Q&A: Free Will
Free Will
Question
In your classes on free will, it is argued in favor of the inner feeling of the experience of choice. My question is: since according to the experiment showing that the brain’s decision is made before the feeling of choice—at least in cases of random choice without value-based considerations and the like—doesn’t that cast a heavy shadow over the reliability of that feeling?
Answer
This has already been asked more than once, and I’ve answered it.
First, even if it turns out that my eyes deceive me (a fata morgana), I do not lose trust in them. The same is true of intuition. Haven’t you ever had a feeling that you had come up with a correct idea, and then it turned out not to be correct? Did that make you lose trust in the feeling of correctness?
Second, when you press a button there is no feeling of choice, only a feeling of decision. That is not the same thing.