Neurowill III
Consider freewill on a continuum.
Attending the neuroscience colloquia at UBC made me form an impression of our nervous system as somewhat of a computer made up of really complex IF-THEN propositions. Take the simplest connectome known, the C. Elegans, made up of the 302 neurons whose wiring we have already mapped. This network codes for all of the worms behavior in what could be argued to be a predetermined manner: hit an object reverse, otherwise move forward with an x% chance of changing direction. The key thing is, when will it decide to change direction? what direction will it change to? thats where the concept of free will comes in. Right now, we must take an instrumentalist position because there is nothing in the NS we can point to to attribute this behavioral change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgZHziFWR7M
On the other hand, one could argue for the following: After spending a month in an embrionic stem cell research lab I've come to realize how infinitely complex molecular biology can be. This can be comparable to particle physics in the sense that, yes we could in theory predict the position of atoms if we knew their current state, but things are way too complex for the limits of our computational power. The biggest difficulty one faces in such research is to keep the cell in its undifferentiated pluripotent state. The problem is, anything, really anything, will make that cell differentiate. Poke it and thats a sign to become a blood cell, breath on it and it'll turn into a neuron. Taking advantage of this we can induce differentiation, we can set the cell's agenda, we can 'determine' its future by altering the conditions in which it lives. Can this not be the case with the C. Elegans? Move forward until calcium concentration at neuron no. 52 reaches x% in relation to potassium concentration in neuron no. 134 then move back and move forward again.
Now consider human beings.
Dre (Andre Beu)
