Decisions

Ever get stressed about the free will question? Do we make our choices ourselves, or do chemical reactions make them for us and just kind of force us to play along?

In an experiment that tested people's brains while they were making a (notably pointless) choice, scientists were able to monitor unconscious sectors of the people's minds to figure out what decision they would make seven seconds before they thought that they actually decided. In other words, even though people consciously confirmed their choices as ones made purposefully, the readings suggested their unconscious minds sorted things out and then their conscious minds just went along with the committee.

So just what does that mean, exactly? It doesn't mean we have no free will, necessarily. Just because our conscious minds have a monopoly on our sense of self doesn't make them any more legitimate than the rest of our brains. Well. You know. I guess.

To be honest, even the scientists involved in this experiment got a little squirmy about it. From the article:

Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts -- even up to 7 seconds ahead of time -- how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

So, we learn for sure from this experiment that stupid decisions such as choosing a hand for button pushing are prepared in advance for our conscious minds to receive, but we don't know for sure whether that choice, once prepared, couldn't be rejected consciously if we had some legitimate reason.

We also don't know if consciousness plays a part in more important decisions that might bring morals, emotions, or anticipation of future events into play in a complicated way. Decisions that might have consequences.

But it is one of those spooky suggestions that point towards a world where we might only be passively watching ourselves and trying to make sense of it all.

Maybe. To me, it's more likely that it's just a sign that we're a little bit bigger than the conscious selves that float in our heads analyzing ourselves and the things around us. There's a lot going on behind the curtain. The hidden stuff belongs to us too, though. Don't panic.