Since we have no free will, what purpose does/did consciousness serve?

[dimreepr]

Nonsense. I have chosen a long time ago never to be angry or stressed, and I haven't been angry or stressed since. I used to fear heights, but decided not to a while ago, and now when I cross e.g. a rope bridge 100 m high, I don't even feel a thrill.

 

So you've finally conquered your emotions Spock, nice one .

[mistermack]

Nonsense. I have chosen a long time ago never to be angry or stressed, and I haven't been angry or stressed since. I used to fear heights, but decided not to a while ago, and now when I cross e.g. a rope bridge 100 m high, I don't even feel a thrill.

Check out the thread on stammering then. And Tourette's and Anorexia. You should be able to provide an instant cure. A lot of people will thank you.

 

I have a fear of heights, and no amount of deciding not to has ever helped. Same with the fear of public speaking. It takes more than just deciding in most cases. I can force myself to do those things. But it's not gone away.

[Bender]

I didn't say everyone can control all emotions. I'm also no psychologist, and I don't know why other people can't control theirs. I guess my realisation that emotions are nothing more than a bunch of chemicals helped.

 

I don't think stammering, Tourette's or anorexia are emotions, though. I don't know about phobia's, but I guess my fear of heights or public speaking weren't "real" phobia's, just the regular non-pathological kind of anxiety.

[delboy]

I didn't say everyone can control all emotions. I'm also no psychologist, and I don't know why other people can't control theirs. I guess my realisation that emotions are nothing more than a bunch of chemicals helped.

 

I don't think stammering, Tourette's or anorexia are emotions, though. I don't know about phobia's, but I guess my fear of heights or public speaking weren't "real" phobia's, just the regular non-pathological kind of anxiety.

 

 

 

I do agree, to a limited degree it's possible to control emotions. After all, what is therapy all about? By learning about what is causing emotions and challenging certain thinking patterns it's very possible to change our emotions in a very conscious way.

Edited March 9, 2017 by delboy

[dimreepr]

I didn't say everyone can control all emotions. I'm also no psychologist, and I don't know why other people can't control theirs. I guess my realisation that emotions are nothing more than a bunch of chemicals helped.

 

 

You may be able to suppress some emotions but that doesn't mean you don't feel them or control which ones turn up next.

[mistermack]

From personal experience, I have a reasonable control of what I tell myself. But not much over whether it works or not.

I can tell myself that the audience don't matter one jot to me. And I'm pretty sure that I've convinced myself. But that little panic attack happens anyway.

With me, it's not the fear of public speaking, it's the fear of getting a panic attack WHILE I'm speaking.

Essentially a fear of fear itself, rather than the thing that sets it off.

 

I've rationalised it till the cows come home, but it's still there every time.

 

And heights are a nightmare. There are some cliffs on the west coast of Ireland, on Achill Island, that are 2,200 ft, almost vertical.

I remember I climbed up there from the land side years ago, and peeped over the edge. I had to lie flat on my belly to even go near the edge. And I absolutely swear that as far as I was concerned, the whole MOUNTAIN was swaying from side to side.

I knew it wasn't, but that didn't stop it feeling like it was.

Matter certainly wins out over mind for me, most of the time.

[Bender]

 

You may be able to suppress some emotions but that doesn't mean you don't feel them or control which ones turn up next.

I'm not talking about suppression. I do not suppress anger. I really do not feel anger. Unless I want to raise my heart rate, in which case deciding to get angry is quite effective in raising my adrenaline level.

About my fear of heights: I used to suppress it, but now I no longer feel any anxiety at heights, at least when I'm secure. In case of the cliffs in Ireland, I'd still have anxiety if there is no fence, but that is no irrational fear and useful to avoid risk.

Controlling which emotion turns up next is easy, just vividly imagine something joyful or sad. Thinking about playing with my children certainly helped getting through two hours of drilling in my dental nerves after several failed attempts to anaesthetise them.

 

It's a petty I cannot be of more help to others.

[dimreepr]

I'm not talking about suppression. I do not suppress anger. I really do not feel anger. Unless I want to raise my heart rate, in which case deciding to get angry is quite effective in raising my adrenaline level.

 

So you don't feel anger unless you want too?

About my fear of heights: I used to suppress it, but now I no longer feel any anxiety at heights, at least when I'm secure. In case of the cliffs in Ireland, I'd still have anxiety if there is no fence, but that is no irrational fear and useful to avoid risk.

 

 

So you don't fear heights, as long as you can't fall.

Controlling which emotion turns up next is easy, just vividly imagine something joyful or sad. Thinking about playing with my children certainly helped getting through two hours of drilling in my dental nerves after several failed attempts to anaesthetise them.

 

 

BOO!!!

[Bender]

So you don't feel anger unless you want too?

correct

 

So you don't fear heights, as long as you can't fall.

correct

[dimreepr]

correct

 

correct

 

And yet BOO!!! still alludes you?

[Bender]

And yet BOO!!! still alludes you?

Alludes to what? Not sure what you mean. Did you make a typo? If you refer to being startled when something unexpected happened: it is a reaction, not an emotion.

 

Back to topic: at least some emotions can be controlled by some people, so the general statement "we cannot control our emotions" is not correct.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Bender

[Strange]

Alludes to what? Not sure what you mean. Did you make a typo? If you refer to being startled when something unexpected happened: it is a reaction, not an emotion.

 

 

And (if that is what was meant - it wasn't clear to me, either) then one can train oneself not to react to unexpected shocks in that way.

[StringJunky]

 

You may be able to suppress some emotions but that doesn't mean you don't feel them or control which ones turn up next.

i might not be in the flow of where this conversation is now - I'm jumping in. Whether we feel a particular instinct, emotion etc to compel us to act a certain way, the fact that we can countermand that compulsion is an example of freewill; the ability to over-ride our personal instinct, however it is made up.Freewill is, in essence, partly the ability to over-ride hard-wired instructions. We can't over-ride everything but the fact that we can some is evidence that it exists, I think. We may not be able to control what comes next but we can decide whether to act on on it. We have a distinct oversight on the internal messages that we receive and what to do with them.

Edited March 9, 2017 by StringJunky

[Delta1212]

 

 

And (if that is what was meant - it wasn't clear to me, either) then one can train oneself not to react to unexpected shocks in that way.

I thought it was fairly clear that he means eludes.

[iNow]

I do not suppress anger. I really do not feel anger. Unless I want to...

You seem to confusing the fact that you have, through practice, trained yourself (rewired your neural pathways...strengthened some networks while weakening others through the years) to minimize your reaction/minimize the emotional response...perhaps you've even learned to preemptively avoid certain triggers of emotion and/or to mute the subtle underlying responses early before they cascade or become obvious... but I promise you that emotions (whether anger, sadness, joy, or otherwise) are still very much occurring within you... and are, in fact, occurring completely out of your control. Microtwitch studies of your facial muscles while responding to stimuli would quite likely validate this point.

 

Regardless...The control you're asserting is not over the emotion but over the response, and even that is still just the logical expression of your current state... of your neural wiring and myelination and hydration level and fatigue and blood composition or glucose level and gut microbiome, etc. The freewill aspect is almost certainly a postdictive illusion...a story or narrative we craft like a quilt work aggregated from numerous disparate threads.

 

 

Freewill is, in essence, partly the ability to over-ride hard-wired instructions. We can't over-ride everything but the fact that we can some is evidence that it exists, I think.

The challenge I have with this position is that freewill too seems to be a result of the very wiring you reference above.

 

Sure...The wiring itself is plastic, but (despite its ability to alter) it remains directly responsible for how we think and respond. What this conversation seems to keep missing is how different parts of the brain are responsible for different things and how different parts of the brain interact with each other in complex and time-dependent ways.

 

Our brains are in a constant state of what you might describe as Fourier transforms, and freewill is not somehow separate from the hard wired instructions. It seems to be the result of activity of a few areas of the brain trying to make sense of what's happening in other areas of the brain....one "flask" of chemicals mixing and reacting with other "flasks" of chemicals. Freewill seems to be little more than a proverbial bubble in the (equally proverbial) froth and foam generated by those mixing events.

 

We have patterns and common actions and thoughts. We form something akin to channels where the action potentials and electrical signals are more frequent or more important (much like water from storms carving a channel down a hillside and that channel getting wider and deeper with each rain storm until it eventually transforms into a riverbed or canyon).

 

We take mental shortcuts and outsource processing to less critical areas and minimize energy expenditure by using autonomic networks to do the heavy lifting. There are even feedback loops and suppression mechanisms/override processes between the frontal cortex and the amygdala (to the point about emotion Bender was making), and this all appears to happen at a chemical level... out of our direct control...and generally without the intervention or even the need of "conscious" choice (whatever that may turn out to be).

Edited March 10, 2017 by iNow

[StringJunky]

You seem to confusing the fact that you have, through practice, trained yourself (rewired your neural pathways...strengthened some networks while weakening others through the years) to minimize your reaction/minimize the emotional response...perhaps you've even learned to preemptively avoid certain triggers of emotion and/or to mute the subtle underlying responses early before they cascade or become obvious... but I promise you that emotions (whether anger, sadness, joy, or otherwise) are still very much occurring within you... and are, in fact, occurring completely out of your control. Microtwitch studies of your facial muscles while responding to stimuli would quite likely validate this point.

 

Regardless...The control you're asserting is not over the emotion but over the response, and even that is still just the logical expression of your current state... of your neural wiring and myelination and hydration level and fatigue and blood composition or glucose level and gut biome makeup, etc. The freewill aspect is almost certainly a postdictive illusion...a story or narrative we craft and little more.

 

 

The challenge I have with this position is that freewill too seems to be a result of the very wiring you reference above.

 

Sure...The wiring itself is plastic, but (despite its ability to alter) it remains directly responsible for how we think and respond. What this conversation seems to keep missing is how different parts of the brain are responsible for different things and how different parts of the brain interact with each other in complex and time-dependent ways.

 

Our brains are in a constant state of what you might describe as Fourier transforms, and freewill is not somehow separate from the hard wired instructions. It seems to be the result of activity of a few areas of the brain trying to make sense of what's happening in other areas of the brain.

 

We have patterns and common actions and thoughts. We form channels where the action potentials and electrical signals are more frequent (like water carving a channel and that channel getting wider and deeper with each rain storm until it's a riverbed or canyon).

 

We take mental shortcuts and outsource processing to less critical areas and minimize energy expenditure by using autonomic networks to do the heavy lifting. There are even feedback loops and suppression mechanisms/override processes between the frontal cortex and the amygdala (to the point about emotion Bender was making), and this all appears to happen at a chemical level... and generally without the intervention or even the need of "conscious" choice.

I don't disagree with anything you've said and the vast majority of it doesn't require conscious intervention. but there are elements of our processing that can make decisions 'on the fly' and act against, or ignore, our automatic parts; an over-ride function in certain situations. I don't see freewill as a distinct ability with it's own wiring in a box, so to speak, but as a continuous extension of the autonomic functions.

 

 

We have patterns and common actions and thoughts. We form channels where the action potentials and electrical signals are more frequent (like water carving a channel and that channel getting wider and deeper with each rain storm until it's a riverbed or canyon).

That's a nice analogy for neuroplasticity.

Edited March 10, 2017 by StringJunky

[iNow]

FYI - Slight cross-post... The message is the same, but I made a few minor edits for clarity while you were typing.

[StringJunky]

FYI - Slight cross-post... The message is the same, but I made a few minor edits for clarity while you were typing.

Right. This about sums it up but that little bubble is not trivial because it distinguishes us from just about all other organisms.

 

 

Freewill seems to be little more than a proverbial bubble in the (equally proverbial) froth and foam generated by those mixing events.

[iNow]

...because it distinguishes us from just about all other organisms.

 

You sound confident about this, but I'm wholly unconvinced the evidence actually supports it.

[Bender]

You seem to confusing the fact that you have, through practice, trained yourself (rewired your neural pathways...strengthened some networks while weakening others through the years) to minimize your reaction/minimize the emotional response...perhaps you've even learned to preemptively avoid certain triggers of emotion and/or to mute the subtle underlying responses early before they cascade or become obvious... but I promise you that emotions (whether anger, sadness, joy, or otherwise) are still very much occurring within you... and are, in fact, occurring completely out of your control. Microtwitch studies of your facial muscles while responding to stimuli would quite likely validate this point.

 

Regardless...The control you're asserting is not over the emotion but over the response, and even that is still just the logical expression of your current state... of your neural wiring and myelination and hydration level and fatigue and blood composition or glucose level and gut microbiome, etc. The freewill aspect is almost certainly a postdictive illusion...a story or narrative we craft like a quilt work aggregated from numerous disparate threads.

Sure, our brains do some preprocessing. I guess it is a matter of definition whether a bunch of chemical reactions can be described as emotions even if they never manifest. Even so, the free will is not an illusion, because I conditioned my brain to do the preprocessing how I want it to.

[Argent]

Sure, our brains do some preprocessing. I guess it is a matter of definition whether a bunch of chemical reactions can be described as emotions even if they never manifest. Even so, the free will is not an illusion, because I conditioned my brain to do the preprocessing how I want it to.

How do you know that your decision to do that was not made in response to subconscious drives arising from "a bunch of chemical reactions"?

[StringJunky]

You sound confident about this, but I'm wholly unconvinced the evidence actually supports it.

If I can articulate it better at some point, and with evidence, I will. I can't at the moment.

How do you know that your decision to do that was not made in response to subconscious drives arising from "a bunch of chemical reactions"?

Every thing is chemical reactions. The difficulty is describing how self-consciousness and freewill emerges from them

Edited March 10, 2017 by StringJunky

[Bender]

How do you know that your decision to do that was not made in response to subconscious drives arising from "a bunch of chemical reactions"?

I assume it was.

[iNow]

...

Edited March 10, 2017 by iNow

[dimreepr]

I assume it was.

 

Not very scientific, but it does seem to be at the center of this argument; we assume we are unique, mostly because it's drummed into us through our formative years, but it's both true and illusory.

 

It's true because our fundamental essence (DNA) is different for all (essentially), but it's also illusory for the same reason; on the individual level we are unique, but on the level of a species, we are essentially clones; so at what point, on this particular spectrum, do we place ourselves?

 

It's an impossible question that most of us are happy to answer affirmatively, because the alternative is beyond our control.

 

Whereas the real question is, why does it matter?