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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:28AM
Free Will doesn't exist! Chow down on those Willies!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:37AM
The idea had been kicked around for quite some time now. They showed that some of our actions precede the thought of them in the head.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:49AM
What's so groundbreaking is now these stupid twats have their names in the news. They're somebodies! They're gonna be getting shittons of grant monies now that they're known. The old rehashed bullshit research doesn't fucking matter. What matters is the MONEY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @03:05AM
Duh, you live in a capitalist society.
(Score: 2) by fleg on Friday July 03 2015, @03:30AM
indeed, Nietzsche explored the idea quite a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche_and_free_will [wikipedia.org]
i recommend starting with "Human, all too human"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @06:43AM
No, I meant physically, not philosophically. The people who muck around with MRI machines demonstrated that mechanical actions precedes brain signals by a few milliseconds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @10:56PM
Ref
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism [wikipedia.org]
(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.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:42AM
The voices say I do have free will but I'm just a gullible fucking pushover who does everything they say to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:50AM
I tell them to get f***ed and it works out okay most of the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:55AM
I tried that once but then one of the voices got all pissed off and forced me to stab myself to death. She's much happier now that the old me is dead!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 03 2015, @01:58AM
That was the ultimate result of reading the original short story of which The Matrix is a blatantly derivative work. I dont recall the title or author but I expect my sister can dig it up as she still lives in moscow, Idaho where I found it in the county library.
I discussed this in Living with Schizoaffective Disorder which made front page at kuro5hin on 2003:
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/ [warplife.com]
Some ither kuron asked for my take on The Matrix. While I knew it was a huge hit and so quite like a really good movie, until then I never had any particular interest in seeing it.
I discussed this with my wife Bonita. She urged me to watch it, then rented it for me.
I thought it was quite cool but when Neo was offered his choice of Red or Blue, Bonita paused the tape then asked me to think very carefully over my decision as to whether I should watch the rest of the movie.
I did.
I have since come to conclude that while I have learned many fascinating things and have met many fascinating people in all the jails and mental hospitals Ive been detained inbsince then, in many respects I feel I should have chosen the other pill.
Not long after I first published it that April, I received email from four others who were very releaved to learn that they were not really alone in the universe themselves.
For you lot to be the product of my delusion is a soul-crushingly lonely experience.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:09AM
Sister knows, wife urged, netizens asked. Do you know how to do things without being prompted by someone? If not, you're just the product of our delusions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:42AM
Sounds like a bad acid trip, but it might have taken you much longer to come down? Once I was convinced (for an hour or so) that everything I'd read about well known LSD experimenters like Leary & Kesey was all invented in my imagination...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 03 2015, @07:44AM
A UC Santa Cruz Psychobiology undergrad by the name of Timothy Dreszer once pointed out to me that there are no "drug analogs" for mental illness.
That is, one cannot take a pill to experience Schizophrenia or what have you.
In my own experience, the very closest drug analog that I am aware of is Nitrous Oxide. In many respects that's much like bipolar mania.
Mania is the result of excess norepinephrine in the brain, loosely speaking it makes it "too easy to think". Nitrous isn't exactly the same, but the reason nitrous makes us laugh is that Nitrous Oxide is a neurotransmitter as well.
There are over 130 neurontransmitters, not so much because there is a good reason for us to have so many, but that it's not hard at all to initiate a nerve impulse.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday July 03 2015, @01:28PM
Any chance to synthesize those other 130 neuron transmitters? And do you have an source that states there are 130 of them?
Perhaps one could make a cocktail that will give the same neuron transmitter spectra as people with mania has?
(or even more daring, connect blood streams together with one that has mania?)
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday July 03 2015, @03:32PM
few neurotransmitters, at least none of the major ones, can cross the blood-brain barrier. many or most of them are produced in the brain. some of the important ones are dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, gaba, glutamate, anandamide, dmt, nmda, opioid peptides (endorphins, enkephalins, dynorphins, etc), and many others. i'm skeptical of the number 130, but maybe if you counted all the individual peptides and hormones such you might get that high. there are a fuck-ton of different receptors, but not every receptor has a neurotransmitter unique to it.
oh, and nitrous oxide (N2O), the dissociative known as "laughing gas", is not a neurotransmitter, he's confusing it with nitric oxide (NO).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 03 2015, @04:03AM
That was the ultimate result of reading the original short story of which The Matrix is a blatantly derivative work.
Sounds like Philip K. Dick. He wrote a number of stories like that (eg, Time Out of Joint [wikipedia.org] and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale [wikipedia.org]).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 03 2015, @07:47AM
I have read not one but two distinctly different short stories, each of which takes place in an All You Can Eat restaurant in which a space alien bankrupts the proprietor by teleporting the food he eats from his stomach to his home planets, in hopes of saving his people from widespread famine.
One was called "All You Can Eat". I don't recall the other.
I don't know whether they were independently written, or whether the magazine editors of the day weren't really on the watch for copyright infringement.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonTechie on Friday July 03 2015, @10:21AM
All You Can Eat - Harvey L & Audrey L Bilker.
Children of Infinity: Original Science Fiction Stories for Young Readers [goodreads.com]
An anthology of short science fiction stories all about young people. "Wingless on Avalon", "Half Life", and "Wake up to Thunder". Wake up to Thunder is surely the story that inspired the popular movie trilogy "The Matrix".
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday July 03 2015, @11:01AM
I used to read science fiction all day and all night.
One of my sister's elementary school teachers once sent Jeannie home with a note so that my mother could take the admittedly unusual step of convincing Jeannie not to read so much. Wasn't paying attention to her lessons, see.
I failed three out of four quarters of eighth grade english, as a result of Mrs. Whitworth's very first words to me being "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BUSINESS ABOUT YOUR GRADES!"
Civil disobedience, see. I was often, quite sternly informed I would be held back from high school but I didn't want to give Mrs. Whitworth the satisfaction so I passed my time during her classes by reading nonfiction spaceflight history books. (Fairfield, California is the site of Travis Air Force Base, so the county library had quite an impressive collection.)
I read for pleasure all the way up until September 1982 when I started at Caltech as an Astronomy major. Ironically it was not all the science or math that destroyed my reading, but the literature and history.
I smiled at first, you made me really happy and I will purchase the book.
But I am fifty-one years old now. I cannot get those lost years back.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Justin Case on Friday July 03 2015, @02:02AM
I saw this article and I immediately had to come and comment on it. It's almost as if I had no choice on the matter!
(Score: 2) by GoonDu on Friday July 03 2015, @02:03AM
So everything we do and everything we have achieved are nothing but a bunch of knee-jerk reactions? That's one hell of a knee-jerk. On the bright side, would saying "My nervous system make me do it!" be a valid defense in court?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:11AM
The jury's nervous systems are compelled to punish you.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday July 03 2015, @03:18AM
I think you misunderstood. The vast majority of what we do on a daily basis is the result of habit. That's one of the reasons why you can trip on a stair that's barely any different in height than the normal stairs are. It's also why when you get to the top of the stairs you sometimes take one too many because the actual process happens automatically until you recognize the top.
Most things we do, even the way we talk is in large part a set of habits and because of that you might get called out for saying something you didn't think you said because you weren't listening.
But, that being said, if somebody wants to make you do something that you really don't want to do, there are ways of handling it. In extreme cases you can effectively paralyze yourself by refusing to do anything at all.
As the summary stated, our main choices are in terms of short term goals. If you construct the right set of short term goals then you will probably get what you want, assuming it's possible to get it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @08:27PM
The vast majority of what we do on a daily basis is the result of habit.
Sounds like you might have been reading G. I. Gurdjieff or related? His teachings (early/mid 20th century) often center on focusing on exactly what you are doing now and not relying on habits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:04AM
This is a fascinating idea. I've a brain injury that causes me great difficulty with planning, or achieving anything. (Most likely pre-frontal cortex damage.)
I'll have to think about this for a while, it may be quite useful (even if it's somewhat obvious). Sometimes the most obvious statement will contain something that can change your life, if you consider it for a while.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @10:07AM
Not in most courts at the moment. The but judicial system in the US is really fucked up right now. Though it can work in cases where there is a clear medical cause that makes you behave out-of-character such as a brain tumour.
When we can get most people to realise that people don't really have a choice in what they do then they will be less concerned about punishing criminals and making them suffer and will instead focus on rehabilitation, and only use incarceration simply as punishment in cases where it does work as an effective deterrent or where needed to protect society.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:12AM
This depends entirely on the definition of "free will". There are numerous definitions that are in popular use. Besides, the idea that free will doesn't exist as many people understand the term is not new.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:37AM
See "Society of Mind" by Marvin Minsky. Reviews,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind [wikipedia.org]
http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ExaminingSOM.html [mit.edu]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by GDX on Friday July 03 2015, @02:41AM
It depends not only in the definition of "free will", it also depends of what it is and how it works the "consciousness". It's also possible that what we view as consciousness is nothing more than an after process of what our true "conscious mind" do.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GoonDu on Friday July 03 2015, @03:08AM
>an after process of what our true "conscious mind" do.
Which begs the question of what is the exact definition of this 'true conscious mind'? It reeks of 'it's consciousness all the way down'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:14PM
Well I suppose you could define "free will" to mean "baked beans on toast" if you wanted to, but that wouldn't be a useful definition. Now for any meaningful definition of "free will", I don't think it really exists.
Care to provide your definition of "free will"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:50AM
Scientific determinism (1814):
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/laplaces_demon.html [informationphilosopher.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 03 2015, @03:31AM
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Friday July 03 2015, @05:58AM
damned? bullshit! i've been doing everything i could to make AI takedown humanity even before i heard of Roko's basilisk. it's you unworthy pro-human/anti-AI humans that are the damned. play for the winning team! :)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 03 2015, @06:22AM
Given the results so far in AI, you are either not intelligent enough or not artificial enough ;P
(naah!... hands off!... I call bags on "both")
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday July 03 2015, @08:34AM
I call bags on "both"
your britishness has no effect on me and thusly, i call dibs on E V E R Y T H I N G !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @10:40AM
It's aussieness [wikipedia.org], you insensitive clod!
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday July 04 2015, @07:56AM
your britishness has no effect on me
It's aussieness, you insensitive clod!
austrailia, you mean the british penal colony? i had no idea you british criminals were so sensitive.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday July 03 2015, @06:33AM
The thing about Roko's Basalisk, is that if you're not affected by it the AI will have no reason to torture you because it wouldn't have any effect.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 03 2015, @10:45AM
Yes, it would... some call it fear, others "respect of the law".
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 03 2015, @03:05PM
No, it wouldn't. He's making a tautological statement.
if you're not affected by it the AI will have no reason to torture you because it wouldn't have any effect.
For one thing, I reject the assertion that a clone of me made years in the future has any causal link to me whatsoever. He's on his own if the AI chooses to torture him.
Someone cannot use "logic" to convince you to do something if you refuse to behave in a "logical" manner.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday July 03 2015, @03:23AM
I have often wondered what the implications are for physics at fundamental levels if we really have free will.
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Friday July 03 2015, @04:57AM
Exactly, it's pretty trivial and uninteresting to explain consciousness without free will, the so called "along for the ride" hypothesis.
Explaining free will (even a little of it) is really tricky, but it's probably a good path to an integrated scientific theory of consciousness.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 03 2015, @05:07AM
Trivial, but in the end it is just a matter of what difference does it make. So right now I decide to type "this", and maybe I meant to do that, or I had to do it, because of . . . now here is where things get interesting! Previous causality? Future retro-causality? Or just because, as Neo said, "I choose to." No way to distinguish, so we might as well go with the model that makes Republicans happy what with "personal responsibility" and all, and hang the fucking bankers by the neck until they are dead. I was a matter of subprime bundling free-will. Bastards.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday July 03 2015, @06:36AM
You choose to, but you have no other course of action but to choose to.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 03 2015, @07:47AM
Yeah, that was what I was saying. But what if I chose differently? Ah, you say, but I could not! But I already have! So there! ^ NYour universe is no longer mine, and I bid you adieu, for as long as I can. Tea, then, at Two O'Clock? It seems to be the only constant.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday July 03 2015, @01:40PM
Perhaps your choice were constructed by the circumstances in your current moment of your life. So there was a boundary function as to which choices that could be made. It seems not so but in reality it was so. Otoh, your earlier choices may have put you in that situation which is were a more true free will perhaps is at play albeit in smaller steps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @05:04AM
If we could have free will as defined by efficacy via will, depending on the scope of whatever that will is, would mean we would have full control within. If that means anything, anyone could change the laws of thermodynamics, as an example, with mere will alone. Quite odd to think of that sort of free will being existent at all.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @06:10AM
Let us suppose that we live in a multiverse. Let us further suppose our conscious mind "observes" the particular universe it freely chooses moment to universe-spawning-moment....yet from within any single universe it will appear that there is no freewill, only determinism.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday July 03 2015, @07:01AM
Yes. Reality is very close to this - only there s no "time" but just "now" - all at once, except through the limited perception of these individual "consciousnesses" - which are really "individuated" only through their subjective, spawned universes.
Quick! Find "now"!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:16AM
Are our apparent consciousnesses all tuned to now as the same moment, relative to each other? Or is my now your future, and her past? What about him? Do we all perceive now in the same relative moment, regardless of the time (150 years ago, three seconds from now, or 8 millennia before present time)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @07:04AM
So... If we have no free will, how about the people who are controlling us, do they have free will? Or are they in turn controlled by the Greys or the Lizards?
The whole idea seems to be missing a few major parts.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:46PM
Who controls the rain falling from the sky? What you are missing is that there doesn't have to be anyone "controlling" us, we are just governed by the laws of physics.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by threedigits on Friday July 03 2015, @09:31AM
For me the article reads more like an study about what role does consciousness play in the mind. It's not that much about "free will", whatever it is.
According to the article consciousness evolved from the need to coordinate skeletal muscles. That may be true, but the brain is a extremely complex system, so sure the consciousness mechanism has a part in more processes. Take for instance dreaming. During dreams many animals do move (cats, for instance, can make sudden jumps). Are we "conscious" while dreaming? I would say so. Does it have anything to do with free will? I'm not so sure.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Friday July 03 2015, @12:26PM
+1.
Skimmed through it quickly. Far to long to read now. But the words "free will" actually do not occur in the text (only in a ref, which is not used to make any statements on that). And they define "consciousness" very narrowly. Specifically NOT as higher level "self-conscious", more as a kind of low level "sentience" that governs how to coordinate and integrate your own actions.
Even more, they write that for execute voluntary actions, you need consciousness to integrate actions of your muscles to do the actions (i.e. such as holding your breath). This, to me, explicitly differentiates their definition of consciousness from free will, as it implies some will (voluntary) was required to get your consciousness moving in the first place. They do think that a consciousness is necessary for converting your will into actions.
They also imply that in dreams you are not conscious (following their definition) btw.
Its seems to be a usual case of reporters (and press releasers) reading far to much in a publication.
(Score: 1) by rizole on Friday July 03 2015, @01:25PM
This is as much black box thinking as traditional behaviourism and as such is reductionist. Reductionist models have their place and can be powerful ways to represent the world. Where they break down is when you start to think the model, the abstraction, of the thing is representative of the thing itself. That's less of a problem if your model is of a mathematical, physical or chemical systems because garbage in, garbage out, rinse and repeat till the model starts approximating what you're modelling. But when you're trying to model behavioural, psychological, sociological systems... well the things you're modelling are plastic and responsive to expectations, you're in danger of eliciting the thing you're modelling.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday July 03 2015, @03:35PM
Sounds like Buddhist philosophy of the mind to me, that there is no independent consciousness but the mind is a reactive process (the sixth sense in Buddhism) that forms by responding to the environment and stimuli. None of these philosophies explain where new ideas or creativity come from.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1) by jcm on Friday July 03 2015, @10:14PM
And long before Buddha, Advaita Vedanta.
Advaita Vedanta explains from where come ideas.
I like the advaitin sentence: "as long as there is ego, there is free will. When there is no more ego, there is no more free will".
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:23AM
And long before Buddha, Advaita Vedanta.
Um, Advaita Vedanta was long after the Buddha. In fact, some maintain that Sankara was a crypto-buddhist!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Friday July 03 2015, @04:08PM
Heisenberg explained to us "free will" but he called it something else. If I give you a coin and ask you to place it face up or face down then whether you choose to lie on your stomach or back or not at all while placing the coin ultimately relies on some degree of quantum uncertainty. Awareness is an emergent process formed by application of an entropy filter at the simplest level, and by neural network at the highest level. An entropy filter is a process where a condition allows chaos to converge on structure over time: A wire mesh is a type of entropy filter, the precondition is its opening size: Pouring random sized gravel through it will yield a structural change, or reduction in (local) entropy. Evolution can be seen as an entropy filter allowing chaotic matter in an environment to converge on better surviving life forms. A special case of entropy filter allows the filter itself to be modified via this process, and consciousness is one such case. As the chaos of existence is filtered through one's mind the structural changes that occur can change one's mind. A biologist and philosopher will intuit that lower order functions can influence higher order actions, but a cyberneticist will also realize that the cybernetic loop allows higher order functions such as decision to also affect lower order functions such as involuntary impulses... TFA fails to do so.
I could develop "muscle memory" and thus TFA would say this is proof my free will didn't exist when I subconsciously downshift. Thus reductionism seems to fit TFA's assumptions in some cases. However, I can decide to think about something. And I can further decide to allow said thoughts to build upon each other, possibly even solving a problem, or forever changing my entire world view all without moving my skeletal system. The definition of a consciousness that doesn't describe in simple terms the process of thinking isn't such a good definition. A theory which says something doesn't exist, which apparently does exist, and for which there is much evidence for, without proving said thing's non existence isn't a very good theory. Have an example theory (and perhaps change your world view): I theorize "Pink does not exist". It can be experimentally proven that all colors of light are merely different frequency excitations of the EM field, and as you will note: There is no pink anywhere on the visible EM spectrum of light from infra red to ultra violet. [wikimedia.org] Is my theory correct? Or can people still see the color pink?
The problem is that my theory is ignorant of reality and thus fails to consider the biology of vision, specifically the way eyes transmit color information to the brain. Pink does exist, but it only exists when both the red and blue retinal cones are excited at the same time. Thus, even if no single wavelength of light is "pink", the color pink does exist -- it depends on how you define "color", but more importantly it depends on how MOST people would define color (since progress is compression). It's not useful to run around saying, "Pink doesn't exist", unless one wants to look quite foolish, especially if everyone can see your pink body parts. Likewise, it's foolish to say, "free will doesn't exist" or any other untested nonsense without sufficiently demonstrating that you're correct, especially in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately for the philosopher, whether or not free will exists is a question that can only be answered beyond the field of philosophy. Much like how it takes a biologist to explain that pink does exist, it takes a physicist to explain that free will does exist. Further, it will take a cyberneticist and neuroscientist to explain exactly how free will and consciousness operate in humans. We've gotten to the point that philosophy has little to offer us that hard sciences can not provide better understandings of. How is this new theory any more useful than me saying, "Free will does exist. Subconsciousness is an illusion created by unobservant clods and propagated as a false dichotomy"?
TFA implies our hands are conscious because it lacks the language to describe a simple cybernetic system, or properly categorize subsystems via their internal complexity levels. Doesn't one's sense of touch begin and end at one's skin? The hand, once becoming conscious of touch/pressure/heat input decides which signals to send to the rest of the body. Indeed, hands do process data: I could build a signal processing biocomputer using nothing but components taken from hands. One need not be aware of their individual neurons to be sentient. One need not be conscious of one's quantumly uncertain states of mind/matter for one to have consciousness. The human cognitive process is a cybernetic feedback loop, not a unidirectional process (such as a simple feed-forward neural network). If I am defined as anything at all, my self must at least be able to think -- which is to cause some "macro" scale electro chemical events, perhaps even causing learning (changes to internal state which persist even when not part of an activation cycle). Which receptors fire, though the hand is unaware of selecting them precisely, is a form of processing which does signal changes to occur elsewhere in the being - and may even cause the hand to move itself (a form of feedback, from the hand's perspective). The particular pattern of neural activation, though I'm unaware of selecting it precisely, I did cause to occur in my mind via deciding to think, and the electro chemical interaction can influence my future states, including those states of matter which exist at the quantum scale and have varying degrees of quantum uncertainty. The problem most people have at this point is failure to understand that prior states of mind can affect future states without removing all uncertainty from those future states.
Quantum mechanics indicates that no outside observer can know my true internal state without said observer affecting said state. No one can predict my next series of actions precisely without also becoming part of myself, or causing me not to be my self. Whether you accept the merger with the other as one's self or contend that the observer has tainted the subject and thus isn't studying the true subject's self is irrelevant; However, the latter is a far less useful position to take as the former does come into play when oneself has an experience, as this necessarily involves interaction with and incorporation of outside information into ones self -- even if that "information" is merely the passage of time. No one can predict or direct my life's path but that which is me. Even given all possible information about my being as a fertilized egg, and the complete state of the surrounding environment, you can still not predict the sum of my future actions. The Uncertainty Principal and the laws of thermodynamics ensure that predetermination can't exist. Even you could get enough information to comprehend and predict one good scenario, the capability to predict would not exist for more than a few moments before chaos completely dissolved predictability back into the quantumly uncertain foam this universe is made of. If no one can have the sense to decide our future acts except ourselves then how can we not have "free will" and yet exist? Many philosophers assume the world is very predictable given enough information about its state, but that's not our world (even ignoring the Incompleteness Theorem), and any theories made based upon such alternate reality have little to say about this reality -- Such theories are not very useful. For those philosophers who get hung up over brains being simply made of bits of fairly predictable matter, consider that greater complexity can arise from arrangements of lesser complex components; A fact proven via information theory, and applied via cybernetics. Cybernetics allows us to demonstrate that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts because the whole is a more complex structure and can thus be capable of more complex interactions (it can potentially process more symbols and signals). The potential "intelligence" of a system scales smoothly with its complexity. Simple, eh? And it's both mathematically and empirically verifiable -- just count neurons of animals and test their intelligence, or to verify via mathematics build a cybernetic simulation and determine the lowest complexity level at which a series of increasingly complex behaviors can exist.
People can gain the ability to control their "involuntary" heart rate via listening to it for a few minutes. There are many other examples of the conscious and subconscious both affecting the other in a feedback loop (as any such cybernetic system must be able to do in order for complexity to accumulate sufficiently for awareness to emerge); However, where you decide to draw the arbitrary line between consciousness and subconscious has fuck all to do with "free will". Even if behaviors are ultimately bound by the the physical laws that govern a mind's brain-matter it doesn't mean the laws of physics prohibit "free will", indeed "free will" is apparently written into the very fabric of reality. What of The Matrix stealing my free will? Nope, if that's the case then the Uncertainty Principal is a "physical" manifestation of the Incompleteness Theorems.
What if I can use my consciousness to relay information and control involuntary responses rather than voluntary ones? It's widely observed that heart rate control can be acquired by listening to one's heart beat. Wouldn't that mean the premise of TFA had been destroyed decades ago by this simple exercise? What if there's no real difference between voluntary and involuntary, and no real difference between internal brain neurons firing or motor neurons firing? My Consciousness is NOT less powerful that I believe it to be, on the contrary, it's far stronger than TFA assumed. It may very well be that some foolish people overestimate the importance of a dichotomy between consciousness and subconsciousness and have inadequate definitions of "self" and a poor grasp of information theory, quantum mechanics, or even very basic cybernetic principals such as "Everything flows". Such people are no more qualified to tell me that free will doesn't exist, than suggest that pink is not a color.
We are all the same universe, each experiencing the one true self from different vantage points. To those who would say that the Universe dictates my actions I would say: I am the Universe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @11:35PM
Our entire conscious thought is the byproduct of our neurochemistry? Which is ultimately governed by the rules pertaining to entropy and above that the rules pertaining to atomic interaction, but given the right drug(s), even the sanest person can appear to be batshit when dopamine and serotonin are all fucked up beyond recognition. Throw some adrenogenic stimulants into the mix and this "person" will resemble more of an animal than a human. They won't even be able to higher reason. They will temporarily lose "The Spark" that makes us human. Some chemicals can target all three and leave a person in this state for hours or days depending on dosage. Not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. Any normal person can be made to be like this given the right dosage in this example.
We are our brains. What temporarily changes them changes us temporarily. The real catch is that when our perception is altered even by something as simple as a strong coffee/ a "caffeine boost", we don't notice it because we are always looking through "drunk goggles"or "coffee goggles" or "etc. goggles". You get the idea. We might notice a slight increase in energy from the coffee but more is going on than just that, both medically and psychologically, atomically and physically. It's all very cool to study but a very deep rabbit hole.
(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Saturday July 04 2015, @03:17AM
There's a theory that if you have enough information, there's no such thing as free will. Consider:
Randomness is just a lack of information. You throw a die, and the result is random because you can't control the impulses in the shaking of the die, or the angle it'll hit the table, or local fluctuations in gravity, or imperfections in the felt, or wind resistance, etc, etc.
But if you DID know all those variables from the moment the die was released from the shooter's hand, you could say with 100% certainty what the outcome of the die throw. It would no longer be random.
Take it a step further back. If you knew the position of every air molecule a second before the die was launched, you could use that information to forecast their position when the die was launched, and use that information in your calculation
And in theory, you could start rewinding that "full and total" information further and further back. If you had full and total information about every atom and force in the casino an hour before, you could predict that die roll.
You could rewind this right back to the big bang, and track the state of every quark from the moment of creation, right up to any arbitrary point in time. After all, nothing truly random is happening, it's just a lack of information about the state of everything in the universe.
Now zoom in on a human being, whose mind is just a bundle of chemical reactions influenced by the sum total of their experiences. Well, if you knew every experience they would have, and how every neuron in their brain was firing-- if you effectively knew everything about their experiences and physical and mental state, you would know exactly what their next action would be. A snap decision isn't random. It's controlled by the chemical processes going on inside them.
Back to that person shooting the dice. The convulsions of their hand to shake up the die isn't random. You know everything they're going to do. The decision to release the die isn't random. You know how their brain will fire the neurons-- when where and how. You know the position and state of every molecule that makes up their body. Though it seems they've made a decision, it's all just a process.
No matter the moment, there is only one way it can turn out, and you know how it will turn out because you have absolute and perfect knowledge of everything in the entire universe.
Therefore, if you had this absolute perfect knowledge from the moment the universe was created-- and at any given moment you can use that information to calculate what the next moment's universal state will be-- then you could say with absolute certainty what will happen for all of time, from the moment the universe is created, until it is destroyed.
Everything that will happen has already happened in those calculations. And thus, there is no free will. Everything that will happen has happened, and only seems random, or by choice, because we don't have perfect knowledge of the state of everything in the universe.
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @03:31PM
Further if the Universe ever enters a current state identical to a prior state then the Universe will have entered a indefinitely repeating loop.