But before reaching any sweeping conclusions, it is important to remember that this study looked at a very rudimentary kind of action. The decision to move a finger hardly ranks as the same kind of free will we exercise when we make moral choices or major life decisions. To conclude that we aren’t fully responsible for our actions, for example, would be extremely far-fetched.
And lets consider two more things. First, Fried and his colleagues used their patients’ reports on decision-to-move times; it is possible that people are just very bad at accurately remembering or reporting when they made such decisions (although it is unlikely that they would be wrong to the tune of over a second). Second, the decision to move a finger – especially when that’s the only thing you are supposed to do – might develop gradually rather than occurring at a single time. (Try it yourself: hold your finger against a surface, and wait till the urge to tap it causes you to. You may find that this urge isn’t an all-or-none thing, and you wait till it is strong enough to actually go ahead.)
But before reaching any sweeping conclusions, it is important to remember that this study looked at a very rudimentary kind of action. The decision to move a finger hardly ranks as the same kind of free will we exercise when we make moral choices or major life decisions. To conclude that we aren’t fully responsible for our actions, for example, would be extremely far-fetched.
And lets consider two more things. First, Fried and his colleagues used their patients’ reports on decision-to-move times; it is possible that people are just very bad at accurately remembering or reporting when they made such decisions (although it is unlikely that they would be wrong to the tune of over a second). Second, the decision to move a finger – especially when that’s the only thing you are supposed to do – might develop gradually rather than occurring at a single time. (Try it yourself: hold your finger against a surface, and wait till the urge to tap it causes you to. You may find that this urge isn’t an all-or-none thing, and you wait till it is strong enough to actually go ahead.)