Dear reader,
This post is the first of a series of posts dedicated to the subject of Judgment. As seen in the earlier post, “And The Verdict Is. . .”, I discussed cognitive biases that affect our judgment, for better or for worse. Learning about how information is processed in the brain is not only enlightening but also integral for making educated and thorough decisions. Over the course of the next posts, I will discuss topics and questions that probe and test the concept of judging, how judgment is formed and its effects. First off, I would like to address the concept of free will. It seems that if the human brain processes information that leads to an action, then humans must not have free will. However, this is not the case. Eddy Nahmias, from The Scientific American, discusses the debate between scientists who believe in free will and scientists who believe free will is an illusion. In his article titled, “Why We Have Free Will”, Nahmias details experiments that glean the surface of the unconscious level of the brain, where thoughts are formed before they are brought into the consciousness of the person. One experiment was by Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco, in the 1980s. Nahmias describes that Libet asked his subjects to flick their wrists whenever they wanted to (this is an excellent example of the cognitive bias called representativeness heuristic: the idea of what randomness should be). With electrodes attached to his subjects, Libet was able to monitor the electrical activity in their brains. One type of electrical signal was “readiness potential”, which occurs in the unconscious part of the brain. The other type of signal communicated the command to flick their wrist in the part of the brain that is consciously aware. Since the readiness potentials occurred about a quarter of a second before the signals that were conscious did, Libet concluded that decisions were made by the unconscious part of the brain, therefore contributing to the idea that free will does not exist. However, Nahmias argues that this could just as well be evidence of free will at work. Also, the action of flicking a wrist is habitual, and does not require much deliberation. Deciding to change a habit and debating on life choices are not habits that can be easily decided and executed, but take more time and effort. The process of those decisions may even take place in a separate part of the brain. Until there is more research about unconscious activity and better technology, potential answers will remain speculative, based off inferences from what technology can reveal at this time. Curious? Hungry for more? Stay tuned for these future possible posts: Split-second decisions and gut instincts Do physical surroundings affect our perception? Distorting memories
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHello. Welcome to all things psychology. Enjoy! Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|