Nowhere357

Yes this is true. I make a big assumption that I am not the only mind with this ability. I blame empathy, intuition, and maybe even 'common sense'; after all, what reason is there to assume I have the only real mind on this planet?

The cloned brains merely try to isolate the quality we are speaking about. they show, IMO, that free will can be observed in the macro world as randomness.

I would choose the one that pleases me most. No one else can detect the fact that I'm pleased or not; you can only detect the fact that I made an apparently random decision.

I don't think the word 'pleases' is basic enough to capture my point. The word can be seen as requiring feedback with the brain. If I relax my will, and merely observe the thoughts my brain throws at me, I become aware that the thoughts seem to have a quality of attractiveness. It's easier to attend to thoughts that are attractive to me. Like a moth to a flame. Free will or will power is the ability to focus on less-attractive thoughts. Attractive thoughts naturally draw my attention. Using free will, I can resist this 'natural draw'.

BTW I'm just exploring.

Nowhere357

Hi John. Yes I agree.

Would you agree that mental states affect the brain? Is that a controversial position?

Treacle Worshipper

Originally posted by Nowhere357
Well TW you aren't leaving me much. First you say free will cannot be unbiased. Now you say it can't be biased.

Actually, I think I said that for will to be free, it had to be unbiased, you said that was a fallacy (begging the question) and I asked you how will could be both biased and free. Because bias indicates limit and limit indicates a lack of freedom

Free will is a complicated concept that carries too much baggage. I really don't claim evidence of free will. What I claim is some limited ability to focus my awareness. I just figured that when people were talking about free will, they were talking about the application of that ability.

I think my brain processes the 'next thought' without my attention. When I attend to a thought, or concentrate on it, that thought carries greater weight during the 'next loop'. IOW the thoughts I 'choose' are more important to the brain.

This ability to guide the brain into accepting lower weighted thoughts is what I call 'free will'. So it's more like a volt-meter rating than an object or entity. A 'weak-willed' person has a low rating and can't keep his mind on his job; a 'strong-willed' person has a high rating and makes a large impact on his environment.

The existence of the ability to focus attention is the mystery, IMO, and not the existence of 'free will'.

The way our brain functions, it is affected by the physical world, and it is affected by it's mental state. The laws and rules that govern our mental state are not the same laws and rules that govern physics.

I think we are approaching this from different directions. I am saying "I have these functions of awareness, choice, etc, which I call 'free will', but science tells me that they are based on physical events, therefore, how can they be free?"

What started me wondering about this was suffering from clinical depression (ie. depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain). When we first started to reduce my meds I had been stable for about nine months. However, we reduced too quickly, and in 2 days I went from being "normal" to suicidal. It was a terrifying experience, and really started me thinking about how we can have free will, when it seems that all that that means is that our brain chemistry is in working order.

Just a thought
TW

Nowhere357

Well, they can't. Clearly they are just natural reactions.

Here is where I find a different viewpoint.

I feel pain. Can science prove that? In fact, all science can do is identify neurons firing and chemicals coursing. Physical science cannot determine that I feel pain; it can only determine that I physically react to stimulus. Science says that pain doesn't actually exist.

That is wrong. I am a real entity, and I really feel stuff. Any reality map must include this fact.

In the same way, we have free will. We can, to some extent, focus our awareness as we choose.

DRFseven

Don't you think there is a cause for the ability to focus?

student739

Treacle Worshipper said, "Actually, I think I said that for will to be free, it had to be unbiased, you said that was a fallacy (begging the question) and I asked you how will could be both biased and free. Because bias indicates limit and limit indicates a lack of freedom."

Although some proponents of free will may claim that the will is completely free, certainly it has also been claimed by proponents of free will that although the will is significantly biased as a result of properties such as character, memory, and belief, the sum of the influence of these properties is not (or often not) sufficient to produce the choice of a single course of action from many but rather is only sufficient to produce a range of courses of action amongst which the will chooses a single course of action freely.

student739

Nowhere357

Yes. The ability to focus is a natural ability.

DRFseven

What do you mean by natural? Do you mean made up of neurons and electro-chemical transactions? In other words, what causes this "natural ability" to occur?

DRFseven

How do these proponents suggest that the will "settles on" a single course of action? There must necessarily be a process of weighting down to a single conclusion, or else how does any decision ever get made? And what part of the cognitive process is the will, anyway? Is it the whole brain, including the impulses involved in unconscious motivation, which represents the largest part.

I've never understood why some people think that experience/memory/emotions form some of the weight attributed to certain alternatives, but not all of it. Where do they think the rest of it comes from? Why is there a physical mechanism for only some of it, and then a sort of mystery force that takes over the rest of it?

Nowhere357

Is gravity a 'mystery force'? In fact, gravity is a relationship between matter, and no one has found a graviton. But that is no bar to accepting gravity. Why? Because things fall down whether we care to accept it or not (so to speak).

The reason why physical mechanism explains only part: observation. I can observe that my ability to focus awareness does actually affect my mental state. Just as I observe that things really do fall down.

Now, science tells me that 'pain' is neurons firing. My own observation tells that is inadequate. In fact, There is more to subjective awareness than is indicated by studying physical matter. Why should this be difficult to accept? The scientific method was designed to study objective reality, by REMOVING subjective reality from the picture!

But that doesn't remove subjective reality from the natural universe! In fact, all knowledge including all scientific knowlege, REQUIRES the existence of subjective reality!

We're studying something that is naturally outside the scope of physical science. Science cannot detect that I am a personal subjective awareness, In the same way, science cannot detect that I have free will.

Personal mental experiences are not accessible to physical science. What is accessible the effect that life, and minds, have on the environment. IMO once all physical mechanisms are removed, free will is detected in the macro world as randomness and tendancy.

I'm trying to explain "why some people think that experience/memory/emotions form some of the weight attributed to certain alternatives, but not all of it."

The reason I think is acceptance of subjective experience. I know this is a controversial idea, and I don't ask you to accept it. I do ask that you hold it, try to see what I'm saying.

Physical science both presumes and ignores the mind. To study life and the mind, we must face that presumtion. I'm trying to say that personal mental experiences become a valid tool for exploring reality, when studying the mind.

I accept the logic that free will is only an 'illusion', all decisions are actually determined mechanisticaly.

The problem is when I back up a step. Apply the same logic to my experience of pain, and I learn that pain is only an 'illusion'. But I know, as deep as I can imagine knowing anything, that pain is more than 'illusion', that I must exist as an entity, because I can feel the shit.

From this POV, where I accept my subjective existence, I look at free will, and realize that my subjective existence affects my mental states, which affect the brain/body, which affects the mental states, which affects my subjective existence. Everything falls into place.

Then subjective existence must be an energy source. So I think maybe this is a falsifiable theory.