Barking up the wrong free: readiness potentials reflect processes independent of conscious will

2013 ◽  
Vol 229 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Schlegel ◽  
Prescott Alexander ◽  
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong ◽  
Adina Roskies ◽  
Peter U. Tse ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Readiness Potentials ◽  
Conscious Will

Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action

1985 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Libet
Keyword(s):  
Motor Performance ◽  
Motor Output ◽  
Voluntary Action ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Readiness Potentials ◽  
And Control ◽  
Conscious Intention ◽  
Conscious Will

AbstractVoluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological “readiness potentials” (RPs). With spontaneous acts involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins at about—550 ms. Such RPs were used to indicate the minimum onset times for the cerebral activity that precedes a fully endogenous voluntary act. The time of conscious intention to act was obtained from the subject's recall of the spatial clock position of a revolving spot at the time of his initial awareness of intending or wanting to move (W). W occurred at about—200 ms. Control experiments, in which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of any perceived event.For spontaneous voluntary acts, RP onset preceded the uncorrected Ws by about 350 ms and the Ws corrected for S by about 400 ms. The direction of this difference was consistent and significant throughout, regardless of which of several measures of RP onset or W were used. It was concluded that cerebral initiation of a spontaneous voluntary act begins unconsciously. However, it was found that the final decision to act could still be consciously controlled during the 150 ms or so remaining after the specific conscious intention appears. Subjects can in fact “veto” motor performance during a 100–200-ms period before a prearranged time to act.The role of conscious will would be not to initiate a specific voluntary act but rather to select and control volitional outcome. It is proposed that conscious will can function in a permissive fashion, either to permit or to prevent the motor implementation of the intention to act that arises unconsciously. Alternatively, there may be the need for a conscious activation or triggering, without which the final motor output would not follow the unconscious cerebral initiating and preparatory processes.

scholarly journals Veto and Vacillation: A Neural Precursor of the Decision to Withhold Action

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erman Misirlisoy ◽  
Patrick Haggard
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Temporal Pattern ◽  
Neural Precursor ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Action Sequences ◽  
Readiness Potentials ◽  
Preparatory Activity ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Motor Areas

The capacity to inhibit a planned action gives human behavior its characteristic flexibility. How this mechanism operates and what factors influence a decision to act or not act remain relatively unexplored. We used EEG readiness potentials (RPs) to examine preparatory activity before each action of an ongoing sequence, in which one action was occasionally omitted. We compared RPs between sequences in which omissions were instructed by a rule (e.g., “omit every fourth action”) and sequences in which the participant themselves freely decided which action to omit. RP amplitude was reduced for actions that immediately preceded a voluntary omission but not a rule-based omission. We also used the regular temporal pattern of the action sequences to explore brain processes linked to omitting an action by time-locking EEG averages to the inferred time when an action would have occurred had it not been omitted. When omissions were instructed by a rule, there was a negative-going trend in the EEG, recalling the rising ramp of an RP. No such component was found for voluntary omissions. The results are consistent with a model in which spontaneously fluctuating activity in motor areas of the brain could bias “free” decisions to act or not.

Global precedence and response activation: Evidence from LRPs

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Miller ◽  
David Navon
Keyword(s):  
Global Precedence ◽  
Local Shape ◽  
Global Shape ◽  
Preliminary Information ◽  
Readiness Potentials ◽  
Global Advantage ◽  
Response Activation ◽  
Lateralized Readiness Potentials

Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were measured in left/right/no-go tasks using compound global/local stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants responded to local target shapes and ignored global ones. RTs were affected by the congruence of the global shape with the local one, and LRPs indicated that irrelevant global shapes activated the responses with which they were associated. In Experiment 2, participants responded to conjunctions of target shapes at both levels, withholding the response if a target appeared at only one level. Global shapes activated responses in no-go trials, but local shapes did not. The results are consistent with partial-output models in which preliminary information about global shape can partially activate responses that are inconsistent with the local shape. They also demonstrate that part of the global advantage arises early, before response activation begins and probably before recognition of the local shape.

The Chevalier’s Secret: Emma Hardinge Britten and the Dawn of American Occultism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C Thompson
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Human Spirit ◽  
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ◽  
Structured Approach ◽  
Conscious Will ◽  
And Training

Abstract In 1876, prominent spiritualist medium and writer Emma Hardinge Britten published two books written by the Chevalier Louis de B., arguably a pseudonym she used to disguise her own opinions about the nature of the soul and the power of the occult will. As American spiritualism fell into disrepute—dogged by cases of fraudulent mediums and a culture of excess—occultism, typified at the time by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, rose up to replace it. Britten saw the potential that Blavatsky’s views on the development of the conscious will, the existence of a spirit hierarchy, and training with skilled adepts could have for spiritualism’s much less structured approach to supernaturalism, but she worried over occultism’s dismissive attitude toward a unified concept of the soul. Blavatsky tended to fracture the self into several parts in her writing, dismissed the prospect of human spirit communication, and challenged the notion that all human souls were immortal. I argue that Britten created the Chevalier in order to challenge spiritualist orthodoxy while maintaining her identification as a medium who believed sincerely in the spiritualist concept of the soul. I discuss three major areas in which Britten sought to negotiate a space between spiritualism and occultism: the consequences of mediumistic passivity, the existence of non-human spirits, and the predominance of a secret Indian brotherhood at the head of an occult hierarchy.

Hypnosis and Will

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Everyday Experience ◽  
Multiple Personality ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Conscious Will

This chapter explains how hypnosis involves a significant departure from the everyday experience and exercise of conscious will. The hypnotized person experiences the causation of his actions in an unusual way, as being generated less by the self and more by the hypnotist. This is not only a feeling but involves a kind of actual transfer of control from person to hypnotist. What is equally odd, though, is that the range of what can be controlled changes during hypnosis. In this sense, while hypnosis may undermine the experience of will, it seems paradoxically to expand and alter the force of will. This is why hypnosis has been implicated in many of the curiosities of will, including possession, multiple personality, and automatisms.

scholarly journals Towards an Object-Oriented Ethics: Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and the Physics of Objective Evil

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Drew M. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Arthur Schopenhauer ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Conscious Will

AbstractObjects are inert, passive, devoid of will, and as such bear no intrinsic value or moral worth. This claim is supported by the argument that to be considered a moral agent one must have a conscious will and be sufficiently free to act in accordance with that will. Since material objects, it is assumed, have no active will nor freedom, they should not be considered moral agents nor bearers of intrinsic ethical vale. Thus, the apparent “moral neutrality” of objects rests upon a kind of subject/object or mind/body dualism. The aim of this paper is to explore two paths by which western thought can escape this dualism, re-valuate the alleged “moral neutrality” of material objects, and initiate a sort of “object oriented ethics,” albeit with surprising results. To do so, this paper explores the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza to interrogate both the claim that material objects have no will and that freedom is the necessary condition for ethical responsibility. This paper concludes by arguing that not only should objects been seen as bearers of their own ethical value, a determinate judgement can be made regarding that value through a basic understanding of the laws of physics.

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