Vale Wheeler, and Libet updated

Daniel Holz at Cosmic Variance has a beautifully written obit for John Wheeler. We are grateful for the time the great thinkers spend on us students.

Wired has an article on the updating of the classic experiments by Benjamin Libet on the fact that conscious choices occur after the brain has already begun a task.

More like this

Going off to a rugby alumni weekend generally requires entering a 48-hour news blackout, at least for me. Of course, the outside world doesn't stop just because I'm enjoying myself, so I emerge from my fog this morning to find that John Archibald Wheeler passed away. The New York Times obit is here…
Our brains are shaping our decisions long before we become consciously aware of them. That's the conclusion of a remarkable new study which shows that patterns of activity in certain parts of our brain can predict the outcome of a decision seconds before we're even aware that we're making one. It…
Holz at Cosmic Variance comments I only met Wheeler once that I recall. Interesting man. Many years ago, I was in Japan and needed some assistance from the US embassy. The INS officer looked at my papers, looked up and said: "you're a physicist? Do you know John Wheeler?" Fortunately, I had then…
Phil Plait brings to my attention that John Archibald Wheeler died yesterday. As Phil says: John Archibald Wheeler was a genius, an amazing physicist who felt that teaching as well as research was important. His students included Richard Feynman, widely recognized as one of the true geniuses of all…

This (Libet) seems to be another nail in the coffin of mind/body dualism. If the brain is busy doing the requisite work for a decision long before we're aware of our decision, then it can't been a separate mind doing the decision making. Brain functioning seems to be the mind. This is what my psych unit teaches anyway. Add to that the fact that a immaterial brain has to violate the law of conservation of energy to affect a material brain/body and dualism seems in trouble.
Or have I misunderstood everything?

By Brian English (not verified) on 13 Apr 2008 #permalink

Shades of Ted Chiang's "What's Expected of Us" -- though (@Brian) he uses it to make a point about determinism, not dualism.

What a piece of bunk.
You can see a more concise description under
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2112.html

and the supplementary figures under
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/suppinfo/nn.2112_S1.h…

The prediction accuracy before the conscious decision is 60% and jumps to 75% when SMA is activated (which is *after*
the conscious decision). That is lousy and doesn't legitimate the wording "Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand". Dear friends, 60% isn't a "consistent prediction" and telling that "not completely accurate" is a severe understatement.