Two camps of scientists are battling on the idea of free will. The standing argument has been that no such thing exists as touted by Neuroscientists... until now.
Bjorn Brembs, a neurobiologist working at the Free University Berlin, in Germany has devised an experiment that he claims deprives the test subject of all stimuli from the outside world. Such an environment would be fair testing grounds for such a thing as the ever elusive free will.
The expirment: 1 fruit fly in a pure white box, devoid of any visual cues, suspended in air with its every movement tracked and monitored.
It has been held since the 1980's that free will does not exist. Why? Benjamin Libet of University of California San Francisco came to this conclusion after experimentation: before any conscience effort to produce movement begins, the brain is already initiating the movement. This is known as the "readiness potential". This concept has long been held in the circles of Neuroscience, relatively speaking. So, for Brembs to come along and challenge this is like Columbus challenging the notion that the world is flat, in some degree.
The conclusion of the matter: Brembs states that while he cannot prove that free will truly exists, he can, based on his experiments, rule out two other extremes, randomness and pure determinism.
You can read more here.
Some questions:
-Does free will exist? Or is it free agency that is more viable an option?
-What are the implications of this study in a religous sense?
-Do you find that Brembs expirement, based on what was provided in the article, devoid of external stimuli?
-Why do you think this is such a touchy subject in both the scientific realm as well as the religous realm?
-If you are religous and believe in some sort of election/predestination, how do you deal with free will arguments?
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