptions of the experiment are accurate.

If subjects always show a build-up of brain activity before they make a choice to press the button, and they always find themselves "choosing" to press it immediately after that build-up (without being able to choose not to press the button when they see the slide change), doesn't this suggest that the soul has no power to affect anything either way? Also, if you accept that our sensation of making a choice is at least sometimes an illusion, doesn't this undermine the whole case for free will based on first-person experience?

Jesse

"Obviously"? "Necessarily"? Why couldn't one experience making a choice and then experience a slight delay before your hand acts on that choice? I would think this would be the most obvious way for a soul-believer to imagine it--we would experience the choice at the moment the soul made the choice, but then there would be a slight delay before the physical action as the soul interacted with the brain and the brain sent the signal to the muscles. Again, if you say that our experience of making a choice at a particular moment might be an illusion, you undermine the whole argument for the soul from first-person experience.

Imagine I'm given a bionic hand with very s l o w artificial nerves, so there's a 5-second delay between the time the brain sends a signal to lift a finger and the time the finger actually lifts. Surely I will experience making the choice to lift my finger before the finger lifts, not at the moment it happens, right?

Normal

Could it not also mean that there are voluntary functions of the brain outside of consciousness, and that this function sends signals simultaneously to enact the choice and to the consciousness?

Either way, it is effectively irrelevant to my definition of the soul, which has nil to due with physical consciousness. You seem to be equating soul with consciousness, which I have never done.

Jesse

Normal:
Could it not also mean that there are voluntary functions of the brain outside of consciousness, and that this function sends signals simultaneously to enact the choice and to the consciousness?

If it's a function of the brain it's not something coming from the free-willed soul, so it's not really a "choice" in the sense a believer in metaphysical free will is talking about.

Normal:
Either way, it is effectively irrelevant to my definition of the soul, which has nil to due with physical consciousness. You seem to be equating soul with consciousness, which I have never done.

Your belief in the free-willed soul has nil to do with your first-hand subjective experience of making choices? What is it based on then?

Normal

We make involuntary choices all the time. Like shaking your leg, or touching your face. These "choices" are made outside of consciousness, and does not undermine anything.

Sure, and if there's a voluntary function of your brain outside of consciousness that makes the decision and sends it to both hand and consciousness at the same time?

Normal

Or it's merely another step in the line of reflex, which is what I was implying. It's not proving that the function is actually making the choice, the function is merely acting it out.

My definition of the soul is not contained within consciousness, as you are implying. I receive the empirical evidence of the choices through consciousness.

Jesse

Normal:
Or it's merely another step in the line of reflex, which is what I was implying. It's not proving that the function is actually making the choice, the function is merely acting it out.

In that case it's really the soul making the choice and passing it on to a particular part of the brain, not a "function of the brain". Which just brings us back to the question of what it would mean if our conscious experience of making a choice did not coincide with the moment the soul actually made the choice.

By the way, do you agree that the bionic hand example shows that your earlier claim that "the brain still has to send a signal to the hand to fully enact the choice, so you will necessarily 'experience' the choice after you have made it" was nonsense? There is no reason it is necessary that a person should be unable to experience making a choice to move a part of their body until that part of the body actually starts moving.

Normal:
My definition of the soul is not contained within consciousness, as you are implying. I receive the empirical evidence of the choices through consciousness.

I don't understand the distinction. Part of one's experience of making a choice is of making it at a particular moment. If this experience is an illusion, then it seems to me that the conscious experience of making a choice is worthless as "empirical evidence of the choices."

Suppose I get up and decide to improvise a speech, and I have the conscious experience of making it up as I go along, choosing my words as I go. Your position would seem to imply that it's conceivable that the free-willed soul actually planned out the speech hours beforehand...if so, how could my subjective experience of choosing my words as I go possibly be valid evidence of free will?

Normal

Why is it impossible for a function of the brain to send the decision to the hand and the consciousness at the same time, thus accounting for the delay? I'm not implying the function made the decision, I'm saying the function is sending the signals to enact the decision to the consiousness and the hand at the same time.

Yes, it was nonsense, a bit of confusion on my part.

Not the consious experience of making a choice, the conscious experience of having the option of multiple choices. You have the conscious experience of choosing one of many choices. It is still unclear to me how that is possibly an illusion.

Your twisting my definition of soul quite a bit. Where did I ever say the soul planned anything? The soul plans nothing, it merely makes the choices as you go. Saying something along the lines of "the free willed soul controlled me" is a non sequitur, and really is utter nonsense. The past choices are contained with your memory and conscious experience, that is all.