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Q&A: Free Choice and Neuroscience

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Free Choice and Neuroscience

Question

Hello Rabbi,
I watched the Rabbi's lectures on free choice, and there's something I couldn't understand—
Doesn't the fact that it is artificially possible to produce a consciousness of choosing even when the person is not actually choosing mean that we should abandon the intuition that we have free choice?
True, that fact does not prove the claim that there is no choice, but can't it at least undermine the intuitive advantage of libertarianism?
Even if we assume that there is consciousness—and that a mental dimension exists—it could still be one-way: the physical affects the spiritual, but the spiritual does not affect the physical…

And one more thing—in the experiments conducted by Liad Mudrik, of choosing and not picking, (and in general in Libet's experiments), they checked when the person consciously decided to choose, and when there was a signal in his brain showing 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 a person's very awareness of his choice has a physical manifestation, then there was something that preceded the act of choosing itself.

In short, I didn't understand the relationship (in the libertarian understanding) between the spiritual act of choice and the consciousness of choice, whose representation can be seen in physical dimensions.
Thank you

Answer

No. It obviously weakens it somewhat, and still the intuition has an advantage until proven otherwise. You can also be made to see Grandma Yocheved standing before your eyes even after her death, and still you do not doubt what you see. The fact that it is possible to create an illusory sensation in a person does not cause us to doubt our sensory system.

Discussion on Answer

Michi (2021-12-02)

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

השאר תגובה

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