Cruel Intentions

Interesting article about a new brain scanning technique that allows scientists to determine a persons “intent”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2009229,00.html

Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scientists were able to predict a person’s actions with 70% accuracy. Not too shabby considering we don’t really know where “intent” comes from. It sounds largely empirical. Match activity to ultimate actions. This will require a bit more work before it becomes as powerful as it might be.

Clearly a great case of “correlation” linked to “causation”, only in this case the causation can be diverted. I might wish to slug my arch nemesis “Dr. DoB” in the hallway after he is particulary snotty to me, but I won’t. Is there a secondary “intention” that kicks in?

“What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?” (A Scanner Darkly)

Of course the standard fears of “Minority Report” movie-style dystopias are already popping up. Blah blah blah. It’s a technology, it will be abused, it will be used for the worst possible ends imaginable. We know that. We’re heading for disaster.

BUT, that being said, what I find fascinating is it helps us take one step closer to determining the source of “free will” and “intention”. I have often had heated debates with my philosopher friend, Dr. G., over this very topic. I don’t claim to understand where he thinks “thoughts come from”, he is a theist after a fashion and supports the idea of the non-physical as real, so thoughts and “will” for him can and do have an underlying non-physical component which is what he calls the soul.

But I’m a materialist and I don’t buy that. I am under the impression that my thoughts and my personality are the result of complex electrochemical interactions in my brain. But I still don’t know where my “will to do something” comes from.

Dr. G. suggests that by my metric if we knew all of the predicate physics and chemistry my brain was exposed to, then we could predict with 100% accuracy what the next thought would be that I would have. But yet I “feel” like I have free will and can choose to think about certain things, which feeds into Dr. G’s smug assertion that I do, indeed, have a non-physical “soul”. Ha. Or are my thoughts fully pre-determined? Are they randomly generated from some “seed” thought?

But it does make me wonder. Where does intention come from? Will this scanning technique lead to a deeper understanding of “free will”?