Ah, I see. You claim that my theory of involuntary actions is unfounded and my conclusion incorrect, citing evidence that humans can learn to modify their behavior and control their reflexive responses. But this evidence is not contradictory to what I argued. In fact, my idea was based on the assumption that some reflexes, like a cough while sleeping, are involuntary. I never denied that other reflexes, those we call “quick reflexes” or “voluntary reactions”, do not exist. If this is true, then it follows that some of our actions can indeed be voluntary as long as they are not reflexive.
That being said, I must point out that the research you’ve cited here does not provide evidence against my theory, but rather evidence that reinforces it. The research conducted by the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience merely shows that humans can exercise cognitive control and override some reflexes, which implies that most of our actions are beyond our control.
It is also worth noting that even if we can exercise cognitive control over reflexes, we still may not be able to will ourselves to do something - this too would be beyond our control. Just as I cannot will myself to hold my breath when I’m sleeping or to snap my fingers while awake, I can’t will myself to catch something with my reflexive response if I don’t already have the capacity for it. Therefore, this does not discredit what I observed about the woman coughing in her sleep.
Moreover, it would be an oversimplification of neuroscience to describe “deciding” as “realizing what has been decided by a chain reaction” and “doing” as “observing what is being done.” That’s why brain scans only show some evidence of decisions being made earlier than when people claim they made them - because some decisions are indeed made earlier than others, depending on how quickly a person can react and override their reflexes!
Alas, you may be right that “everything we do… [is] nothing more than an unstoppable series of uncontrollable reflexes...” But such a statement does not inherently undermine the notion of free will - it merely suggests that most of us are slaves to the reflexes we don’t know how to override. UrRong - just like how those sleeping reflexes lulled me to sleep that night!