Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00567)

<kpauljohnson@y...> wrote:
Good morning,

Recently I delved into this challenging new book which surveys all 
recent research on consciousness and thus should be of interest to 
most people here. This book by Carter provides plenty of food for 
thought. What intrigues me especially is research that shows brain 
activity preparatory to movement occurs *before* conscious 
intention. The researcher is named Libet and his "experiment showed 
that the brain starts to execute a voluntary movement before the 
person `decides' to do it. A wave of neural activity known as the 
Readiness Potential-- a marker of action to come-- was detected 
nearly half a second before the person reported being aware of their 
decision to act. The actual action occurred shortly after, when the 
neural processes which started with the Readiness Potential produced 
the contraction of muscle fibers."(p. 84)

This would seem to confirm the Fourth Way teachings that "man is a 
machine" and "no one can do." But Libet is resistant to abolishing 
free will, and comes up with an ingenious way to rescue it, that also 
is reminiscent of Gurdjieff: we can't freely decide to do something, 
because the conscious decision is really an aftereffect. But in the 
half second between Readiness Potential and action, when we do become 
conscious we can *stop* the action in progress. And this is the 
extent of our free will. Free won't, rather

Comments?

Paul