Information and free will: brain scan value? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 14, 2011, 17:21 (4762 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A negative comment about fMRI brain scans; Don't believe they tell us as much as the science press hype tries to display:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204554204577024253508340744.html?KEYWORDS...

Thank you for this, David. A salient quote: “Until we realize that fMRI is not a window into the soul, that the images it produces are fuzzy statistical representations of a very complex organ, then we'll continue to be misled by the research.”

The complexity of these mechanisms is mind-boggling, and each finding makes it less clear what actually performs the boggle! I believe it was Tony (balance_maintained) who compared the brain to a computer and asked what operated it. The above choice of words (“not a window into the soul”) is striking, but even if the mechanisms do turn out to be self-operating materials, there is still no way one can confidently claim that chance is capable of starting off the process that led to their assembly. However, let me also maintain my own balance: nor would I confidently claim that chance is capable of spawning Abel’s creator gods on Planet X, or that a Universal Intelligence is capable of spawning itself. Maybe it’s time to simply marvel and give up trying to understand!