Free Will & Neurology: brain activity to conscious decision

Free Will and Neurology:

How could a brain made of ordinary matter give rise to a mind floating totally free from physical reality?

Experiment: Measuring brain activity in the run-up to a conscious decision.
Results: The brain is working on a decision at least 2 seconds before it becomes a conscious element.

Susan Greenfield: "The actions and decisions we take everyday, which feel like instant conscious choices, are the result of slowly emerging sub-conscious processes in the brain."

We have a free will and we make choices. "There's no way we can think away our own conviction of free will. We cannot abandon it, it's a necessary presupposition" says philosopher John Searle. But those choices are always the result of very personal but subconscious analysis.

This concept explained and much more in the documentary series "Brain Story" (2000) by the extraordinary British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). http://www.bbc.co.uk

Full description of the original documentary series:
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/837632.stm

Official "brain story" book, companion to the series:
- http://www.amazon.com/BBC-Brain-Story-Unlocking-Emotions/dp/0789478390/ref=sr...

About the author, Susan Greenfield:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Greenfield
and
- http://www.sirc.org/about/susan_greenfield.html

the "whole brain atlas" online:
- http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• QuarksAreStrange
• Free
• Will
• Brain
• BBC
• Neurology
• Experiment
• Conscious
• Decision
• Philosophy

[khijasmith]

some great inforamtion here thanks

[willbirful]

love the video man

[shellybirdy]

interesting video and very informative

[TheSpikeystuff]

really informative and interesting

[shandcunt]

@TheTheKRIT I jst read the whole series of comments you posted, I must say thank you, my father and I are going through a phase of talking about these mattters and this is going to be an awesome exercise in "Epistemic Rationality: Your doing it wrong"

[shandcunt]

@TheTheKRIT Figure out what you are talking about and then come back to me

Your argument seems to based on a lack of understanding of how biology works. I see what you are attempting to say but what you are doing is using simple intuitive reasoning and then extrapolating it out into areas where the same intuitive reasoning breaks down.

I tend to agree with the views of V.S Ramachandran and Sam Harris, both of whom are neuro scientists, maybe check them out bro, I found them interesting

[TheTheKRIT]

@TheTheKRIT broken, you see them as dead and you are unable to commnicate with them but its only because you are still stuck in your brain ( your radio) So you cant see the information that is coming into your mind you are seeing the bi product of what it creates. that is what death is.

[TheTheKRIT]

@TheTheKRIT a radio its receiving all these waves and producing a sound right? thats exactly what our brain is doing, its creating sense out of frequencies of information. But when you smash the radio do you here any sound? No so you say oh my radio broke, in a sense its dead. but in reality the waves of information that were there for the radio to recieve are not destroyed there is just no way to transfer them into something WE can hear. when someones brain shuts down they are also

[TheTheKRIT]

@TheTheKRIT is pointing in the direction that everything is created by consciousness and without it everything would be a superposition of endless possibilities. This is the same for your body. There is something perceiving your body and just like the problem of free will how do you know that the brain is actually exists if its just a perception of itself? If consciousness creates reality then the brain does not create consciousness. This is my example right here, our brain is like

[TheTheKRIT]

@TheTheKRIT there is no solid matter in reality, we are creating it. We know that our brain is made up of non "living" particles just like a rock so if the same basic energy has created a rock and your brain how are you conscious and the rock isnt? Lets keep in mind that in order to see a brain and how it works you have to erceive it with your own brain. So how do we actually know its there? We just have to assume but think about this way. Quantum physics