I've been pomdering lately what is the connection between free will and consciousness. I'm aware that I perceive the"choices" that I make. If free will is an illusion, then how does this work? Is it an illusion- that was my previous question.

So let's say our lungs. We are usually not aware of them working. They still keep working regardless of whether we are aware or not. But when we become aware of it, we are able to control it! So there must be some sort of connection between what we call free will and consciousness... :bugeye:

But what about our hearts? We are not aware that it is beating, and it does its job by itself. So... if we would somehow become aware of it, would we be able to control it? :confused:

Anyways... I'm still pondering those questions and I believe the answer of Free Willvs Determinism is somewhere in between those lines. The hard part is to find it....

Cheers,
Truth :m:

it is possible to become aware of your heart rate, your pulse too, just turn your attention too it. you can with enough attention become aware of how your whole body is pulsating. it can also be altered thougfh tis involves breath contro more so than controlling the rhythm of the heart.

I've been pomdering lately what is the connection between free will and consciousness.

Easy... assume free will does exist. If that is the case, consciousness and free will are not the same thing and conscious thought is not free will. It was shown that all voluntary (free willed) actions happen 400ms BEFORE the consciousness is made aware of it.

Owned.

Easy... assume free will does exist. If that is the case, consciousness and free will are not the same thing and conscious thought is not free will. It was shown that all voluntary (free willed) actions happen 400ms BEFORE the consciousness is made aware of it.

Owned.
What? Do you have a source for that info?

What? Do you have a source for that info?

Read this:

The 0.5 second delay required for the cortex to model an event has implications for the role of conscious experience in the control of our lives. If experience is always 0.5 seconds behind the true present instant then how can we be said to control anything? The brain must be acting automatically whilst performing most tasks. The 0.5 second delay also seems to contradict our everyday experience. We certainly feel like we are aware of things in less than 0.5 seconds, for example, the direct stimulation of sense organs seems to be experienced much more rapidly than the delayed experience of cortical stimulation. In fact subjects report that they are conscious of stimuli, such as being touched or seeing flashing lights, within 0.1 to 0.2 seconds of the event. So how can subjects report events within 0.2 seconds even though it seems to take 0.5 seconds for the cortex to generate activity that can be experienced? The simplest explanation is that the reaction occurs automatically within 0.2 seconds and then the conscious experience of this reaction occurs 0.3 seconds later. This gives a total 0.5 seconds delay before conscious experience whilst allowing fast reactions.

Source (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/conz3a.htm)

Also from the same source:

In 1964 Kornhuber and Deecke performed a series of experiments that measured the electrical activity from the scalp (EEG) during voluntary actions. They averaged many EEG's from subjects who were about to move a finger and discovered that there is an increase in scalp potential before the movement takes place. The increase in potential can start as long as 2 seconds or so before the movement and is known as the "readiness potential" (Bereitschaftspotential). The readiness potential is strange because it seems to contradict our conscious experience; we do not decide to move a hand and then wait 2 seconds before the hand moves. It seems that the non-conscious brain may be taking things into its own hands.

Does this mean topic closed? lol

No, definetely not.

This is very interesting...
Yes, I suppose the universe is deterministic then- or at least we don't have free will...

What would happen if we could speed up the brain? Could we then "gain" free will? Would that feel any different?

And why do we think in terms of free will and determinism? Are there really those things or the universe happen not to determine them?

:confused:

:D

Thanks Absane. You are my hero. :D:D

i think free will is a concept that only exists in the human mind. in reality, there is a kind of semi-free will in that we are ultimately in control of ourselves (save for natural law and physical limitation) but that our actions are determined by a course of causality--that we are able to predict our actions somewhat and that because of that, we are forced to choose actions based on their effects.

Sort of what I always believed. But the above sources say otherwise. Unless you can reconcile those two points of view?

Sort of what I always believed. But the above sources say otherwise. Unless you can reconcile those two points of view?
it only depends on how we receive that data. even if it is a few seconds behind what is actually happening, that gap will be subconsciously taken into consideration by an early age. it just becomes something we are accustomed to without really even thinking about, like up and down and left and right. we become familiar with unconsciously predicting the reaction of what we sense and so we 'know' what will happen before it happens.

Huuuummm....

I will have to give that a thought...

Well, I just did this simple experiment...

I thought in my head "I will raise my finger" and then did it 1 second later. It went on as though I had free will, as though I conciously chosen to do it.

So... does the 0.5 second rule still aply here? :confused:

Thanks Absane. You are my hero.

I learned about that fact in my "Great Questions of Philosophy" class back in my freshman year of college (maybe two and a half years ago). We did a poll in the class of how many (out of us 60) believed one of the 3:

1) Hard Determinism - everything is predetermined... cause and effect contradict free-will
2) Libertarianism - free-will exists and there is no cause and effect
3) Soft determinism - cause and effect can exist but free-will exists in a limited fashion as to not contradict C/E. I think it is called contracausal freedom. Essentially, your free will is limited by how much the universe controls you (outside forces... minimal outside forces means you have more freedom).

Not to my suprise, about 8 believes in Libertarianism... 2 (me and some girl I think) were hard determinists, and 50 were Soft-determinists)... at the end of the whole series of Free-will lectures, the numbers were still the same.

My point is... discussing this free-will issue gets almost no where. I think it is because the human brain thinks it is free-willed just because the way we interpret our actions in reality (real or not) suggest we did it without anything noticably infuencing our actions. Does that make sense?

Basically I am going to TRY to hold off on these free-will debates as I am getting tired of arguing over and over the same points and not getting anywhere. :rolleyes:

I forget the point of my post... :eek: I think I hit reply for a totaly different reason. Oh well.

Well, I just did this simple experiment...

I thought in my head "I will raise my finger" and then did it 1 second later. It went on as though I had free will, as though I conciously chosen to do it.

So... does the 0.5 second rule still aply here? :confused:

Basically if you look at the studies.. it all seems our actions are really 0.3-0.5 seconds behind conscious experience. Although everything does not seem that way, they suggest that even conscious actions are automatic. I have some personal experience that suggests that.

While driving, I always make it a CONSCIOUS effort to take my foot off the brake and onto th gas when the light turns green... And when the green light comes on, it does not feel automatic. It feels like I did this as a free-willed action. However, if I am not paying attention something different happens. If the light just turned red and I didn't notice.. I stop. The traffic that does have a light, well it is only the turning arrow. I cannot see the light but what I can see is their red light on for straight-traffic. When their green light DOES come on (notice it is not mine) and I see it in my peripheral vision, my foot automatically moves off the brake petal in the exact same fashion it does when I try to consciously control it.

Same for reaction time tests.. I think I am consciously pressing the button when I need to, but many many times my finger will press the button by itself or even "jump the gun."

Yes, I've had those experiences too. But there's a caveat. Those experiences only happen when we have a habit- that is, when we have done the action many times and are used to do it.

Some things seem to require more. They seem to require our undevided attention and conscious effort to do it. That's why I've always been a soft-determinist despite the fact I strongly believe in the law of cause and effect when it comes to psychological matters.

So... do you have an explanation for habit and actions that are not habitual?
We can always make a new habit- a better one, that is. But it takes conscious effort and determination.

So...? :confused:

Well I do not have examples on hand... but as you live out your day, notice the things you do all day (big things and small things) and how you do them. I do it all the time, and I notice patterns... it seems that everything I do always has some sort of underlying pattern to it. It may be sutle, but there is always a pattern to what you do. And to fill in the gaps for everything else you do that does not seem to have a pattern to it, try to understand how you came about to doing it.. what were your thoughts? I bet your thoughts have patterns, too. Take personality tests that ask "what would you do in this situation?" Amazing that if you visualize the situation down to the finest detail you always have an answer to what you would do.

Yes, that's part of our personalities...

Here's an example of what happened today. I was walking back home from downtown. I was pretty tired and was looking forward to relaxing a little bit. I came by a bus stop and the bus came that could take me back to downtown. Oddly enugh, I felt an urge to go back downtown. It was so strong I almost caught the bus. :eek: I had to clear up my mind and I continued going home.

So whassup with that? Was my reaction to take the bus a sample of that 0.5 second rule? And why did I resist it? Maybe this 0.5 second thing indicates the "will of God" which we can consciously override once it becomes conscious to us? :confused:

Yes, that's part of our personalities...

Here's an example of what happened today. I was walking back home from downtown. I was pretty tired and was looking forward to relaxing a little bit. I came by a bus stop and the bus came that could take me back to downtown. Oddly enugh, I felt an urge to go back downtown. It was so strong I almost caught the bus. :eek: I had to clear up my mind and I continued going home.

So whassup with that? Was my reaction to take the bus a sample of that 0.5 second rule? And why did I resist it? Maybe this 0.5 second thing indicates the "will of God" which we can consciously override once it becomes conscious to us? :confused:

Happens to me all the time. I have set routes I take to get places (well many routes I know of for any one place but I usually take the quickest because I am always running late.. just me being a P). When I go to do something completely different and I am not paying attention (which is most of the time) I take a route to go somewhere else. Like one time I had to go SOUTH for work... well I took the interstate like I should, but I didn't hit south and didn't realize it until 15 miles when I was in downtown. WTF?

It's really just not focusing on something that you do not normally do or inadvertently telling yourself to do something else.

Yes, that's part of our personalities...

But shouldn't free-will have override?

Happens to me all the time. I have set routes I take to get places (well many routes I know of for any one place but I usually take the quickest because I am always running late.. just me being a P). When I go to do something completely different and I am not paying attention (which is most of the time) I take a route to go somewhere else. Like one time I had to go SOUTH for work... well I took the interstate like I should, but I didn't hit south and didn't realize it until 15 miles when I was in downtown. WTF?

It's really just not focusing on something that you do not normally do or inadvertently telling yourself to do something else.
Precisely. It's what I call "automatic pilot mode" :D

But shouldn't free-will have override?
Well, personality is really just a set of habits, basically. So free will can override that. But it is a slow process. :eek:

In any case... another example... if you have an addiction, your body tells you to consume whatever you are addicted to. It is like a habit. And it takes a lot of effort to break it and change it. Changing your personality is equally hard. Those things are all habitual automatic responses of our bodies. We can fight it, for sure, many people have done it. But the point is that it is really hard to explain those things without free will. :eek:

So free will is a prisoner of our habits and personality? And it only emerges when we put great effort into it? Most people I know are lazy.. so I guess they are all robots.. just like everyone else.

Even if we do fight our personality, we have created a new personality that puts our personality behind. Well, how can we be free-willing all the time?

Our personality is always changing according to our new decisions. It's a slow process though. Like a wave sculpting a rock for millions of years...

Our personality is always changing according to our new decisions. It's a slow process though. Like a wave sculpting a rock for millions of years...
Damn!
How old ARE you?

Where do you stand raven?

Where do you stand raven?
On what specifically?
This thread jumped around a bit.

Free-will. Sorry, I thought it was implied but I forgot the thread has jumped around

I think, similarly to TruthSeeker, if I understood him (which I often don't -no offense :)), that we most certainly have free will, but it is something that people often take for granted, and seldom grasp to the extent that it is available.
I think we are inundated daily with countless influneces and pressures, and much of what we do is simple conditioned response.
I think, as time goes on, and we are subject to more and more intentional influences (consumerist societies, political pressure, religious doctrine and all that) it gets worse and worse.

Every decision we make, regardless how insignificant or grand, is greatly influenced by external forces, likewise, every decision we make, regardless how insignificant ot grand, has the potential to greatly influence others, but, ultimately it IS our decision to make.

I elaborated a bit about this in This Thread (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=55020).

Do I have any proof for this? No.
Do I believe it for all I am worth? Absolutely.

Without free will, I would see absolutely no point to life, but I honestly don't think it is a simple justification as a result of that perspective.
It just makes sense to me, and that's enough for me.

Was that all just a jumbled mess, or does it make sense?

Oh it makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for elaborating. To sum it up a soft-determinist :)

soft-determinist :)
If that's what you want to call it.
I wouldn't.
I know there are quite a few different schools of thoughts regarding "determinism", "soft determinsim" and what have you, and I can't say that I am keenly aware of all the distinctions and caveats, and frankly I don't care enough TO know.
What I can say is that the physical world seems to be deterministic, but consciousness is where that line is crossed.
I vaguely define conscuiousness, I suppose, as the ability to be self-determined.

Do I use labguage which is too complex for everyone or what!?!?!? :eek: :o

Absane, do YOU understand what the heck I talk about? :confused:

It's not that your language is complex, it just that sometimes the prasing you use is...
vague?

It seems that you choose to try and convey quite complex ideas in a way that covers all your bases in a sucint manner and are very careful to chose your words so that your idea can come across in a very general way to apply to a multiude of situations, and the result ends up difficult to discern the specifics of what you are trying to say.

hmmmm, kind of like what I am doing now. :)

I just think that sometimes you would be better off using analogies, and specific hypothetical situations and worry about filling in any holes if they happen to come up.

grrr, I feel like I am not making any sense at all.

Do I use labguage which is too complex for everyone or what!?!?!? :eek: :o

Absane, do YOU understand what the heck I talk about? :confused:

Most of the time I understand what you are trying to say, yet in a general way... The guy that confuses me more is existabrent.

It's not that your language is complex, it just that sometimes the prasing you use is...
vague?
Sorry man, I'm an accountant and a philosopher. You can only get vagueness from me. :D

It seems that you choose to try and convey quite complex ideas in a way that covers all your bases in a sucint manner and are very careful to chose your words so that your idea can come across in a very general way to apply to a multiude of situations, and the result ends up difficult to discern the specifics of what you are trying to say.
Wow. I think that explains it. :eek:

I just think that sometimes you would be better off using analogies, and specific hypothetical situations and worry about filling in any holes if they happen to come up.
I often do that. Maybe I should do it more often. Sometimes I just don't feel like doing it...

grrr, I feel like I am not making any sense at all.
Welcome to my world. :D