Is free-will an illusion?

While I don't want to ridicule anyone for their beliefs I would like a coherent response to the directionality issue. The inner-agent hypothesis operates differently from how our sense organs work. The eye does not work by eminations going from it to objects looked upon. The ear does not work by sending something out to a sound source. Our sense organs receive stimulation as our activity receives feedback. The feedback results in a changed organism.

The inner-agent hypothesis operates differently from how our sense organs work.

The dolphins' and bats' "sonar" system works by throwing sound out there and listening to how it bounces back on objects...

Sometimes pictures make a point better than words, eh?

I feel like I'm in some sort of bizarro mystery game.

Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies. This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system) forms a percept or gestalt, the whole has a reality of its own, independent of the parts. The whole is other than the sum of the parts"

Contrary to the behaviorist approach to understanding the elements of cognitive processes, gestalt psychologists sought to understand their organization (Carlson and Heth, 2010). The gestalt effect is the capability of our brain to generate whole forms, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of global figures instead of just collections of simpler and unrelated elements (points, lines, curves...).

Maybe this says it better for you

Does everything actually (in reality) disappear when I close my eyes?

I'm really trying to figure out what the point of your statements has been since the red ball thing, but I don't get it for the life of me.

More generally, senses are not purely passive.

I'm really trying to figure out what the point of your statements has been since the red ball thing, but I don't get it for the life of me.

More generally, senses are not purely passive.

I would point out that those properties come to control our responses...

I just meant that some senses work this way. The human sense of touch is in fact similar.

Can you explain the link with consciousness, or not?

What would really be startling and, in turn, would make me question my scientific worldview would be if the mind were capable of doing even one thing that the senses can’t. If we could, for example, smell things in our imagination even though our bodies were incapable of smelling, that would change everything. If there were a sixth sense that was not merely an example of the five senses, I’d believe in a mind that was different from “private behavior.” But there isn’t.

In my imagination, you are disappointed by the simplicity of Skinner’s explanation of consciousness. You intuit something beyond or beneath hearing, seeing, etc., in your own consciousness. Your intuition is wrong, but your disappointment is real. I think one of the main reasons people resent science is that people think about complicated things long and hard, sometimes for centuries or millennia, and then science’s explanation is ludicrously simple. How the stars go? The earth is spinning. When the thing explained is you or something you care about, a simple explanation can irritate.

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I just meant that some senses work this way. The human sense of touch is in fact similar.

I would think that the motor response of making contact with a stimulus is being confused with environmental input to sensory receptors and neurons. This is not my area of expertise, but I believe that afferent neurons are responsible for transmitting the input information to the central nervous system.

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Can you explain the link with consciousness, or not?

I have discussed consciousness elsewhere.

if the mind were capable of doing even one thing that the senses can’t. If we could, for example, smell things in our imagination even though our bodies were incapable of smelling, that would change everything.

Predicting free choices for abstract intentions
Chun Siong Soona,b,c,d,e,1, Anna Hanxi Heb,f, Stefan Bodeb,e,g, and John-Dylan Haynesa,b,d,e,h,1
a
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany; b
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive
and Brain Sciences, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; c
Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders, Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School,
Singapore 169857; d
Department of Psychology, Technical University Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany; e
Department of Neurology, Otto-von-Guericke
University Magdeburg, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany; f
Melbourne Medical School, and g
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of
Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia; and h
Graduate School of Mind and Brain, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany

Edited by Marcus E. Raichle, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and approved February 22, 2013 (received for review July 19, 2012)


Unconscious neural activity has been repeatedly shown to precede
and potentially even influence subsequent free decisions.
However, to date, such findings have been mostly restricted to
simple motor choices, and despite considerable debate, there is
no evidence that the outcome of more complex free decisions can
be predicted from prior brain signals. Here, we show that the
outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can
already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and
parietal cortex 4 s before the participant reports they are consciously
making their choice. These choice-predictive signals co-occurred with
the so-called default mode brain activity pattern that was still
dominant at the time when the choice-predictive signals occurred.
Our results suggest that unconscious preparation of free choices is not
restricted to motor preparation. Instead, decisions at multiple scales of
abstraction evolve from the dynamics of preceding brain activity.

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I have a sort of idea, according to which agency works in a Darwinian way.

Well, Ollie, I think most of what you said makes sense, i.e., it is plausible.

New ideas have a striking similarity to genetic mutations. Now, let us look for a moment at genetic mutations. Mutations are, it seems, brought about by quantum theoretical indeterminacy (including radiation effects). Accordingly, they are also probabilistic and not in themselves originally selected or adequate, but on them there subsequently operates natural selection which eliminates inappropriate mutations. Now we could conceive of a similar process with respect to new ideas and to free-will decisions, and similar things.

That is to say, a range of possibilities is brought about by a probabilistic and quantum mechanically characterised set of proposals, as it were – of possibilities brought forward by the brain. On these there then operates a kind of selective procedure which eliminates those proposals and those possibilities which are not acceptable to the mind.