Free will or lack of.......

[WesD]

21 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

The brain is 100% automated in it's output moment to moment. It has no control over what it's inputs are going to be. It is blindly genetically programmed to develop the 'self illusion' and the associated illusion of free will as a consequence. This software will chugg along indefinitely until the brain is exposed to new inputs (such as this thread) which contradicts the status quo, As a direct result of the new inputs the strength of neuronal connections in certain areas of the brain might change as the brain 'checks' this new info against all the other patterns and biases it has developed. The more the brain experiences a 'free will input' the stronger these connections will get, resulting in more thinking about it arising in conciousness.

I agree re outputs being reactionary to the inputs and what it sees however inputs can be controlled via your senses, if you don’t want to see something shut your eyes or look elsewhere your visual inputs have then stopped/changed. Touch is much the same as well as hearing, if you don’t want to listen to the world when running for example you can put headphones in and listen to music therefore changing the inputs of sound. 

 

People have a choice in topics to learn and as to that end store information they feel they may need. People who build memory palaces are manipulating their brain to store maximum info that they deem necessary. 

 

@Vespasian comes across as someone who takes interest in a topics sake for nothing other than interest, no exam to pass no real point other than it interests him, he doesn’t have too but he chooses to spend hours researching said topic, choosing to store that info not for need but enjoyment. If everything was automated you wouldn’t be able to instantly dismiss a subject. 

 

They say dont choose a book by its cover yet if we where automated it wouldn’t matter what book we read only that we where feeding that automated sensation of needing to read yet we don’t just pick anything up as we are a choosey bunch we look for something that interests us rather than read anything, that strikes me as a manual input to feed an automated output. 

[the village idiot]

19 minutes ago, WesD said:

I agree re outputs being reactionary to the inputs and what it sees however inputs can be controlled via your senses, if you don’t want to see something shut your eyes or look elsewhere your visual inputs have then stopped/changed. Touch is much the same as well as hearing, if you don’t want to listen to the world when running for example you can put headphones in and listen to music therefore changing the inputs of sound. 

 

People have a choice in topics to learn and as to that end store information they feel they may need. People who build memory palaces are manipulating their brain to store maximum info that they deem necessary. 

 

@Vespasian comes across as someone who takes interest in a topics sake for nothing other than interest, no exam to pass no real point other than it interests him, he doesn’t have too but he chooses to spend hours researching said topic, choosing to store that info not for need but enjoyment. If everything was automated you wouldn’t be able to instantly dismiss a subject. 

 

They say dont choose a book by its cover yet if we where automated it wouldn’t matter what book we read only that we where feeding that automated sensation of needing to read yet we don’t just pick anything up as we are a choosey bunch we look for something that interests us rather than read anything, that strikes me as a manual input to feed an automated output. 

I think it's more accurate to say that inputs via the senses are controlled due to the nature of the sense organs and the nature of the brain. 

 

You are quite right that if your eyes are shut or they are focused elsewhere the visual inputs will be different. The key point is that (however much it feels like you are) you are not initiating the directive to close or refocus the eyes. You are not in control of what the eyes do or don't take in. The directive to close your eyes was an inevitable automatic response by the unconcious brain in response to countless millions of previous other automatic responses stretching back in a very very very long line.

 

Every thought and every action is wholly dependant upon previous thoughts and actions, none of which you had any concious control over. Conciousness can be aware of the automatic flow of your life but it can't influence it in any direct way.

 

When thinking about the nature of choice you have to break things down to the level of 'what caused that choice'. The answer is invariably the state of the brain immediately preceeding the decision. We do not pick our brains or the contents of our brains, we have no say in how they wire themselves, what memories they preserve, how much neurotransmitter they are releasing or anything else relating to it's functioning. 

 

We do not pick the state of our brains, and it is the state of our brains that directly leads to each thought and each action in each moment.

[the village idiot]

1 hour ago, WesD said:

 

@Vespasian comes across as someone who takes interest in a topics sake for nothing other than interest, no exam to pass no real point other than it interests him, he doesn’t have too but he chooses to spend hours researching said topic, choosing to store that info not for need but enjoyment. If everything was automated you wouldn’t be able to instantly dismiss a subject. 

As Vesp himself said, he didn't particularly think he had a strong interest in this subject, but for some reason it just keeps popping into his head. He can't instantly dismiss a topic. His brain will unconciously 'decide' whether he continues to be tortured by this devilish topic. Ignoring this thread would improve his odds of consigning the debate permanently to the backburner, but the seed has been sown! What grows and fruits out of that seed is entirely out of his control. I'm quite sure that he can accept this notion but it will annoy the hell out of him!

[skyhuck]

12 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

 I'm quite sure that he can accept this notion but it will annoy the hell out of him!

How can "he" accept it, he does not exist, he is just a construct of the brain. So is it the brain that will be annoyed.

 

Or have I got it wrong?

[the village idiot]

1 hour ago, WesD said:

They say dont choose a book by its cover yet if we where automated it wouldn’t matter what book we read only that we where feeding that automated sensation of needing to read yet we don’t just pick anything up as we are a choosey bunch we look for something that interests us rather than read anything, that strikes me as a manual input to feed an automated output

Our brains are constantly on the look out for patterns. It is largely how they make sense of the world and why we tend to be creatures of habit.

 

When scanning the Arbtalk recent posts list your brain will have a more pronounced pattern recognition response (basically a stronger electrical burst) to some posts over others based on all the previous automatic inputs into the brain. If someone mentions a specific model of saw to you one day and then you see a post refering to this model some days later, your brain will register the pattern and you are quite likely to click on it, where as without it having been previously mentioned you were more likely to gloss over it.

 

Some peoples brains may be wired to click on everything. Most brains though are wired to respond to pattern recognition and click on posts that resonate. In a very real sense the brain (not you) 'chooses' what to be interested in.

[the village idiot]

28 minutes ago, skyhuck said:

How can "he" accept it, he does not exist, he is just a construct of the brain. So is it the brain that will be annoyed.

 

Or have I got it wrong?

No, you have it right, but there is an important caveat.

 

Even if we accept logically and scientifically that the self is an illusion we still live almost completely in it's grip. The only reliable way we know thus far to permanently leave it behind is to become an olympic level meditator. It takes decades of doing little else but meditation to undo the decades of 'self' reinforcement. Who wants to sit in a cave doing nothing for 40 years? It is simply not practical or particularly desirable in modern Western society.

 

It is OK to refer to Vesp as 'him' because to all intents and purposes he is a 'him'. Despite understanding the illusion Vesp is still gripped by the illusion, as am I. 

 

Understanding the nature of the illusion gives some insight , and other people become infinitely more interesting (and blameless). But one can't relieve oneself of the influence of the illusion by just thinking about it. It takes years of concerted, concentrated effort.

 

Does that make any sense?

 

There is an anecdote of a chap who completely lost his sense of self for a couple of years quite by accident. The consequences were profound. I'll tell the story in the next post.

Edited January 3, 2018 by the village idiot

[Vespasian]

27 minutes ago, the village idiot said:

As Vesp himself said, he didn't particularly think he had a strong interest in this subject, but for some reason it just keeps popping into his head. He can't instantly dismiss a topic. His brain will unconciously 'decide' whether he continues to be tortured by this devilish topic. Ignoring this thread would improve his odds of consigning the debate permanently to the backburner, but the seed has been sown! What grows and fruits out of that seed is entirely out of his control. I'm quite sure that he can accept this notion but it will annoy the hell out of him!

hahaha  sort of on the right path, as it happens for years I've struggled with the feeling that theres more to life than the obvious..  that in some unknown way we are as connected to the earth as much as we're connected to our culture say..  a hidden missing something that we can't quite put our fingers on..

 

sometimes I imagine its to do with electricity, what with the brain using electricity to connect the neurons and the spinning of the earth producing a giant magnetic field that surrounds the earth.. I couldn't for the life of me wonder how that might be possible but at least its something to hang onto...

 

In olden times feeling like this might of been expressed as religious beliefs..  but I'm not convinced its anything to do with that..  my own feeling on the matter are that these things might better be explained by science..   it might be said that these feeling are the result of delusion, and I couldn't argue with that.. But none the less, I feel it and as such I want to investigate it..   

 

This free will thing being related in some way is why I've taken an interest in the subject.. its not that I'm really interested in free will so much. More that I might find evidence of this hidden unknown as I rake over its coals... for instance, might it be that the mind is seeing future events on those brain scans and not preparing the mind to act?.. the first thing the inquiring mind aught do is question evidence, ask if evidence has been misinterpreted...

 

In summation, not so much a seed as a re-awakening...   

 

I've got a couple of other marbles wrackling my head as well..  it would be nice if I could work on one problem at a time, unfortunately there's a bunch of monkeys in there all fighting for attention...hahaha

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TIMON]

How can "he" accept it, he does not exist, he is just a construct of the brain. So is it the brain that will be annoyed.
 
Or have I got it wrong?

It amuses me that despite the fact that we come from opposite ends of the belief spectrum, we often draw similar conclusions.

[onetruth]

1 hour ago, the village idiot said:

The key point is that (however much it feels like you are) you are not initiating the directive to close or refocus the eyes....  The directive to close your eyes was an inevitable automatic response by the unconcious brain in response to countless millions of previous other automatic responses stretching back in a very very very long line.

 

Every thought and every action is wholly dependant upon previous thoughts and actions, none of which you had any concious control over... 

 

We do not pick the state of our brains, and it is the state of our brains that directly leads to each thought and each action in each moment.

I think what you have said is correct, but there is a problem inferring too much about the nature of freedom from the mechanics of causality.  True, the physical brain and its environment one moment will determine its physical state in the next moment, and thoughts, emotions, etc. may arise out of that previously determined state.  But that binds us only in a kind of retrospective sense.  I'm making a hash of explaining what I mean, but rather than delete this paragraph, I'll leave it and try again...

 

We only experience the present.  When we remember the past, it is the present memory that we are experiencing.  We can deny free will by citing examples: I did this stupid thing because I was angry, or my brain chemistry at X moment was Y because at X-1 moment the universe was in Z configuration.  That's cause-and-effect, it is reasonable to say that it holds true, and that the entirety of all experience was determined at the moment of the big bang.  (Quantum theorists may query this point; for sake of argument let's pretend they're wrong and the physical world is causal and determined).  However, when we consider freedom, we are not really concerned with the totality of history and how it has led, inevitably, to this current state of mind.  It is how free we are in the present that is of concern, and the question is whether or not we have any capacity to resist our immediate mental desires.

 

To say that we have no free will because our thoughts and actions are just the consequences of ancient circumstances is, to me, as meaningless as saying we have no free will because one day we'll die.

[the village idiot]

6 minutes ago, onetruth said:

However, when we consider freedom, we are not really concerned with the totality of history and how it has led, inevitably, to this current state of mind.  It is how free we are in the present that is of concern, and the question is whether or not we have any capacity to resist our immediate mental desires.

I agree that 'the present' as you are refering to it is kind of it's own space, and it is right to distinguish it in principle to all the time and events that lead up to it. But the present is not a space open to manipulation in any causal way in it's own time. Any capacity to resist our immediate mental desires is predicated on past exposures. This applies whether you believe choice can occur in the present moment or not.

 

We can observe the consequences in the present moment and this can radically alter the next, but as I see it, at a fundamental level there is no escaping the cause and effect cycle.