Fruit Flies and Free Will

[ThreeMartini]

I know the topic of free will has been discussed previously. I came across this article and wanted to post it FYI.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18684016/?GT1=9951

[bigmonkey]

Thanks for the link.

What was most interesting about that article was how these neurobiologists were essentially looking for something whcih is very controversially defined. The nature of free will is a philosophical issue. They found patterns of how these fruit-flies act according to some mathematical theorem and use this as evidence that they have free will, but quite clearly one could say that the flies are determined by this theorem and therefore have no free will. Somehwere else they likened degree of free will to degree of spontaneity, but it is consistent with our best scientific theories that spontaneity is really just unobserved rule-following.