Does Neuroscience Obviate Free Will?

[Joshua the Writer]

Where is your proof that we have no free will? Also, I refuse your own request to prove my point scientifically, because you have not done so with yours. You simply said that there is science to prove it, but did not provide any additional info.

Personally, I believe that I have free will. Every animal, including humans, has a soul that controls voluntary brain signals. What else would control that?

Science does not have the answers for everything. Sometimes, we must look to the spiritual.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

If consciousness comes out of the brain, we have to consider the idea of free will from a specific direction.
Whereas if the brain is a receiver/interpreter of consciousness, that is a whole other possibility entirely.

This moment is all there is. What exactly is this moment? We are only aware of a small amount of what is contained within this moment. As consciousness is vaster then we are aware of, we are always playing 'catch up' with ourselves. A part of us has already decided what needs to happen long before we experience the moment of decision.

It's our souls that control our consciousness.

 

[Rahere]

It's our souls that control our consciousness.

At a neurophysiological level, psychology's moved on considerably from the 1940s questions of identity. A raft of sub-classification of perception than simple sensory awareness has been developed, from neuroception (not just thinking but awareness of what we're thinking), to interoception (awareness of our bodies), proprioception (awareness of our immediate environment}, to exteroception (awareness of the wider physical world/universe). To that I'm adding transception, awareness of the intangible. Neuroception informing our limbic system, particularly from the mid-brain gyri, might pass as "soul" if it were not that I'm personally very aware of the numinous. What's driving that? The trauma healing mechanism's in that limbic animal brain, and is blocked by neuroception signalling from our conscious cortex. All the different trauma healing methods do is drop us into meditation through one portal or another through cognitive suppression. Therefore, religious experience is in the limbic, and there may be more such than just the trauma release. Yes, if any trauma specialists are here, I'm suggesting Peter Levine was wrong (Waking the Tiger), healing after embedding is possible by draining the amygdala reactor, if the limbic has something of greater worth than the subjective snap survival experience the IAS uses, which can overwrite it with a "relax" reaction.

 

[Finder]

Trying to argue that "there is no free will" is a losing proposition. Sure, you can believe there is no free will, but why bother trying to convince someone else, if they can't choose whether to believe you or not?

But that is just it, they can't choose to believe you. Either your argument falls within their world view or it doesn't. You cannot change minds.

The best case against free will is advertising and marketing. It works because humans are predictable.

 

[Finder]

Where is your proof that we have no free will? Also, I refuse your own request to prove my point scientifically, because you have not done so with yours. You simply said that there is science to prove it, but did not provide any additional info.

Personally, I believe that I have free will. Every animal, including humans, has a soul that controls voluntary brain signals. What else would control that?

Science does not have the answers for everything. Sometimes, we must look to the spiritual.

But you need to find out what science "knows" first. Those thoughts you have that feel like you are getting an original idea can measured before you are conscious of them.

As far as the "spiritual," that also makes a case against free will. There is karma and the illusion that you are actually your ego.

 

[Finder]

One thing is certain, I don't have the free will to ignore my autism...

 

[Rahere]

But you need to find out what science "knows" first. Those thoughts you have that feel like you are getting an original idea can measured before you are conscious of them.

As far as the "spiritual," that also makes a cagoalpostsse against free will. There is karma and the illusion that you are actually your ego.

I've spent about 3 years in 5 different fora and not come up with the faintest hint any of them know a damned thing. They're more concerned with adding to the confusion by continuously shifting the goalposts.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

At a neurophysiological level, psychology's moved on considerably from the 1940s questions of identity. A raft of sub-classification of perception than simple sensory awareness has been developed, from neuroception (not just thinking but awareness of what we're thinking), to interoception (awareness of our bodies), proprioception (awareness of our immediate environment}, to exteroception (awareness of the wider physical world/universe). To that I'm adding transception, awareness of the intangible. Neuroception informing our limbic system, particularly from the mid-brain gyri, might pass as "soul" if it were not that I'm personally very aware of the numinous. What's driving that? The trauma healing mechanism's in that limbic animal brain, and is blocked by neuroception signalling from our conscious cortex. All the different trauma healing methods do is drop us into meditation through one portal or another through cognitive suppression. Therefore, religious experience is in the limbic, and there may be more such than just the trauma release. Yes, if any trauma specialists are here, I'm suggesting Peter Levine was wrong (Waking the Tiger), healing after embedding is possible by draining the amygdala reactor, if the limbic has something of greater worth than the subjective snap survival experience the IAS uses, which can overwrite it with a "relax" reaction.

Too many big words. Can you use simpler language? Using a bunch of fancy words doesn't make you look smart. It makes the info you're trying to convey more inaccessible.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

But you need to find out what science "knows" first. Those thoughts you have that feel like you are getting an original idea can measured before you are conscious of them.

As far as the "spiritual," that also makes a case against free will. There is karma and the illusion that you are actually your ego.

Do you know anything about this, either scientific or spiritual?

 

[Rahere]

Do you know anything about this, either scientific or spiritual?

I posed enough of a quandry to the Church of England in the mid 80s that they decided to make me show them. So 'im upstairs did. It was the start of quite a legendary relationship which is summed up by the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the team, but I did get the credit for the lead act, reintegrating Europe, and also tied up the Mahatma's unfinished business. It's hard not to when the Boss has set it up so you'd have to be a right klutz not to land it, so the credit really goes on high.

Now science is defined by logic, right? And logic's mathematical. Mathematics has shown itself to have limits, what's known as "bounded". So science is bounded too. Where there's a boundary, there's an inside and an outside, in a universal setting. So science claiming omniscience is wrong, there's quite a lot which is validly unscientific. And that includes the creator of the universe, however you know it. So for science to pontificate like Dawkins does is to speak out of its posterior.

I know my freewill has on occasion been overruled. That's OK, I was chickening out, what happened was a heck of a ride. It landed me among a lot of friends.

 

[Finder]

Do you know anything about this, either scientific or spiritual?

Both. I have read a lot about cognitive psychology, mostly in relation to my field of study related to visual perception. I have also studied comparative religion and a lot on Eastern religion: tantric Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, and Shamanism and how those relate to North American traditions. I was also a pilgrim on the 88 Sacred Places of Shikoku Pilgrimage and was married in a Shinto shrine. I am also a social studies analyst and have worked with natural scientists on their research.

 

[Rahere]

Can I put neuroscience more simply? You have to go back to the 1940s and existential philosophy. Is any of what we experience real? Is my Invisible Friend real? Neuroscience is the name of the subject which developed from that, and by breaking the thing down into blocks, has concluded there's a better than average chance our awareness is more than a massive simulation. You exist, you're not a figment of my imagination, and vice versa. What's going on in our noddles is more than just a giant game. It's more than the input of our five senses, and the psychologists have given each of those fields of understanding the complex name I explained in brackets. We're now at the point where they're starting to be able to say how things like panic reactions actually work, and so what we have to do to defuse them. We already do a lot of it in grounding, but not necessarily quite enough in the way of the Ridikulous Enchantment. Yes, Harry Potter overwriting trauma with a sense of proportion. If you've got that in your emotional value system, then dropping into meditation, letting cognition go, allows a PTSD healing process we've misunderstood to work. How we drop in is many and varied. Janae Elizabeth (TraumaGeek) uses shibari subspace. MAPS is about to get approval for extasy. Some use shamanic methods. I'm about to work with a specific subset of EMDR hypnosis known as Kinetic Shift. I've already accidentally succeeded using plain religious meditation. Some use mindfulness, which is simply an expensive variant of the simplest form thereof. And on and on.

Some of that relates to our different form of mentation, how we think. It's not actually that different, as far as I can tell, because logic is logic, most of the time. People don't understand me because I pack a gallon into a pint pot. They come back as you did, and tend to give up when their minds can't cope with any more. I talk of two identical computers, one with an old operating system which can only use 10% of it's memory (as NTs do), the other with one which uses 100% (as I do, all but a safety margin). Which is disordered?

The breakthroughs in neuropathology (the study of how we think) are very recent, and only just beginning. This is one of the reasons I'm critical of the old diagnostic methods, because they were superficial and tried to turn everyone into clones.

One of the big areas is quantum technology. We've proven that we can define the very nature of the universe with our minds - Heisenberg's determinism. There's a bestselling book at the moment, Carlo Rovelli's Helgoland, which deals with it, but you might find it hard going. Me, I was working in the techniques in pure maths 50 years ago. I took the thinking into diplomacy. The nuclear physicists are trying from their side. I'm looking at our side. I've seen some really mind-blowing stuff happen, and I'm pretty sure they threw the baby out with the bathwater when they moved to scientific empiricism. First, I need to see if they were making antiprotons in the 16th century.

 

[Fino]

Too many big words. Can you use simpler language? Using a bunch of fancy words doesn't make you look smart. It makes the info you're trying to convey more inaccessible.

Oftentimes, it's not even the fancy words that are the problem. It just seems that way because of how much attention they draw to themselves. Often, the person is not even making sense, failing to string words together into coherent wholes.

 

[Rahere]

One of the major issues with trauma is that our cognitive presence impedes a more primitive animal release in the limbic. Dropping the subject into meditation is part of letting it work. An emotional rewrite helps enormously.
This comes pretty close to Reiki, although that's more direct.

Oftentimes, it's not even the fancy words that are the problem. It just seems that way because of how much attention they draw to themselves. Often, the person is not even making sense, failing to string words together into coherent wholes.

That may be because the subject's not been studied completely, it's work in progress. Trauma and neurophysiology are developing fast right now, and so there is no complete answer.
But at the same time, I'm afraid I'm not going to break concepts apart for you. You have to put some work in. I do, I'm off to a day seminar on Science and Spirituality in a sec.

 

[Trophonius]

Trying to argue that "there is no free will" is a losing proposition. Sure, you can believe there is no free will, but why bother trying to convince someone else, if they can't choose whether to believe you or not?

Because I can't choose whether to try to convince them or not.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

Oftentimes, it's not even the fancy words that are the problem. It just seems that way because of how much attention they draw to themselves. Often, the person is not even making sense, failing to string words together into coherent wholes.

Especially weird to see that writing style on a site for Autistic people.

 

[Rahere]

A lot of it's because most of the population get by on a vocabulary of about 400 words. I can't help having a bigger one, I was born that way and spent my childhood stuffing me head full of data and keep up to date as far as possible. It's not done to impress, but for precision: if you don't understand, go google it.

 

[Finder]

Oftentimes, it's not even the fancy words that are the problem. It just seems that way because of how much attention they draw to themselves. Often, the person is not even making sense, failing to string words together into coherent wholes.

Perhaps we should play the ball and not the man.

 

[Finder]

Especially weird to see that writing style on a site for Autistic people.

Really? I am autistic and have been known to be overly descriptive. I have also had a period when I was anachronistic in my language. Are you saying that is not an autistic trait? I really don't think we should be trying to judge what is "autistic" and what is not.

 

[Joshua the Writer]

Really? I am autistic and have been known to be overly descriptive. I have also had a period when I was anachronistic in my language. Are you saying that is not an autistic trait? I really don't think we should be trying to judge what is "autistic" and what is not.

I'm saying its weird because some of us don't like that writing style. Just use familiar words for goodness sake.