varying levels of consciousness

[Cavernio]

Reach:
I started out with trying to respond to each our your paragraphs, but I found that it all basically boils down to whether consciousness can affect the brain in a top-down manner. What I take your position to be is that, since consciousness can only develop from our brain, the brain is obviously the physical determinant of our thoughts. I've already agreed with this when I said something like even if we could determine everything that would happen, it doesn't mean, to me, that free-will doesn't exist.

This is a rather low-grade analogue, but it's all I can think of. If you, say, create a computer program A that is designed to, itself, make another computer B which is then designed to do C, you could say that program A made program C, but it's also right to say that program B made program C. Now what if the design of program C is to change what program A does. This then changes program B which then changes program C. At the very start, it is still clearly A that started everything. Let's pretend that program A is not actually a program, but hardware now, and very basic hardware at that, that B is some sort of basic software, and that C is highly advanced, intricate software. After hardware A has started, can you say that the hardware is still controlling everything, but that would be ignoring the fact that clearly software C is doing much more of the calculations and controls, and indeed that C has taken over the process. A is the body, B is the brain, C is the mind. Well, ok, with a mind/body thing, C actually affects B which then affects A, and A and B are both hardware. And I guess B would be doing calculation and C would be making sense of the calculations, but the gist is the same. If you can imagine how a computer program could exist that could change itself, and if you can see how C would actually be controlling things, then in my mind, you should be able to imagine how our mind can control ourselves.

I don't know if this would fall under dualism or not, but I know that to not have a dualism of mind/body to some extent seems absolutely ridiculous. Our mind, no matter how connected our brain and body, is a completely different creature than the rest of the physical world as we know it.

"Can you explain what you mean by "The fact that I feel I have control over what I do is what gives me free will." I don't see how this holds up. It might give you free will in a mental sense, but physically whether or not you believe you have free will is going to have no effect on whether or not you *actually* do (Given feelings are just a product of the brain as well)."

Maybe you think this is a wholly stupid statement, but if we have free will in a mental sense, that to me is actually free-will.


"Have you considered the possibility that this is just your retrospective interpretation of something that was already set into motion irrespective of you? If you took a test to look at your brain waves when you report being able to change the red pen into a blue men, the brain waves associated with this change would come before your so called will to make that change."

I know this is not a comment directed at me, but to get into nitty gritty things, there's absolutely no scientific certainty that any given thought happens only after the brain does something. There is no way to determine when a thought changes because 1) there's delays in relaying information to a person, 2) our instrumentation is very weak in determining both time and place of any activity in the brain, especially in conjuction with the fact 3) that we cannot know a person's thoughts even knowing all brain activity. (Although perhaps in the future, given enough studying, we may be able to do 3.) You are making an assumption.

[Cavernio]

Originally Posted by dsliscoo

Whatever that programming once was has been almost entirely annhilated by the experience of life on the brain itself.

This is one thing you said that I agree with dsl. I could even add it to my computer program analogy by saying that after so much stuff D has happened (D being the environment which generally affects only C, but which can affect A and B too), A is even less of the cause to what a person's thoughts are.

This is addressed at Reach again, and is more of something to ponder than any true evidence I have about my view of conciousness. Evolutionarily speaking, why would we even evolve consciousness if it had no control over us? There's no purpose to it beyond that that I can see.
You might say that consciousness is merely a by-product of the complexities of the brain, that it can't do what it does without having conciousness. Firstly, I just don't think that that's true. Computers are very complex and yet they're not conscious. Secondly, we DO have reflexes, movements which are indepedent from our consciousness. Parkinson's disease specifically interrupts conscious control of movement, but not reflexive movements.