Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet has done pioneering experiments which provide the best evidence available with regard to the question of free will. He's one of the first scientists to study the subjective experiences of conscious awareness and correlate them with activity in the brain. In his best known experiment, he showed that before a voluntary action let's say a person decides to flick their wrist—there are telltale signs in the brain of their action 1/2 second before the person realizes they've even made a decision. Libet seems to have proven that the conscious will does not in fact initiate action. Libet has shown, however, that there is a "conscious veto" or what some call "free won't" by which our mind can inhibit action proposed by our subconscious. There is a short window of around 1/10 of a second after an idea becomes conscious in which a person can squelch it. Otherwise, it procedes.

Libet has shown that, in general, it takes about 1/2 second for information in our environment to become conscious. The half-second seems to be required to get a critical mass or neurons to work in synch on a single problem. We can react quicker than that—athletes do that frequently—but these reactions are pre-programmed and occur without conscious awareness. Baseball players, for instance, are not consciously aware of the arc of a pitch. They swing on instinct developed through practice. Also, when we speak, we generally are not aware of the words we are about to say, but rather have the gist in mind, and allow our unconscious to come up with the words.

Libet started out as a materialist, but after many years in the lab, he's concluded that what's known of the physical world cannot account for consciousness. The notion that the mind is reducible to the brain is, in his view, an unproven hypothesis.

Libet also argues that it is meaningful to speak of the "unconscious mind." Many who argue that consciousness is not reducible to the brain would nevertheless accept that the unconscious is reducible to the brain. Libet, however, seems to regard some of the unconscious as pre-conscious, just outside peripheral vision, needing only attention to make it conscious. I remain skeptical as to whether "unconscious mind" is useful terminology.
-- Mind Time (http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/05/08/212005.php)


This is precisely what one would expect given Schopenhauer's philosophy of the Will and Representation, although the interpretation is in error. This is due to the abysmal lack of recognition Schopenhauer's thought recieves.

Many who argue that consciousness is not reducible to the brain would nevertheless accept that the unconscious is reducible to the brain.

Is completely wrong headed. Consciousness is easily reducible to the brain, but the unconscious can be considered a purer objectification of the will, the will being the thing-in-itself.

Here is an essay about Wagner's Parsifal being a proto-Science Fiction and its connections to 'The Matrix':
Parsifal as Proto-SF (http://www.andrew-may.com/parsifal.htm)

Notice this in the above essay:

"... time and space are merely our way of perceiving things, but otherwise have no reality." To me, that seems an amazing insight for a mid-19th century European. It was still an amazing idea eighty years later when A E Van Vogt put it in his Null-A novels!

Not so good. This 'amazing insight for a mid 19th century European', is only amazing if you dismiss everything mid 18 & 19th century European thinkers were going on about. Space and time are a priori and thus reside within the subject as knowledge.

Do you understand the problem posed by Kant concerning the nature of the thing-in-itself?

Great. Now do you know how Schopenhauer solved it?

Do you understand the problem posed by Kant concerning the nature of the thing-in-itself? ... Now do you know how Schopenhauer solved it?
Will is the thing-in-itself for Schopenhauer.

It makes sense to say that the individual will underlies individual consciousness, but to say that it unconditionally determines the idea-world as well raises a problem.

On the one hand there is the will, which generates things without rhyme or reason, and then there is the world as idea, which has necessity inherent in it and therefore cannot be random. The latter cannot be the product of the former unless you want to refer back to a single primordial creation of the world as idea by the will, a single random act of will from which all else in the world has followed by necessity. Schopenhauer himself does not resolve that problem as far as I know, but then he doesn't have to resolve it because he can fall back on the Kantian assumption that the world itself is inherently contradictory.

I like Nietzsche's assessment that the stones with which Schopenhauer built his structure are more valuable than the system itself.

Then the answer to your original question, in all honesty, is 'no'. Sorry about that.

I had a feeling. Yanking the yank's chain, eh?

No. It is just that you need foundational knowledge in order to build upon. I think Schopenhauer expresses his ideas better than anyone else, so I reserve that to him alone (just in case I fuck it up).

Will is the thing-in-itself for Schopenhauer.

It makes sense to say that the individual will underlies individual consciousness, but to say that it unconditionally determines the idea-world as well raises a problem.

On the one hand there is the will, which generates things without rhyme or reason, and then there is the world as idea, which has necessity inherent in it and therefore cannot be random. The latter cannot be the product of the former unless you want to refer back to a single primordial creation of the world as idea by the will, a single random act of will from which all else in the world has followed by necessity. Schopenhauer himself does not resolve that problem as far as I know, but then he doesn't have to resolve it because he can fall back on the Kantian assumption that the world itself is inherently contradictory.

I like Nietzsche's assessment that the stones with which Schopenhauer built his structure are more valuable than the system itself.

Well Nietzsche would say that because all he ever did was build out of Schopenhauer's stones and if he hadn't convince himself that he was right to dismantle Schopenhauer's ediface, he would have been left there just holding his dick wouldn't he?

The latter cannot be the product of the former unless you want to refer back to a single primordial creation of the world as idea by the will, a single random act of will from which all else in the world has followed by necessity.

Not so. About what lies beyond space and time we cannot know. Just like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. There are certain things we cannot know. Schopenhauer and Kant helped define those limits of knowledge as surely as a Heisenburg or a Gödel. So your meditations simply make no sense because you are trying to work with tools that can recover no information on the subject.

Well Nietzsche would say that because all he ever did was build out of Schopenhauer's stones and if he hadn't convince himself that he was right to dismantle Schopenhauer's ediface, he would have been left there just holding his dick wouldn't he?



Not so. About what lies beyond space and time we cannot know. Just like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. There are certain things we cannot know. Schopenhauer and Kant helped define those limits of knowledge as surely as a Heisenburg or a Gödel. So your meditations simply make no sense because you are trying to work with tools that can recover no information on the subject.
I am not working with any tools except my recollection of what I read in Schopenhauer. I don't have to know anything about man's ability to know the world in order to point out a problem in Schopenhauer's system.

I think you are being a bit pompous. And the dick reference? You are quite the scholar. Vulgar and pompous at the same time.

Re-read Schopenhauer with that problem in mind and you will find it solved. And yes you do need to know the limits of man's knowledge when you claim the problem is that the man doesn't explain to you the unknowable.

Vulgar and pompus. Love it.

One of my favorite recollections of reading Schopenhauer is when in Vol II of WWR, Schopenhauer describes some of the behaviours that can end up causing a man to loose his sanity, and shit! if there wasn't an accurate description of Nietzsche there on the page.

A genius. I however am not a genius, so I would advise all interested parties to go study at the source.