Vale Wheeler, and Libet updated 14 Apr 2008 Daniel Holz at Cosmic Variance has a beautifully written obit for John Wheeler. We are grateful for the time the great thinkers spend on us students. Wired has an article on the updating of the classic experiments by Benjamin Libet on the fact that conscious choices occur after the brain has already begun a task. General Science History
Biology So much to say, so little time 9 Jul 2009 As I prepare for the conferences I start attending and blathering at from tomorrow, I of course find a treasure trove of things to blog about. Since I can’t really do them all justice, I will merely put a one liner for each below the fold. Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating Science overview 13 Mar 2014 I have done quite a lot of blogging under this heading lately so I thought it might be useful to get all the posts used in order: On beliefs Why do believers believe silly things? The function of denialism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? The “developmental hypothesis” of… Read More
This (Libet) seems to be another nail in the coffin of mind/body dualism. If the brain is busy doing the requisite work for a decision long before we’re aware of our decision, then it can’t been a separate mind doing the decision making. Brain functioning seems to be the mind. This is what my psych unit teaches anyway. Add to that the fact that a immaterial brain has to violate the law of conservation of energy to affect a material brain/body and dualism seems in trouble. Or have I misunderstood everything?
This (Libet) seems to be another nail in the coffin of mind/body dualism. If the brain is busy doing the requisite work for a decision long before we’re aware of our decision, then it can’t been a separate mind doing the decision making. Brain functioning seems to be the mind. This is what my psych unit teaches anyway. Add to that the fact that a immaterial brain has to violate the law of conservation of energy to affect a material brain/body and dualism seems in trouble. Or have I misunderstood everything?
Shades of Ted Chiang’s “What’s Expected of Us” — though (@Brian) he uses it to make a point about determinism, not dualism.
What a piece of bunk. You can see a more concise description under http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2112.html and the supplementary figures under http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/suppinfo/nn.2112_S1.html The prediction accuracy before the conscious decision is 60% and jumps to 75% when SMA is activated (which is *after* the conscious decision). That is lousy and doesn’t legitimate the wording “Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand”. Dear friends, 60% isn’t a “consistent prediction” and telling that “not completely accurate” is a severe understatement.