Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
lowing is an excerpt from Section 7.2, “Is Freedom of the Will an
Illusion?”
Over the next half minute suddenly raise the index
finger of your right hand three or four times. Pick your
moments spontaneously as you go along. Try to notice
whether there is any appreciable time lag in between
choosing your moment and your finger beginning to
move.
OK. If your subjective experiences were the same as
mine, the movement in your finger muscles will have fol
lowed on more or less immediately from our conscious
decision to initiate the action. The astonishing thing is
that a technician equipped with the right instruments
would have known you were going to raise your finger
about a second before the movement began. H. H.
Kornhuber and his associates performed this classic ex
periment in the seventies, using subjects with a number of
electrodes fixed to the scalp and finger. It was discovered
that a characteristic pattern of brain activity would begin
to build up as much as one and a half seconds before the
finger movements commenced. . . . In context, a techni
cian observing the onset of this activity in your brain
would know that you are about to raise your finger—and,
chillingly, would know this the best part of a second be
fore your subjective experience of freely picking your mo
ment. The implications of this experiment are still the
subject of heated debate. However, it has influenced a
number of writers in their belief that our subjective expe
rience of free will is an illusion.
Copeland, Jack. Artificial Intelligence.
A Philosophical Introduction.
Blackwell Publishers, 1993, p. 142.
In philosophy, the notion of free will is that intelligent beings
are free to make choices. If several alternatives are possible in a situ
ation, then the doctrine of free will states that the individual is free
to make any of the choices. In our experience as human beings, we
feel that some choices are left completely up to us, and we can do
whatever we want arbitrarily. When given a choice of which flavor
of ice cream we want at a store, we feel that we are not bound in
