>tfw consciousness is just another sense like smell, touch, sight, hearing and taste
>tfw finally at peace with hard determinism
Explain
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>>28416997
Freud thought something like that. Its probable consciousness is the flow of information in your brain (like stream as James said). There are neurological theories about it which supports some of its hypotheses like you actually decide to do something unconsciously before it became conscious. We are still not sure how it all works though.
Now we should answer if free will could be unconscious as your organism decides or it should only apply to conscious decisions.
Everything is deterministic in a sense. You can predict everything if you knew all the details or was capable of knowing all variables at any given time. We have pretty outdated terminology for these phenomena in my opinion.
>>28416997
I was wondering something similar this week, are all the choices we make not just reactions to previous choices, so in the end you don't really have a free will, you just make choices based on previous choices. I don't really know how to write what i want to say but maybe you can understand, this seems inline with the thread.
>>28417037
At the macro scale, the world is 100% deterministic, as far as science can tell.
The answer is that Free Will has no place in our current scientific understand of the world. Experiments support this.
"fMRI machine learning of brain activity (multivariate pattern analysis) has been used to predict the user choice of a button (left/right) up to 7 seconds before their reported will of having done so."
But then we clearly perceive freedom of choice and freedom of thought!
So where does Free Will and an "autonomous" consciousness come from?
I used to consider consciousness an "illusion". But that's a useless description. Who is being deceived?
My personal answer is that consciousness is a sense that allows us to gain some insight into our brain's operations. Nothing more.
I'm finally at peace with the world and hard determinism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_determinism
>>28417067
>Freud thought something like that.
Interesting. I should read some Freud.
>There are neurological theories about it which supports some of its hypotheses like you actually decide to do something unconsciously before it became conscious
Yes, here's a recent study:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/full/nn.2112.html
>>28417119
I have seen some studies similiar to this when I was in uni. And yes, Freud was deterministic in everything regarding human psyche. The whole psychodynamic field is pretty deterministic.
As I said I would also like to argue if unconscious decisions could be counted as free will. Our organism decides either if its conscious or not. Maybe the term free will shouldnt be used only to conscious decisions as both of them are based on our experiences so they have the same source.
Also I was thinking what if consciousness can be as a sense but also fulfill a role of direction. Like imagine yourself as a rider on a horse and you can direct your horse but cant really control it fully. Maybe consciousness can direct our actions and unconsciousness takes care of all the necessary things. That would explain why we cant force ourself to change so easily as we need to reexperience and retransform our experiences so our unconsciousness have something to work with.
Im probably wrong though. I havent finish my degree so Im likely missing some important stuff.
>>28417211
The hardest knot to untie when thinking about this is that the world is extremely parallel, in that an unimaginable number of parameters are changing all the time. We are used to thinking in a serial fashion, action, reaction.
I don't study this sadly. Free Will has just been bugging me since I first questioned it.
It is intensely relieving to think of myself as nothing more than an expression of the universal process. The infinitely large soup of chemistry and physics that just happened to form patterns that we recognize as "you" and "I". Now I can accept myself, whatever "myself" means.
>>28417241
I can understand such feeling. You wouldnt be the first who experiences it. I know that stoicism as philosophy are into such universal approach. There are other examples of course.
I can feel the kind of mystical melancholy. Like a world of fantasy. The kind of melancholy that makes sadness happy with a cup of solitude poured into it.
I wish I could experience such with a human. Most people are too preoccupied with nonsense of everyday drill in my opinion and forgot about their childhood dreams and thirst for knowledge.
>>28416997
I once did a bunch of LSD and came out convinced of this. Glad someone else sees it the same way I do!
>>28417290
>I wish I could experience such with a human.
They are out there! Find the others! :)
Maybe we too will meet some day, unknowingly.
>>28417388
(also @previous poster)
Alan Watts and the contemporary philosopher Sam Harris are in the same vein.
Both are also advocates of psychedelic use. Harris more than Watts.
If you were to rewind to the moment of the big bang and press play the exact same things would happen, past and future. It was this realization that led me to believe in determinism.
>>28417421
Thats very interesting! I have read "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts and heard some miscellaneous lectures by him but I never got around to reading his other works. Thanks for the philosopher recommendation anon!
Consciousness is just a phenomenon like weather. The clouds don't control themselves.
>>28416997
What do you guys do with your philosophical thoughts? I have thoughts that rival plato's, I just day dream about them, then go back to my usual nilhilism and never think about them again
>>28417591
>What do you guys do with your philosophical thoughts?
Utilize them to feel more at ease with the world, lessen pain
>>28417591
I used to use them to form my perspective of the world. After a while I realized that what I was leading to was Buddhism and just started following that.
