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Free choice and neuroscience

שו”תCategory: philosophyFree choice and neuroscience
asked 4 years ago

Hello Rabbi
I watched the rabbi’s lessons on free choice, and there’s something I couldn’t understand-
Shouldn’t the fact that it is possible to artificially create a consciousness of choice even when the person does not choose cause us to abandon the intuition that we have a choice?
While this fact does not prove the claim that there is no choice, could it not at least undermine the intuitive advantage of libertarianism?
Even if we assume that there is consciousness – and that there is a mental dimension, it can be one-way – the physical affects the spiritual, but the spiritual does not affect the physical…

And also something else – in the experiments conducted by Modric, of choosing rather than picking, (and in Libet’s experiments in general) they examined when the person consciously decided to choose, and when there was a signal in his brain that showed that he was choosing. If I understood correctly, in her experiment, they saw that the person’s conscious decision to choose preceded the signal. But if it is really true that the person’s very awareness of his choice has a physical manifestation, then there was something that preceded the act of choosing.

In short, I did not understand the relationship (in the libertarian understanding) between the act of spiritual choice and the consciousness of choice, the representation of which can be seen in physical dimensions.
thanks


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מיכי Staff answered 4 years ago
No. Of course, this weakens it a bit, and intuition still has an advantage until proven otherwise. You can also be made to see Grandma Yocheved before your eyes even after she dies, and you still don’t doubt what your eyes see. The fact that it is possible to create an illusory sensation in a person does not make us doubt our sensory system.

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מיכי Staff replied 4 years ago

The moment of choice is obtained from the person's own report, not from measurement.

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