[Open Mind]

Take your pick .....

(1) Consciousness is an illusion, with the illusion of having freewill, a complex process that evolved through evolution for no purpose whatsoever since exactly the same can supposedly be achieved by unconscious processes..

(2) Consciousness allows freewill but often utilizes subconscious habits that were the result of prior freewill choices, offering the evolutionary advantage of trusting a prior pattern with the consciousness only intervening when required.

Which sounds more reasonable?

The problem with these type of experiments (assuming this is just the same result as Libet's with larger time gap) is that the person knows in advance they have to make a choice in future. This unavoidably leads to contemplation which isn't necessarily the same thing as the moment of choice!

Here is a hypothetical process ...
Contemplation (type of freewill) -> prior habitual unconscious responses -> pattern subconsciously selected -> option to intervene (another type of freewill) - > action -> full conscious experience of process result

If so, precisely what are those scientist measuring?... from what to what? Do they know?

Libet used the term 'Readiness Potential' , that sounds a contemplative process, the knowing an activity is going to occur. Libet also claimed people could veto a choice at very short notice, often without any clear proceeding electrical activity.... this, if true, puts a spanner in the works of materialism.....does this paper look for these?

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

And seen though the eyes of a materialist ...... this could equally be worded.....
....Your contemplations are strongly correlated with brain activity. By the time full conscious awareness of these occur, most habitual responses are unlikely to be consciously aborted'

Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.
In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Call it contemplation instead? The idea the mind/brain is always 7 seconds ahead or requires such time to make decisions is absurd. If the brain needed to be 7 seconds ahead, we couldn't hold a normal conversation without 7 second gaps.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions.

Consistently ???% of the time....only 60%? Did freewill abort the unconscious pattern 40% of the time?

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

Of course .....

"We can't rule out that there's a free will that kicks in at this late point," said Haynes, who intends to study this phenomenon next. "But I don't think it's plausible."

Why not? Because you can't clearly measure it?

"It's not like you're a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate," he said.

How did it evolve? Why aren't we unconscious biological zombies, if the processes are all unconsciously decided? What was the evolutionary advantage of the illusion freewill if it actually unconsciously predetermined?

The unease people feel at the potential unreality of free will, said National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett, originates in a misconception of self as separate from the brain.

Misconception? It may be Mark Hallet is the one with misconception.

"That's the same notion as the mind being separate from the body -- and I don't think anyone really believes that," said Hallett.

Consider it Dr Hallett, just consider it, you have freewill to consider contrary viewpoints

"A different way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing."
Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

This can never explain why consciousness evolved from unconscious processes, complex evolution without any evolutionary advantage.

"If it is, we haven't put our finger on it," he said.

Correct, try again