Neil
New
Why is that any more demonstrative of free will than some sort of emotional reaction? Meanwhile, I'm not convinced it's an empirical question. If something is not determined then it is random. There is no logical room for a third sort of decision making.
Sorry, I don't understand. Could you expand on this?
~~ Paul
If there is a pre-sentiment effect demonstrated, yet the subjects were able to avoid the negative photo, it would demonstrate that if a future event can affect the present, then a choice was made to avoid the future event that seemed to already happen (because if it didn't occur in the future, then how could it have an effect in the present?). If it were deterministic, how could you explain this?
If you explain this as random, then you have another problem - if it were just random, why would the presentiment effect precede the negative and not the positive? If, say, consciousness can scan the future for probable events and alert you, then with an RNG displaying photos you could have a 50/50 chance of seeing negative or positive, yet you only see the presentiment effect prior to negative photos. If you invoke some sort of EPR across time type of correlation, it may offer a way to explain some presentiment effects, but then if we look at the precognitive remote viewing from SRI then we are challenged since this explanation couldn't work in this situation. It sea as if a future event can actually be picked up in the present. And if this is the case, how could a choice be just random if that random choice in a particular direction is needed for the future event to actually occur in experience?
Further, deterministic ideas on this seem pretty irrelevant, since we know our universe fundamentally is not deterministic. At best, based on physical law, one could suggest a random choice based on quantum decision making models. We know through quantum cognition that the classical models of decision making theory do not fit the data, so it seems that those types of deterministic theories could be ruled out.
Physicists Conway and Kochen have come up with their Free Will Theorem which has something to say mathematically about our free will. Granted there is controversy over the third axiom, but nonetheless it is progress towards describing free will in a way that lends itself to possible empirical testing.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
Another side to this is what David Bailey mentioned. With considering the above about quantum cognition models, free will theorem, etc to eliminate deterministic models, and we look at Gödel's incompleteness theorems and Turing's indecidability theorem, we further realize that we cannot fit this into a random model, either. There is something fundamentally different about our ability to think that cannot be mathematically modeled. The quantum cognition models are an improvement, but these models based on quantum randomness cannot get around the incompleteness and undecidability theorem.
Looking at PK experiments adds to this. If a subject has an intent to cause deviation of the output of an RNG in a specified direction and this change occurs, how can random decision making in a brain cause the output of an electronic device to change? Even if you do not restrict the mind to the brain, how can random decisions result in the desired outcome of a random system?