You and others are right in that Brembs was perhaps confused about the
difference between spontaneity and free will.
But perhaps the experiment, in demonstrating spontaneity, does weigh against
the idea of the fly being programmed?
Robert:
1. Brembs and his colleagues reasoned that if fruit flies (Drosophila
melanogaster) were simply reactive robots entirely determined by their
environment, in completely featureless rooms they should move completely
randomly.
Yes, but no one has ever argued that a flier is a stateless machine. It seems
like their argument ignores the concept of internal state. If they went through
all this trouble just to prove that the brain of the flies has an internal
state, it seems they wasted a lot of time on something trivial.
I cannot see how the concept of "free will" has got anything to do with this.
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