Neuroscience and Free Will - Libet's Experiment

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If Eccles says the mind uses the brain as a tool then it is in direct opposition with the entire experiement. It is the exact opposite result.

[debeastdueeast]

I'm no expert in this, but in what way does this prove any form of Dualism? Nothing beyond our brain is proven to have been invoked in this experiment, so I'm skeptical of your conclusion. Choice is derived from the conscious feeling of wanting to do or to not do something, so there shouldn't be any sort of 'delay'. Since there is one, however, we can assume that, as a physical system, our brain reacts to situations in a predictable manner, as is with any other physical system.

[Shady Fatnassy]

This may help:

Brain = hardware

Mind = software

consciousness = process

[Andy Wells-Smith]

That's just stating your opinion the data is completely consistent with (and in fact predicted by) Eccles and Popper.

What are you talking about? There's no consensus within the scientific community (Look it up!)

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This and the newer improved experiments all clearly show conscious decisions are not conscious at all. They are made outside our consciousness, outside of our 'mind'.  They are made in the brain.

There's plenty of consensus for that crystal clear result. Of course a lot of people outside the science community hardly know about the experiment let alone its result. That's not lack of consensus it's lack of knowing about it.

[Andy Wells-Smith]

I'm talking about Eccles and Popper's model of consciousness.

By the way, there's no consensus as to what this experiment proves.

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I don't think people understand what a huge deal this experiment is.  It basically proves we are machines with no free-will. If that's not the biggest result from science *ever*, then I don't know what is.

Maybe when we realize consciousness is an illusion of the same type, that might be the biggest actually.

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"you’d expect a delay between the mind’s decision and it coming to consciousness"

You're mixed up, the mind is supposed to be our consciousness remember? So you wouldn't expect a delay because they are the same thing under a different name.

[Andy Wells-Smith]

If anything Benjamin Libet’s experiment confirmed the Dualist-internationalist position. Sir John Eccles suggested that the mind uses the brain as a tool, now given the transmission of neural signals (at a finite speed) you’d expect a delay between the mind’s decision and it coming to consciousness.