Control and free will: Libet

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0930 MST)]

Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 09:10 CST –

In the Libet experiments, the
subject agreeing to take part in the experiment is similar to driving the
car. The subject cannot just sit there and do nothing while watching the
clock as that would cause a higher-level error to the controlled
perception of being a cooperative subject. So the higher system regularly
changes the reference level of the subject’s hand position to move which
is recorded by Libet as the “readiness potential.” The fact
that there is no conscious awareness of this higher-level activity is
interesting, although it doesn’t make it impossible for the subject to
decide for whatever reason that he or she no longer wants to
participate in the experiment and do no more wrist flicking.

I agree, pretty much. But who says that the initiation of the readiness.
potential is unconscious? The way I see it is this. The person
deliberately, and consciously changes the reference level for the
state of the finger or wrist. That starts the voluntary action. Then the
person switches attention to the clock and waits for his/her finger or
hand to start moving, which takes a small fraction of a second, and
finally notes the clock reading at the moment when the first movement is
sensed. The clock reading is now considerably later than it was when the
act was initiated. Then the person has time to interrupt the act or
change it before it finishes. All actions have a beginning, a middle, and
an end, even when we perceive them as single “events.”

The question that will be raised is “How can the experimenter tell
when the initial conscious willing takes place?” Of course the
answer to that is that the experimenter can’t tell. Only the subject is
in a position to know that. But the experimenter can measure the initial
readiness potential, and then ask the subject if there was a moment
before the action when the subject willed the action and the action had
not yet actually occurred. We don’t usually notice that lag, but once
attention is called to it, it is definitely there – isn’t it?

A variation on the experiment might help. Suppose that sometimes, the
apparatus that detects the readiness potential triggers a flash of light
or a beep as soon as the potential occurs. Since this is a good third of
a second before the movement actually begins, the subject should be able
to say when the flash or beep occurred in relation to the initial act of
willing and the subsequent result of a perceived movement. I think a
third of a second is long enough for a discrimination to occur at that
level of perception.

Best,

Bill P.

···

If functional neuroimaging ever
develops to the point where there is very fine spatial and temporal
resolution, it may be possible to see HPC in action, with cascading
changes in references levels caused by error signals at higher levels. In
the meantime, I wonder if there aren’t experimental techniques like Libet
has used that can give us better insight into how HPC works and what it
means for issues like free will.

–Gary

No virus found in this incoming message.

Checked by AVG Free Edition.

Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.6/617 - Release Date: 1/5/2007
11:11 AM

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0945 MST)]

Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 10:30 CSG –

···

On 1/5/07, Acree, Michael > AcreeM@ocim.ucsf.edu > wrote:

There has been
work on the readiness wave for some time. Back in the '60s the
British physiologist Grey Walter hooked up the cortical readiness
potential to operate a slide projector. Subjects had merely to
“will” the next slide to appear, and it did. The
experience was so unnerving that some subjects wet their pants.

Interesting. So what these subjects gained in slide projector control
they lost in bladder control!

Sounds like a bad trade to me!

Odd. Why don’t they wet their pants when they find that all they have to
do is will it in order to make one of their hands move?

Best,

Bill P.

[From Richard Kennaway (2007.01.05.1657 GMT)]

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0930 MST)]
A variation on the experiment might help. Suppose that sometimes, the apparatus that detects the readiness potential triggers a flash of light or a beep as soon as the potential occurs. Since this is a good third of a second before the movement actually begins, the subject should be able to say when the flash or beep occurred in relation to the initial act of willing and the subsequent result of a perceived movement. I think a third of a second is long enough for a discrimination to occur at that level of perception.

This has been done, by Libet himself. This is discussed in the paper that Gary Cziko posted. There is, it turns out, enough time for the conscious mind to decide not to make the movement. This is where Libet believes free will resides: in the ability to veto unwilled actions. He discusses (on pp.52-53) the question of whether the conscious veto might also be preceded by a readiness potential, and therefore (on his interpretation) not a free choice, but his discussion seems to wander into speculative fog. I think he wants to believe that there is room for free will in the vetoing action, but has no experiments putting it to the test.

Libet's interpretation of his results is the subject of debate. There's a whole issue of "Consciousness and Cognition" devoted to the matter (vol. 11, no.2, June 2002). Online but subscription-only, unfortunately. A typical comment on Libet: "At most, Libet's work shows not that volitions do not initiate actions, but that conscious volitions do not."

Personally, I've no idea what people mean by free will, other than the subjective experience of choosing. The idea that it is an uncaused cause results from taking the subjective experience to be an account of the underlying mechanism giving rise to that experience.

An interesting observation he mentions is that no readiness potential is observed preceding the exclamations of people with Tourette's syndrome, which they experience as involuntary.

···

--
Richard Kennaway

[From Bjorn Simonsen (2007.01.05,20:15 EUST)]

I wish All of You a Happy New Year.

From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.0930 MST)]

The way I see it is this. The person
deliberately, and
consciously
changes the reference level for the state

of the finger or wrist. That starts the voluntary action.

Then the person switches attention to the clock and

waits for his/her finger or hand to start moving, which

takes a small fraction of a second, and finally notes

the clock reading at the moment when the first

movement is sensed. The clock reading is now

considerably later than it was when the act was

initiated. Then the person has time to interrupt the

act or change it before it finishes. All actions have

a beginning, a middle, and an end, even when we

perceive them as single “events.”

Do I understand you correct when I say:

The person starts the experiment in imagination mode looking at the
clock. He imagines that he at a certain moment will move his finger.

  1.  At the same time he (in control mode) controls his perception that
    

the clock shall be e.g. 20 seconds past.

  1.  When the clock shows 20 seconds past, he control his perception of
    

a moving finger.

  1.  Is it possible that it is his imagination that is registered 550
    

ms before the act?

From Richard Kennaway
(2007.01.05.1657 GMT)

Personally, I’ve no idea what people mean by

free will, other than the subjective experience of choosing.

Neither I am enthusiastic over the concept “free will”.
I also ask myself why he name the electric
change RP.

bjorn

Lag in the sequence of willing,
willed act, and observation of time, is neither mysterious nor obscure,
but the starting point is both.
[From Bill Powers (2007.01.05.1950 <ST)]

From Bruce Nevin
(2007.01.05 14:27 EST) –

That is just what I think too.

Best,

Bill P.

[from Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 22:25 CST]

The whole question of willing something seems to me to center on the idea
of arbitrary changes, changes that are not part of the normal
operation of the hierarchy. That’s why I associate it with reorganization
and awareness rather than ordinary well-learned control processes that
can go on with or without awareness. I think we can, in a quiescent
state, arbitrarily initiate acts like raising a finger or blinking the
eyes, in the absence of specific stimuli. It is that kind of act that I
would associate with an act of will, and expect to see at the moment of
first activity in the brain. I don’t know what the willing agent is, but
I have no reason to doubt that it is there in me. I am it. I can
attribute automatic actions to “my brain”, but I’m the one who
does the willing.

According to HPCT, actions happen as a result of error, a mismatch between reference level and perception. So I would like to understand how these “arbitrary acts” arise from error.

If there is no disturbance (“stimulus”) pushing my perception away from the reference level, then it must be that the reference level has changed as a result of a reset from a higher system. If I decide to sit quietly and “arbitrarily” wiggle my finger to see what it’s like to “will an action,” I am now controlling a perception of seeing what it’s like to wiggle my finger voluntarily. So within a few seconds, I wiggle my finger and my higher control system is happy.

I don’t see how this is an arbitrary action that is “not part of the normal operation of the hierarchy.” Higher levels resetting lower reference levels seems to be quite normal operation of HPC.

–Gary

[From Bill Powers (2007.01.06.0130 MST)]

Gary Cziko 2007.01.05 22:25 CST –

According to HPCT, actions
happen as a result of error, a mismatch between reference level and
perception. So I would like to understand how these “arbitrary
acts” arise from error.

If there is no disturbance (“stimulus”) pushing my perception
away from the reference level, then it must be that the reference level
has changed as a result of a reset from a higher system. If I decide to
sit quietly and “arbitrarily” wiggle my finger to see what it’s
like to “will an action,” I am now controlling a perception of
seeing what it’s like to wiggle my finger voluntarily. So within a few
seconds, I wiggle my finger and my higher control system is
happy.

Yes, this seems to be the story. But then how does anything new ever come
into being? When there is no existing organization to correct an error,
how does that error ever get corrected? Or do we just die and let the
next generation try to mutate and get lucky, as the “pure”
(goalless) genetic algorithm proposes?
There may be some underlying motivation for these “arbitrary
acts,” such as a low level of permanent intrinsic error, but the
model then comes down to how the random changes of the E. coli method of
reorganization come about, and how they are experienced. To say they are
“random” changes is to say only that they are unrelated to any
existing systematic scheme and unpredictable in terms of any prior
causes. But isn’t that just what we think of as free will (where
“free” is a strictly relative term)?
This idea of reorganization, as I think of it, is concerned with
processes that are “meta” to the whole hierarchy of control.
They operate on it and through it but are not of it. They are – have to
be – present and working before the first new working control system in
the brain’s hierarchy comes into being. In fact it is the design of the
reorganizing system that is critical to evolution, for that is what must
be passed on from generation to generation. Otherwise no specific set of
genes would be able to build an organism that could survive in any
environment that is encountered. The reorganizing system is to the whole
organism as repair enzymes are to DNA. It contains the essential
blueprint from which the organism is constructed, just as repair enzymes
have to contain the esswential reference signals that specify how the DNA
is supposed to be organized – in those respects that must be preserved,
as opposed to those that must change to permit survival in a given
lifetime.
I don’t try to explain awareness and volition in terms of the hierarchy.
Awareness and volition are part of the architect, not the architecture.
There is “intelligent design” in my model, but it is not
intelligent in the sense of reasoning, planning, understanding, and all
those things the hierarchy becomes able to do – after
reorganization has worked it over.
I think that part of the difficulty in this discussion arises from the
difference between awareness, which is the mobile point of view that
selectively experiences activities in the hierarchy, and perception,
which is simply the way the nervous system represents the world inside
itself. The points of view themselves are structured by the way the
hierarchy has become organized, but without awareness there is no
consciousness of or from them.
Awareness is the Observer Self which is always the same regardless of the
point of view. But there are many other selves which are learned as the
hierarchy grows, and which the Observer Self can adopt as a point of view
from time to time as its focus changes. So who are we talking about when
we say “I” do something voluntarily? Involuntary acts, in an
adult hierarchy, must be far more prevalent than voluntary, seemingly
causeless and therefore effectively random, acts.
I don’t think many people, especially neuroscientists, think much about
these questions. This is all spooky, metaphysical, mystical voodoo to
most scientists. When you fasten your point of view to one or a few
levels in the hierarchy, they may become very well developed, but this
means that you lose touch with all the rest, and experience the world
from just one point of view, If you do this consistently enough, you
never see the difference between your Observer Self and that which you
are observing with. You have to move around among different points
of view to experience something that does not change as you do this. At
least that is my learned understanding of what is going on, as best I can
communicate it.

Best,

Bill P.

This is Phil Runkel, writing because on Jan 5, 2007, at 9:52 PM, Rick Marken wrote:

Psychology now has to borrow techniques and terminology from other, more respected sciences (like biology), in order to give the impression that it _is_ a science and that it is making progress in toward understanding how the mind works.

I agree with that except for the "now." I think psychologists have been borrowing terms from other sciences all along, though as a borrowing becomes popular, more and more psychologists pick up the terms not from the original writings, but from other psychologists, and the meaning gets distorted. That happened with "instincts," with general systems theory, and with cybernetics. No doubt you can think of other examples.

I think the reason so many psychologists so easily fall into saying, "This thing I am studying is just like X in biology [or physics, or chemistry, or...]" is that they are yearning for a model, but don't know how to ask how a thing works (the inner functions).

But aside from all that, I admire your valor in revisiting academia. I hope the welcomes will outweigh the buffets.

--Phil R.

[From Dick Robertson,2007.01.13.0948CDT]

Just peripherally connected to this discussion, have
you seen Evan Harris Walker's __the physics of
consciousness__? Of all the books I've looked into,
that were claimed to explain consciousness, this is
the first one I've seen that actually presents a
plausible, fact-driven approach, and, incidentally
an example that psychologists would do well to try
to emulate. Of course, he's a physicist.

Best,

Dick R

···

----- Original Message -----
From: Philip Runkel <runk@UOREGON.EDU>
Date: Thursday, January 11, 2007 10:33 pm
Subject: Re: Control and free will: Libet

This is Phil Runkel, writing because on Jan 5,

2007, at 9:52 PM,

Rick
Marken wrote:

> Psychology now has to borrow techniques and

terminology from

other,
> more respected sciences (like biology), in order

to give the

> impression that it _is_ a science and that it is

making progress

in
> toward understanding how the mind works.
>

I agree with that except for the "now." I think

psychologists have

been borrowing terms from other sciences all

along, though as a

borrowing becomes popular, more and more

psychologists pick up the

terms not from the original writings, but from

other psychologists,

and the meaning gets distorted. That happened

with "instincts,"

with
general systems theory, and with cybernetics. No

doubt you can

think
of other examples.

I think the reason so many psychologists so easily

fall into

saying,
"This thing I am studying is just like X in

biology [or physics, or

chemistry, or...]" is that they are yearning for a

model, but don't

know how to ask how a thing works (the inner

functions).

But aside from all that, I admire your valor in

revisiting

academia.
I hope the welcomes will outweigh the buffets.

--Phil R.