Yup

[Ghos7Soldier]

Originally Posted by Paul

My last post came off as a bit assy actually. Sorry for that, didn't mean to sound condescending.

No biggie, I can understand getting annoyed if the other person doesn't get it after explaining many of times to them your own ideas and what not, but heh...it's serious discussion.

I guess the whole situation is based off how you see it.

I see things differently and can't really understand what you're getting at.

Not saying your argument is useless, just I guess I can't grasp it correctly.

Don't mean to be annoying myself either.

[Dakantos]

Originally Posted by Paul

My last post came off as a bit assy actually. Sorry for that, didn't mean to sound condescending.

What i'm trying to get at paul, is the child wailing, is a act of luck. That's circumstance and not subconscious. While I 100% agree that our decisions are affected by circumstance and situation, the whole subconscious just comes off as a bunch of bull**** to me. Besides, has anyone even CITED a reference for this yet? for all you know, Odin is just pulling your leg, laughing his ass off.


Besides, even if that is true, how do you know that part of your mind is basing actions off of previous choices or preferences?

For that matter, given the previous example. If I throw a ball at you, you can react anywhere between .1 ~.5 seconds. .5 is being very generous.

If so, why would the brain want to subconscious figure its next action 10 seconds in advance? What reason is there for it? What possible benefit can you get from subconsciously determining your next action 10 seconds ahead of time, especially when every action is then constantly being determined before you even get to that point, where said action could change due to circumstantial events. It's just a whole lot of waste of processing and energy.

If you ask me, not only does it not make sense, but right now, none of you have cited any facts, or references, in regards to it.

This discussion is about what is, not what if.

Originally Posted by Dr. C.S. Shah

Subconscious Mind

We all know something about our conscious mind. At least we can make certain presumptions about our consciousness. Consciousness for most of us is the fact of the awareness or our thinking, feeling, and doing. Although, the reactions to the stimuli may differ from person to person, or even in the same person from time to time, the fact that everyone is capable of reacting is taken as a sign of consciousness. These conscious acts are sometimes termed as conscious mind.

Similarly, certain acts are performed reflexively or without conscious awareness. For instance, mind goes on thinking bad thoughts despite attempts to control them. From where such thoughts as anger, lust, jealousy, hatred and even desire to harm the other come? Same is the case with good or noble thoughts also. Selflessness predominates in some persons to the extent that those persons give up everything and start working for the welfare of the world. From where do these thoughts arise?

They arise from the subconscious mind. Subconscious mind is the sum total of our past experiences. What we feel, think, or do forms the basis of our experience. These experiences are stored in the form of subtle impressions in our subconscious mind. These impressions interact with one another and give birth to tendencies. We become prone to react in a particular way to a particular situation or stimulus depending upon the tendencies in our subconscious mind. The resultant of these tendencies determines our character. Depending on the strength and nature of their character people respond to the same stimuli or the situation in differing ways. The reaction varies according to the character of the individual.

The hot summer dries up all the weed in the field and the field appears barren. Apparently there is nothing but black soil. Soon the rains soak the land and the imbedded seeds sprout up to fill the whole field with unwanted weed again. The farmer never desired to have them, but when certain conditions were fulfilled the weed came to life. The rain water, the weather, and the seeds were sufficient to cause the weed appear above ground. However, the weed did not come with rain water or from some where else; the weed was always present in the seed form in the soil itself!

Same is the case with us. There are impressions in the subtle form in our subconscious mind. On coming with contact with certain external factors, the necessary conditions are fulfilled for these subtle impressions to take the manifest form.

For instance, there is silent unseen tendency to drink alcohol, or to smoke in our subconscious mind. Necessary conditions in the form of a friend, a bar, a cigarette vendor, etc. , bring forth the desire to drink or to smoke, and we are in there! Another person has a latent tendency to seek God. The necessary external stimuli in the form of a scriptural text, meeting a Holy person, visiting a temple (or Church,) etc. attracts him/her, and what a wonder! The person is totally immersed in various spiritual practices, becomes God centered. There never was any conscious effort or desire or thought to drink, smoke, or to seek God. But fulfillment of necessary conditions was responsible for the particular behavior.

"But what about free will? Can we not choose the way we will react to given conditions and circumstances? Yes, we can choose; but the will is not absolutely free will. The will, by which I make choices behaves in accordance with my character, that sum total of all past deeds, thoughts, and feelings. And not only of this present life; the subconscious mind carries the record of many past lives."

Then is there no way out? There is. It is to follow the 'psychology of spiritual science'. We have to empty the mind of all unwanted subconscious impressions and tendencies: weed. It is almost impossible task; almost but not totally impossible. It is possible to change the contents of mind (just as it is possible to sow groundnut seed so as to start replacing the weed). And as we have seen that the conscious experiences get stored up as subconscious impressions, we have to control and handle both conscious and subconscious mind. Our actions, thinking, and feeling should be such that the subconscious mind is cleansed of its dirty contents.

"Suppose you had the problem of cleaning a dirty ink bottle that is fastened to the table. You can't pick it up and empty the ink out. What will you do? You pour clean water in and the ink and the dirt will spill out. You keep pouring in clean water until all the ink and dirt have been washed out and the bottle contains nothing but clean water. In the same way, it is not possible to empty the mind by throwing out the contents of consciousness and making it blank;

[Dakantos]

More information to process, since none of you seem willing to provide sources.

Excerpt From Digital Entities. Study of the Mind.

Consc. vs. Subconsc. Decision Making.
The process of decision making seems to be intimately associated with consciousness in humans, although we can say nothing about whether or not dogs or chimps engage in "conscious decision making" (which is something the materialists should seriously choke on!). But in humans, we have the experience of reflecting upon things (slow decisions) and changing directions in various situations (fast decisions) and lots of other variations where we are thinking about things and decisions happen. The role of consciousness in these decisions is hard to pin down, but as noted at the bottom of the What it is Like to be a Chair page, being in a conscious state is essential to making good decisions.
Certainly, the idea of making "Decisions" is fuzzily defined, in that knee jerk or escape "reflexes" would be viewed by most as involuntary and therefore non-decisional, whereas "deciding what TV channel to switch to" would be considered more voluntary. As I don't have a handy solution to the free will-automaton problem, we will instead adopt the convention that if a choice need to be made (e.g. whether to flee or attack; which prey item to strike), then a decision has been made, free will or no free will. [Do machine using complex logic circuits imbued with countless stochastic elements (like our neurons) have free will? Not my yob!]
The next question is do we make involuntary decisions. For example, in regards to the what it is like to be a chair page, decisions were made that were perhaps instantaneous (I won't say in case you have not yet read the page). Indeed things that were at one time "conscious decision" can seem to become subconsc. in that we give no conscious thought or effort to them. This is most apparent perhaps in the motor realm, although there are also purely mental decisions that can be made that require no motor activity. This is yet another clue perhaps into the murky question of what it is that consciousness is. At some point consciousness is necessary for some decisions, and later on it becomes rote and subconscious. How might this happen. Moreover, certain decisions seem to have a level of complexity that they would never become subconscious (like deciding which jobs to apply for, in case anyone from my work ever reads this). But maybe even the most "complex decisions" can become rote and subconscious if you do them often enough?
In this vein, consciousness is used to make decisions about new things and new combinations of things, and when things achieve a sufficient degree of roteness, they drop into the subconscious realm. This is interesting because it ties into Paul Adams view (syndar.org) that a special kind of learning (the highest level I might say, given my lack of understanding of his work) occurs only very infrequently and it is for exactly these kinds of tasks that the mechanism of conscious, focused attention becomes involved. Adam's synaptic learning involves very specific kinds of interactions between circuits in different cortical layers that extract higher order statistics from sensory and prior experiences. Perhaps these kinds of activity have a special relationship to consciousness and/or attention?


Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?

"Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done," said study co-author John-Dylan Haynes, a Max Planck Institute neuroscientist.

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.

Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation. For those accustomed to thinking of themselves as having free will, the implications are far more unsettling than learning about the physiological basis of other brain functions.

Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will. For instance, the experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions.

"Real-life decisions -- am I going to buy this house or that one, take this job or that -- aren't decisions that we can implement very well in our brain scanners," said Haynes.

Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision.

"We can't rule out that there's a free will that kicks in at this late point," said Haynes, who intends to study this phenomenon next. "But I don't think it's plausible."

That implausibility doesn't disturb Haynes.

"It's not like you're a machine. Your brain activity is the physiological substance in which your personality and wishes and desires operate," he said.

The unease people feel at the potential unreality of free will, said National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Mark Hallett, originates in a misconception of self as separate from the brain.

"That's the same notion as the mind being separate from the body -- and I don't think anyone really believes that," said Hallett. "A different way of thinking about it is that your consciousness is only aware of some of the things your brain is doing."

Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

"If it is, we haven't put our finger on it," he said. "But we're happy to keep looking."

Holbach showed that the brain does become active before we become consciousness of our own answer. Although these machines show brain activity several seconds before a question is answered I'm not sure that I believe we are without free will. This method cannot rule out free will because it is possible to change our decisions at the last minute. I still believe that we govern ourselves with free will even after these experiments.

-Alex Rector

I bolded portions you should pay particular attention to.



Already several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. This is shown in a study by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Charite University Hospital and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin. The researchers from the group of Professor John-Dylan Haynes used a brain scanner to investigate what happens in the human brain just before a decision is made. "Many processes in the brain occur automatically and without involvement of our consciousness. This prevents our mind from being overloaded by simple routine tasks. But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings."

In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts even up to 7 seconds ahead of time how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."
(Nature Neuroscience, April 13th 2008) Dr Haynes




In essence, they don't necessarily know if the decision is being made, only that it's being prepared. As mentioned in one of my earlier posts and I have found this source (Dr Haynes himself, of whom i believe Odin was trying to quote) that such thoughts are routine decisions. I can certainly accept routine, mundane things like whether or not to pick up a coffee cup with my left or right hand can be determined by my subconscious, because that's all that's been proven, But not whether or not I'm going to drink it.

[Ghos7Soldier]

I was debating my own thoughts about it either way.

Also, you can edit those two together right?

[Dakantos]

Originally Posted by Ghos7Soldier

I was debating my own thoughts about it either way.

Also, you can edit those two together right?

Too long. Or I would. They have a character limit.


This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.

"Most researchers investigate what happens when people have to decide immediately, typically as a rapid response to an event in our environment. Here we were focusing on the more interesting decisions that are made in a more natural, self-paced manner", Haynes explains.

More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet's experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person's conscious mind. Libet's experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.


Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze & John-Dylan Haynes
Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.
Nature Neuroscience April 13th, 2008.



There is all the information on it.

The problem is, everyone is thinking of the brain being separate from your consciousness, when in fact, it IS your consciousness.

[Chokichi]

I get what Paul and Odin are saying but think, it's still your brain so as an individual unit / person you have free will because your brain is a part of you so you are making the choice even if your brain, the part of you decides to do something before you realize your thinking of it.

[Ghos7Soldier]

Originally Posted by Dakantos

The problem is, everyone is thinking of the brain being separate from your consciousness, when in fact, it IS your consciousness.

That's how I was seeing it, basically it's STILL you making the decisions technically right?

[Jon88]

Originally Posted by Ghos7Soldier

I don't know, you tell us.

Ok then, no apples do not choose to fall from trees.

Free-Will:

2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.
free will - Definitions from Dictionary.com

The human brain is bound by physical forces, and our 'choices' are nothing more than inevitable reactions. Many people view life as a twisting path with many forks that represent choices, but in reality there is only one straight path that can not be avoided. The 'problem' is however, the path can not be known because such knowledge cannot fit within our minds. So again ignorance creates the illusion of free-will.

[Ghos7Soldier]

Originally Posted by Jon88

Ok then, no apples do not choose to fall from trees.

Free-Will:

2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.
free will - Definitions from Dictionary.com

The human brain is bound by physical forces, and our 'choices' are nothing more than inevitable reactions. Many people view life as a twisting path with many forks that represent choices, but in reality there is only one straight path that can not be avoided. The 'problem' is however, the path can not be known because such knowledge cannot fit within our minds. So again ignorance creates the illusion of free-will.

That would be another term for "fate" seeing as we're destined along that road.

And also, apples can't choose whether if they want to fall or not, they do not have said "brain" to choose whether they want to or not.

Apples aren't humans, they are plants, difference is all in those two things.
Also, don't see how our brain is bound by physical forces only making "free will" seem like an "illusion from ignorance", if you've read the arguments already gone through...it's going to take a lot more than that to tell me we don't have any form of free will.

Though, you are the first person to provide some sort of definition for the word, thanks for that.

[Ryoutaru]

Originally Posted by StarStarMoon

can i get a source on this?

also i thought of posting this 10 seconds before i read it

roflmfao .

[Colby]

Originally Posted by Jon88

Ok then, no apples do not choose to fall from trees.

Free-Will:

2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.
free will - Definitions from Dictionary.com

The human brain is bound by physical forces, and our 'choices' are nothing more than inevitable reactions. Many people view life as a twisting path with many forks that represent choices, but in reality there is only one straight path that can not be avoided. The 'problem' is however, the path can not be known because such knowledge cannot fit within our minds. So again ignorance creates the illusion of free-will.

But, lets just say you are a person on a road from birth the road is basically a plane going from the inside which is your birth to the outside which is your death. Lets say, you choose to walk to the left, but a clone of you in that moment is created that you can not percieve in any way and he chooses to go right, that's free will. You chose to be either on the right or left of where you started, it wasn't inevitable to go one direction or the other. The only thing inevitable is that a decision must be made to either go a direction or not move. Destiny is a sham.

I believe there are infinite possibilities, and each of our decisions creates whole new worlds where another decision could have been made. What I'm saying is, basically, when you chose to go left, there were infinity -1 other universes created in which you went in another direction on the plane that extends out to your death.

If what I'm saying is true, we do have the free will to go in any direction, and true though many may end the same, with infinite directions to go, at least one is bound to end you in a place different had you traveled right instead of left.

[Babylocc]

theres a coke on my left
theres a coke on my right
which should i get?

[Jon88]

Originally Posted by Ghos7Soldier

And also, apples can't choose whether if they want to fall or not, they do not have said "brain" to choose whether they want to or not.

Apples aren't humans, they are plants, difference is all in those two things.

Are humans and plants not made up of the same thing? Atoms. Your brain is made of physical stuff, and physical stuff must follow physical rules. For every single event, there is only one outcome because it is impossible for two outcomes to exist from a single event. How would one be chosen over the other in terms of physically happening? To me that's like saying 1+1=3, you should haven gotten 2, but out of nowhere came 3. And if random things like that can occur, how then does the Universe maintain any order? You throw a football at the ground, and it just randomly decides to float off to space?

Also, don't see how our brain is bound by physical forces only making "free will" seem like an "illusion from ignorance", if you've read the arguments already gone through...it's going to take a lot more than that to tell me we don't have any form of free will.

Say I give you a choice, "Pepsi or Coke". Say you 'chose' Coke. What I would then ask you is why did you chose Coke? For every answer you give me, another why would follow. Until eventually we either reach the absolute reason for why you chose Coke over Pepsi, or you just say, "Stop asking why, I chose Coke and that's final". The latter is a sign of not completely knowing or just unwillingness to pursue why and one just concludes it was a choice. But if we were to continue asking why all the way down to the sub-atomic world (and possibly even further), there I believe we will find the real reasons for why we make said choices and realize they are nothing more than moments in time when the apple was going to fall from the tree...

Originally Posted by Colby

But, lets just say you are a person on a road from birth the road is basically a plane going from the inside which is your birth to the outside which is your death. Lets say, you choose to walk to the left, but a clone of you in that moment is created that you can not percieve in any way and he chooses to go right, that's free will.

Are you and your clone perfectly equal in state at the moment the choice is made? Are the environments exactly the same? If so, how did the two reach different conclusions? "An object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force", what outside force made the two people chose differently?

[Colby]

Originally Posted by Jon88

Are you and your clone perfectly equal in state at the moment the choice is made? Are the environments exactly the same? If so, how did the two reach different conclusions? "An object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force", what outside force made the two people chose differently?

You have to look at this from an outside viewpoint. Lets say for a moment you are outside of time observing the course of someones life. You can see the decisions they will make, and the results of each, now you've seen the result of the decision they have made in our current reality that ends with death, however you can also see what the effect would be of other decisions as well, and although in this reality I may have chosen to go left, in another reality I may have chosen to go right. It isn't all part of one and the same, it's a different reality created by that appearance of a choice to be made.

I made this chart to clarify, you and I and the rest of the world are represented by the green box, we only see the effects of reality A. However, we cannot see outside of this reality, and if there is a reality B, then there is free will. We choose what reality to live in with every breath we take. In this reality, I may always choose to walk left, but in another I may always choose to walk right and which I live in depends all on my choice alone.

[slingblader]

Originally Posted by Jon88

Say I give you a choice, "Pepsi or Coke". Say you 'chose' Coke. What I would then ask you is why did you chose Coke? For every answer you give me, another why would follow. Until eventually we either reach the absolute reason for why you chose Coke over Pepsi, or you just say, "Stop asking why, I chose Coke and that's final". The latter is a sign of not completely knowing or just unwillingness to pursue why and one just concludes it was a choice. But if we w