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Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious m

Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Also, in terms of problem solving, there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. It's not like the problems were solved within the scope of consciousness, which is of course contradictory to what we experience. We feel the contradictions because we experience everything through consciousness, i.e. we can't experience things which happen outside realm of consciousness. The brain scans prove in a sense that there is a disconnect (For instance in this article the brain scans showed signals related to seeing faces in the numbers, but the conscious experience was not seeing them). The link between what the brain does, and what we experience (consciousness) is indeed the hard problem of consciousness.

pulkitsh1234 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libet_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libe... For more context.
akiselev 6y ago
All of the research you describe can be safely bundled into the same category as "dead salmon shows brain activity on an fMRI if you squint hard enough." It's phrenology for the 21st century, except with dyes and MRIs instead of head shaped calipers. The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science. At best, "consciousness" is an abstraction used by psychiatrists and laypeople over much deeper, more complex, and less understood concepts in neuroscience. The field has yet to differentiate the roles neural plasticity plays between newborns, the average college student, and brain trauma victims - let alone grapple with the implication that our brains are the result of a billion years of evolution. The nature of human intelligence is far wilder than you or I can imagine, Horatio, but publish-or-perish cannon fodder is clearly not the answer.
- corin_ 6y ago
  Why does our not fully (or even close to fully) understanding how the brain works mean conscious vs subconscious is unscientific? Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand everything that makes that the case doesn't stop that being the case.
  - vinceguidry 6y ago
    You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics. Mathematicians are not scientists, neither are philosophers.
    - corin_ 6y ago
      I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?
      - ses1984 6y ago
        You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.
        6y ago
ghego1 6y ago
> there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. This made me think of an async process
- agustif 6y ago
  Promise.all()
  - kebman 6y ago
    When you've been working on Node.js for too long. xD
    - rpastuszak 6y ago
      Because if it's longer than that your rotten soul is already burning in the callback hell.
- criddell 6y ago
  I recently listened to a podcast from Sean Carroll where they talked about consciousness being like a jury. There are competing systems that speak as one. So an async process might be a good way of thinking about it. Experiments where they detect the decision being made a second or two before the person becomes aware of it may be picking up on this. Perhaps if they measured different parts of the brain they might seen alternate decisions being made.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
michael-ax 6y ago
an amoeba has consciousness.. and what you call the hard problem is a problem with the brain doctrine .. as the hands of a concert pianist have no trouble running the show with the rest of his or her parts cooperating to make it possible. .. the mind/brain looking on then .. as in many/most other experiences where a whole person is in flow. its freaky to think my parts, glands, organs were not freely and willingly coordinating by way of the cns.. and i have no experiential evidence .. in the amoeba and up .. that a brain is even needed for consciousness.
- pas 6y ago
  yes, consciousness is a spectrum, as we already see it during normal human development/lifecycle. and sure, in that sense maybe even a rock is conscious to some degree, at least compared to hard vacuum. but conflating the importance of the CNS with the lack of a hard cut-off is a folly. similarly, just because the concert pianist can't play well after a hand injury doesn't make the hand more important than the brain. because similarly, the pianist can't play well after many types of head/brain injury. naturally, because the pianist learned to play through the hands, fine-tuned and memorized what to do with the hands to get what the brain wants to hear. hence the importance of practice. amoebas behavior and adaptability is very limited, because its comparatively very simple. an so we might be fairly certain it lacks the hardware/wetware to run what we call consciousness. and it might turn out that a big fancy brain like ours is not needed for consciousness, but likely there's still some cut off, meaning at least a few neurons (or similar networks and [predictive?] feedback loops) are likely needed.
radarsat1 6y ago
> the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Seems to conflate consciousness and free will. Just because you're not conscious of it, your brain still made that decision. And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind".
- brabel 6y ago
  > And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind". No, that's not possible. That's what those experiments are showing, you're just failing to grasp its consequences. If later you report "changing your mind", that will also have happened unconsciously, and you wont' even know why in your conscious experience: but you will be convinced you chose that - when you really haven't.
  - throwawayexodus 6y ago
    what's funny is you're ignoring what the experimenter himself concluded about the experiments. he concluded that we have free will to veto these choices, its always rich to see his experiments so badly misused.
    - brabel 6y ago
      > he concluded that we have free will to veto these choices That's circular. The brain makes a decision, then the brain can choose to veto it? Where does the decision to veto come from? Free will as you're describing is an impossibility: To even come up with the idea of vetoing something, there must be some process in the brain that's started by "something else", and the something else must be also possible to veto ad infinitum. Think for yourself instead of just accepting what the experimentallist suggests you should conclude.
  - radarsat1 6y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but I'm still not sure that consciousness over a decision is what determines whether it was done of free will. Conscious or not, it was your brain making that decision. Not someone else telling your brain what to think. Your brain thought about it, considered the options, made a decision, and then informed your consciousness of it. That doesn't undermine the idea of free will, it just changes how we think about consciousness.
mellosouls 6y ago
I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. You are thinking of Libet's famous experiments. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet%27s_experiments https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_o...
- raindeer3 6y ago
  There are much more recent studies showing similar results https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it I believe these studies were not able to be replicated. Also, we have no way to scientifically measure consciousness. So a study that purports to time it is measuring reaction speed, not consciousness per se.
toddh 6y ago
> Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. But it's your brain that's making decisions based on your experiences, desires, and goals. Obviously your conscious mind can't do everything, it's there for the new and hard stuff. All the rest is pushed down to lower layers, but it's all still you.

pulkitsh1234 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libet_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#Libe... For more context.

akiselev 6y ago

All of the research you describe can be safely bundled into the same category as "dead salmon shows brain activity on an fMRI if you squint hard enough." It's phrenology for the 21st century, except with dyes and MRIs instead of head shaped calipers. The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science. At best, "consciousness" is an abstraction used by psychiatrists and laypeople over much deeper, more complex, and less understood concepts in neuroscience. The field has yet to differentiate the roles neural plasticity plays between newborns, the average college student, and brain trauma victims - let alone grapple with the implication that our brains are the result of a billion years of evolution. The nature of human intelligence is far wilder than you or I can imagine, Horatio, but publish-or-perish cannon fodder is clearly not the answer.

corin_ 6y ago
Why does our not fully (or even close to fully) understanding how the brain works mean conscious vs subconscious is unscientific? Is all mental health research unscientific based on the same logic? My understanding is that it's conclusive that some of our brain's processes we feel we are controlling (conscious thinking), while others happen in the background without us realising. The fact that we don't understand everything that makes that the case doesn't stop that being the case.
- vinceguidry 6y ago
  You're making a common mistake, that of equating "scientific" with "good". Science is a particular method for learning about the world, not a marker of moral worth. I don't want to get too far into the epistemological weeds here, but there are plenty of other, perfectly valid ways to understand the world, many of which are used and studied in academia. The easiest examples to point to are philosophy and mathematics. Mathematicians are not scientists, neither are philosophers.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?
    - ses1984 6y ago
      You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.
      - 6y ago

ghego1 6y ago

> there are experiments which show that the brain calculates the answers and "presents" the answers later on to the consciousness. This made me think of an async process

agustif 6y ago
Promise.all()
- kebman 6y ago
  When you've been working on Node.js for too long. xD
  - rpastuszak 6y ago
    Because if it's longer than that your rotten soul is already burning in the callback hell.
criddell 6y ago
I recently listened to a podcast from Sean Carroll where they talked about consciousness being like a jury. There are competing systems that speak as one. So an async process might be a good way of thinking about it. Experiments where they detect the decision being made a second or two before the person becomes aware of it may be picking up on this. Perhaps if they measured different parts of the brain they might seen alternate decisions being made.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

michael-ax 6y ago

an amoeba has consciousness.. and what you call the hard problem is a problem with the brain doctrine .. as the hands of a concert pianist have no trouble running the show with the rest of his or her parts cooperating to make it possible. .. the mind/brain looking on then .. as in many/most other experiences where a whole person is in flow. its freaky to think my parts, glands, organs were not freely and willingly coordinating by way of the cns.. and i have no experiential evidence .. in the amoeba and up .. that a brain is even needed for consciousness.

pas 6y ago
yes, consciousness is a spectrum, as we already see it during normal human development/lifecycle. and sure, in that sense maybe even a rock is conscious to some degree, at least compared to hard vacuum. but conflating the importance of the CNS with the lack of a hard cut-off is a folly. similarly, just because the concert pianist can't play well after a hand injury doesn't make the hand more important than the brain. because similarly, the pianist can't play well after many types of head/brain injury. naturally, because the pianist learned to play through the hands, fine-tuned and memorized what to do with the hands to get what the brain wants to hear. hence the importance of practice. amoebas behavior and adaptability is very limited, because its comparatively very simple. an so we might be fairly certain it lacks the hardware/wetware to run what we call consciousness. and it might turn out that a big fancy brain like ours is not needed for consciousness, but likely there's still some cut off, meaning at least a few neurons (or similar networks and [predictive?] feedback loops) are likely needed.

radarsat1 6y ago

> the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. Thus putting doubts on our conscious experience of free-will. Seems to conflate consciousness and free will. Just because you're not conscious of it, your brain still made that decision. And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind".

brabel 6y ago
> And your conscious mind can still go back on the decision and "change your mind". No, that's not possible. That's what those experiments are showing, you're just failing to grasp its consequences. If later you report "changing your mind", that will also have happened unconsciously, and you wont' even know why in your conscious experience: but you will be convinced you chose that - when you really haven't.
- throwawayexodus 6y ago
  what's funny is you're ignoring what the experimenter himself concluded about the experiments. he concluded that we have free will to veto these choices, its always rich to see his experiments so badly misused.
  - brabel 6y ago
    > he concluded that we have free will to veto these choices That's circular. The brain makes a decision, then the brain can choose to veto it? Where does the decision to veto come from? Free will as you're describing is an impossibility: To even come up with the idea of vetoing something, there must be some process in the brain that's started by "something else", and the something else must be also possible to veto ad infinitum. Think for yourself instead of just accepting what the experimentallist suggests you should conclude.
- radarsat1 6y ago
  I hear what you're saying, but I'm still not sure that consciousness over a decision is what determines whether it was done of free will. Conscious or not, it was your brain making that decision. Not someone else telling your brain what to think. Your brain thought about it, considered the options, made a decision, and then informed your consciousness of it. That doesn't undermine the idea of free will, it just changes how we think about consciousness.

mellosouls 6y ago

I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. You are thinking of Libet's famous experiments. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet%27s_experiments https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_o...

raindeer3 6y ago
There are much more recent studies showing similar results https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it I believe these studies were not able to be replicated. Also, we have no way to scientifically measure consciousness. So a study that purports to time it is measuring reaction speed, not consciousness per se.

toddh 6y ago

> Somehow this is not surprising for me, I have heard about experiments related to free-will wherein the brain already made a decision even before the conscious mind became aware of it. But it's your brain that's making decisions based on your experiences, desires, and goals. Obviously your conscious mind can't do everything, it's there for the new and hard stuff. All the rest is pushed down to lower layers, but it's all still you.