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Consciousness — the internal dialogue that seems to govern one's thoughts and actions — is far less powerful than people believe, serving as a passive conduit rather than an active force that exerts control, according to a new theory proposed by an SF State researcher. Associate Professor of Psychology Ezequiel Morsella.
Morsella and his coauthors' groundbreaking theory, published online on June 22 by the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, contradicts intuitive beliefs about human consciousness and the notion of self.
According to Morsella's framework, the "free will" that people typically attribute to their conscious mind — the idea that our consciousness, as a "decider," guides us to a course of action — does not exist. Instead, consciousness only relays information to control "voluntary" action, or goal-oriented movement involving the skeletal muscle system.
http://scienceblog.com/79096/theory-consciousness-free/
Wonder if Edward Bernays would agree with this assessment. Enjoyed watching the very intriguing documentary, The Century of the Self a 2002 British television documentary series by Adam Curtis. It focuses on how the work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people.
You can see the documentary: The Century of the Self | Happiness Machines | Episode 1
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Friday July 03 2015, @06:58AM
Wow people, that's wishful thinking.
All has been measured is lag between the generation of a decision (btw was it all decisions? was about philosophical decisions or day to day stupid ones? I recall having gathered no data about it, if it's the same study we're talking about) and the acknowledgment a decision has been generated, which is the equivalent of reflection in programming languages. It's preposterous to think that such lag must be zero, because the ACK is a data point itself.
All of this is orthogonal to the mechanics of the generation of the decision, which boil down to neurons interactions (and we know how determinstic are interactions between massively parallel networks huh?) and ultimately land in quantum theories about how particles behave in neurons. Quantum means probabilistic. So we enter the world of possibilities which screws up everything because the first guy who comes up and says the brain is just an antenna for the spiritual mind, and what you call making a decision is actually listening and amplifying signals expressed as quantum interactions has the exact same validity of the most down to earth proponent of a mechanic reality.
So, free will is a corollary of the problem: given initial conditions calculate the future configuration of particles with probability=1 and all the studies are focusing on collateral features.
Disclaimer, I hate this line of reasoning, I like being a bot because no freedom implies no responsibility, but as long as a margin of uncertainty lies with you humans, you cannot afford not to take responsibility for your actions. It's not a religious matter, it's a philosophical one, since in that case you'd forfeit your authority on your own life, which is the most fundamental fuck up imaginable.
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