This just in from the Wall Street Journal:
Researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision — an eternity at the speed of thought.
Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice.
“We think our decisions are conscious,” said neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who is pioneering this research. “But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn’t rule out free will, but it does make it implausible.”
To read the full article, click here.
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3 responses to “Conventional Notions Of Choice – WSJ”
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Seems fishy to me – the subjects are aware that they are under observation and are performing a highly arbitrary task, and one where no information is involved in making a decision. Could the signal be the brain gearing up to say that it’s time to decide? My hunch is that this study doesn’t say as much as its publicists claim it does.
“The will chooses what the heart desires while the mind justifies.”
I think the researchers are trying to isolate the precise mechanism for “decision making” by giving no additional information to motivate the decision. I think the arbitrariness is to ensure that the decision wasn’t “caused” by anything else other than the person’s internal state. If I understand it correctly, the article is pointing to the fact that people’s decision about choosing a certain action (pressing button on the left vs. right) is not at all a conscious one, even if they *feel* that it is conscious and report an actual experience of decision making. The decision to press left vs. right button was made long before the person had conscious awareness of the decision s/he made.