[Avodah] torah u_mada conference

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 02:13:25PM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
: 2. Prof. Rosenberg discussed free will and claimed that the greatest
: challeneges these days comes from Brain science. In particular from
: observations that the time between the brain receiving information and
: acting is frequently less than 500 milliseconds leaving no time for a
: rational decision.

I already discussed Libet's experiments on list, and suggested some
responses. One thing to note is that data collected in 2009 might
show that the original results weren't all that conclusive after
all. See <http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=233>

See <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=F#FREE%20WILL%20VS%20PHYSICS>.
(See <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol25/v25n344.shtml#03> for quotes
from Wikipedia and Conscious Entities blog. And I collected a number of links
at <http://lists.aishdas.org/htdig.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org/2010q2/016670.html>.


1- It doesn't prove anything in the negative. IOW, perhaps free will is
a filter for which impulses are stopped before action, not which impulses
are started. "Free won't" is the term usually associated with this response.

2- The measure for how long it takes to make a conscious decision could
well be less than the time it takes to register awareness that one did
so. So, event 1, consciously deciding, takes less than Libet's 350 ms,
but event 2, noticing one decided, takes more. (And then there is a
potential event 3, noticing one noticed, if one is thinking about free
willed decision-making while deciding what to type. And now an event 4,
noticing I noticed that I noticed... But no event 5, since my mind gets
lost in that many indiractions.) From the blog entry cited above.

3- According to REED, bechirah only occurs at one nequdah, the battlefront
between yeitzer hara and yeitzer hatov, or middos, or any other conflict.
So, even if we did prove that at times we do respond without conscious
awareness doesn't rule out REED's shitah.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter