Ghost in the Machine

The Captain's Chair

British philosopher Gilbert Ryle mocked dualism as the "Ghost in the Machine."

If your soul is non-physical, how does it move your physical arm?

Does a ghost have mass? If yes, physics detects it. If no, it passes through walls—and crucial neurons—without affecting them.

This implies two terrifying possibilities:

1. Epiphenomenalism: You are just watching the movie.

2. The Illusion: You think you are pulling the levers, but the levers move themselves.

The Readiness Potential

In 1983, Benjamin Libet connected participants to an EEG and asked them to flex their wrist whenever they felt like it.

The timeline was shocking:

1. -550ms: The Brain prepares to move (Readiness Potential).

2. -200ms: The Subject consciously decides "I will move."

3. 0ms: The Wrist moves.

The machine starts the engine 350 milliseconds before the driver finds the keys.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner called this "The Illusion of Conscious Will." Your sense of agency is a post-hoc narrative added by the brain to track causality, not the cause itself.

Free Won't

But Libet found a loophole.

Between the conscious awareness (-200ms) and the movement (0ms), there is a window.

You cannot stop the impulse from arising, but you can stop it from executing.

This is Free Won't.

The neural mechanism is the Right Inferior Frontal Gyrus (rIFG)—the brain's braking system.

You are not the Captain of the battleship who orders the engines to start. You are the Safety Officer who has 0.2 seconds to hit the emergency stop button.

The Inheritance of Perspective

Volition is often retrospective. The Prefrontal Cortex functions primarily to veto or guide, not to initiate, the impulses of the Limbic system. Control is exercised not through brute force, but through the training of automaticity. You cannot choose your thoughts, but you can choose which ones you mistakenly call "Mine."