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New study undermines the link between neural electrical activity and free will
For decades, researchers have debated whether the buildup of certain electrical activities in the brain indicates that human beings are unable to act out of free will.
Experiments spanning the 1960s and 1980s measured brain signals noninvasively and led many neuroscientists to believe that our brains make decisions before we do that human actions were initiated by electrical waves that did not reflect free, conscious thought.
However, a new article in
Trends in Cognitive Science argues that recent research undermines this case against free will.
This new perspective on the data turns on its head the way well-known findings have been interpreted. The new interpretation accounts for the data while undermining all the reasons to think it challenges free will.
For decades, researchers have debated whether the buildup of certain electrical activities in the brain indicates that human beings are unable to act out of free will. A new article argues that recent research undermines this case against free will.
How unconscious forces control our actions
By Magda Osman30th May 2021
Subliminal messaging and nudge psychology lead us to believe that we can be influenced without us realising, but just how powerful is our unconscious mind?
Sometimes when I ask myself why I ve made a certain choice, I realise I don t actually know. To what extent we are ruled by things we aren t conscious of? – Paul, 43, London
Why did you buy your car? Why did you fall in love with your partner? When we start to examine the basis of our life choices, whether they are important or fairly simple ones, we might come to the realisation that we don t have much of a clue. We might even wonder whether we really know our own mind, and what goes on in it outside of our conscious awareness.
BCI is heralded as enabling the disembodied agent to consciously command her interaction with the world, whereas research on the reading of motor intentions is often said to expose the illusion of conscious agency. What explains this divergence of attitudes?