Exploring The Illusion Of Conscious Will Philosophy Essay

Exploring The Illusion Of Conscious Will Philosophy Essay The experience of conscious will can be defined as the feeling that we are doing things, that we consciously cause our actions. However, this feeling may not be an accurate interpretation of what is happening in our minds, brain and bodies as our actions are produced. If we had access to a variety of information we could uncover the mechanisms that activate our behavior and we could explain why we are acting in a specific way. However, another way to explain our actions is that we consciously willed what we are doing. There is a confliction between the ideas of conscious will and psychological mechanism, having never been reconciled in a proper way. One solution for bridging the gap is that the explanation given from the mechanistic approach is preferred for scientific purposes, but that the persons experience of conscious will is very convincing and important to the person and must also be examined and be understood as well. Conscious will can be perceived in two ways. First, we can assume conscious will as the experience of consciously causing an action. This feeling of voluntariness or performing an action on purpose can be considered as an indication of conscious will. Secondly, we can think of conscious will as a force of mind, in other words, as the causal link between our minds and our actions. One might infer that this two interpretations of conscious will are corresponding to the same thing but it turns out that they are completely distinct and we are often tend to confuse them. This confusion is considered as the source of the illusion of conscious will. By examining conscious will as an experience it is concluded that will is a feeling. In other words, will is not consider as a cause or a force by itself but the personal conscious feeling of such causing and forcing. Also, this experience of willing an action is accompanied by a feeling of doing, which is an internal force that certifies genuinely that one has produced the action. Experiences of conscious will can only be confirmed by self- reports. The problem is that self- reports are not always corresponding with some other external evidence of the experience. There are several examples in which the experience of will does not seem to accompany actions that appear to be willed by other external factors. Considering the alien hand syndrome which is a neuropsychological disorder patients typically experience one hand as acting independently, in its own conscious intention. In this case there is a problem classing the alien hands movement as willed or unwilled. On the one hand the a ctions that are performed by the alien hand are seemed to be willful while on the other hand the person states that these actions are not consciously willed by himself. Another example in which the feeling of involuntariness is observed is hypnosis. People in this case feeling that their actions are happening to them rather than they perform the actions themselves. The only difference between hypnosis and alien hand syndrome is that in the second case the person cant predict what the hand will do but in hypnosis conscious will is lacking even though the person knows that the action is present. Considering these examples it is useful to draw a distinction between action and the sense of acting willfully. There are four basic conditions of human action. In the first two conditions we can observe the expected correspondence between the action and the sense of acting willfully. More specifically there is no controversy when a person does something and feels also that he is doing it or w hen a person is not doing anything and feels he is not. However, the case in which the person does not have the feeling of will when there is in fact action encompasses the examples of the alien hand syndrome and hypnosis. These instances can be classed as automatisms and draw a distinction between action and the sense of acting willfully. Another special case that highlights this distinction is the illusion of control. This term was used in order to describe instances in which people have the feeling that they perform an action when they actually dont do anything. This illusion of control can be observed in the interactions between humans and machines or when someone is rolling a dice or flip a coin in a specific way hoping to influence the outcome. Examining these two last conditions it is concluded that the action and the feeling of doing are not coexist inevitably. This might happens because the process of mind that produce the experience of will is different from the process of mind that produce the action itself. As it was mentioned before will is not only considered as an experience, but also as a force. Wegner states that conscious experience is an immediate perception of ones conscious mind causing an action. From this point of view will is considered as a quality of power that resides in the person and causes his or her actions. There are two fundamental problems arising from this concept. First, conscious will is considered as an entity that explains a variety of thing but nothing can explains it. In this way this entity cannot be examined in a scientific way because assuming that will is a force that causes a persons actions is like saying that God is causing an event. This is a barrier to any other explanation because it is not predictable what will is going to do as it cannot be said what God is going to do either. Secondly, the assumption that will is a force that resides inside the person creates further objections. As Hume pointed out causality is not an attribution inhering in obj ects. Another thing that was stated by Hume is that it cannot be seen causation in something, but must only be inferred from the constant relation between cause and effect. Causation is not a characteristic that is nestled in objects but an event. Thus it cannot be assumed that causation is an attribution of persons intention. It cannot be observed that an action is caused by ones conscious intention but it can only be inferred from the relation between the intention and action. One reason why people confuse the experience of will for a causal mechanism is because they try to make sense of themselves as causal agents. Most humans perceive themselves and the other people as entities that acting independently in order to achieve a future goal. The concept of causal agency is very important for people because it helps them understand in a deeper sense human action. Humans are considered to be agents that are acting in purpose and they have the capacity to discern their goals consciously in advance of action. Thus the experience of will seems to be a causal agent. People perceive their own minds as systems that have mental causing properties, as causal agents and in this way they need to accept that the experience of conscious will is real. 2. Theory of Apparent Mental Causation What are the mechanisms that give rise to the experience of conscious will? Why do people feel like they are doing things? Wegner states that the experience of consciously willing an action is departing when people interpret their own thought as the cause of their action. In this sense conscious will is experienced independently of any actual relationship between ones thoughts and actions. This perception of will usually arises when people think themselves before the action takes place and that produces the sense of agency. In other words people seem to see themselves as the authors of an action when they perceive relevant thoughts about this specific action in advance and in this way they tend to infer that their mental processes caused this action. However will is not perceived as s force that causes action but as a conscious experience that depicts weakly the actual causal connection between the persons cognition and action. In this way, there is a fundamental distinction between mental process and the perception and the verbal report of that process. The mental process does not reveal the person any further information about the mechanism of this process and in this case it may be that the person uses prior causal theories to explain his or her own psychological functions. The conscious will may depart from a theory that was formed in order to explain the constant relationship between thought and action. But many scientific findings support that conscious will does not reflect the real causal relation. In fact brain events are those that determine intention and action while conscious intention itself cannot cause action. According to many studies the feeling of will is not tied inevitably to voluntary action and so must be considered as a distinctive phenomenon. Wegner propose a model of mental system that explains how people end up having the experience of will which is consistent with various empirical findings. According to this model, there are a series of events that end up to a voluntary action. In this network conscious thought and action are activated by unconscious mental processes which are may be linked to each other. But the path that gives rise to the experience of will is not actual but apparent. More specifically, when someone believes that his conscious intention caused the voluntary action he is experiencing a sense of will, that he willfully caused the action. The problem is that the perceived conscious will is not always corresponding with the actual mechanisms that connect the thought and the action. In other words, the experience of conscious will is not an indication of the actual relation between the mind and the action. What is truly might be happening is that conscious will arises from a causal illusion, from a third variable that interferes. As it can never be drawn with certainty that A causes B because there is always exist a variable C that cause both of them, in the same way it is not certain that ones thought cause his actions because there are unconscious mechanisms that produce both of them. Wegners theory proposes that experience of will is arising when people infer that their thoughts have caused their actions, whether this inference is true or not. According to this people tend to infer that thought causes action when the principles of priority, consistency and exclusivity are fulfilled. First, the thought must be appear in consciousness prior to the action (priority) secondly, it should be consistent with the action (consistency) and finally there must not be other potential causes of the action (exclusivity). Studies have shown that the perception of causality is based on these principles in order to be established a relationship between the cause and the effect. In fact, these principles do not depict an actual causal relation because the perceptions of causality that are based on these principles arise from reality. In a nutshell, the theory of apparent mental causation assumes that the experience of consciously willing our actions is a construction. When a thought appears to be prior and consistent with the action and exclusive of any other alternative causes this construction produces the feeling that we are the authors of this action. However, this feeling is just an inference that our thoughts cause our action, not a direct perception of this causal relationship. 3. Why do we have the illusion? Why do people occupied with experience of intention if it is no causally effective? As we mentioned before conscious will departs from the interpretation that our thoughts cause our actions. In this way, apparent mental causation is produced by an interpretive mechanism that is completely different from the mechanistic process that forms the real mental causation. Thus, the experience of will is considered to be an indication that mind determines our actions, is the way that mind illustrates their functions to us, not their real functions. These prior thoughts that people have are not intentions that cause things but previews of what we may do. Wegner states that conscious will is the minds compass. More specifically is the experience that alerts our minds when actions are present and that these actions are the products of their own agency. Therefore the will is an indicator that informs us about the way we operate, does not cause our actions. Will also serve another purpose, is it a feeling that gives us information about our understanding of our own agency. In other words, it is an emotion of authorship and functions as a guide to ourselves and marks out our own functions. It informs us about who we are and what we are able to do. Finally, the most important thing is that will cultivates feelings about our responsibility for our actions and our sense of morality and guilt. 4. Empirical evidence Is free will exists? What is causing our actions? Libet (1999) had taken an experimental approach in order to give conclusive answers to these questions. In his empirical study, he found that free voluntary actions were preceded by the readiness potential RP, that is a specific electrical shift in the brain, that starts 550ms before the action. The awareness of the intention to act comes 350-400 ms after RP begins but 200ms before the action. Therefore, the processing of the voluntary acting was initiated unconsciously. In this way it can be drawn that if the brain initiate this voluntary action before conscious intention is appeared then consciousness is too difficult to be the cause of the action (Blackmore). However, the conscious processing can control the result if it veto the action and that confirms that free will cannot be excluded. It is supported that free will is not able to initiate a voluntary action but it can control it (Libet, 1999). Libet experiments had raised many philosophical and methodological problems. First of all, he has been critised Mele(book) tried to interpret Libet findings in an alternative way. According to him there is a crucial distinction between the concepts of deciding and intending on the one hand and other states such as wanting on the other hand. Libet uses the terms of intending, urging, wanting, deciding, willing alternatively without making any discrimination among them. In particular, in order to explain how does a specific intention for an action arises in the subjects he strongly claims that the brain decides to initiate or at least to prepare to initiate the act before there is any reportable subjective awareness that such a decision has taken place. Therefore, Libet believes that decisions are causing our actions and that this electrical shift that happens in our brains seems to be correlated with the causes of our actions because they precede of the muscle motion by approximately half a second. In this way the brain made the decision 500ms earlier before the subjects become aware of that. B ut this can lead to contradiction because decisions cannot be made without being conscious of them. According to Mele, deciding to do something is completely distinct from having an urge or wanting to do something. One might want to produce an action but finally not decide to do it. In this way it is more plausible that brain produces urges rather than decisions because urges correspond to an unconscious processing. Thereafter, this unconscious urges helps the decision to be generated in order for the act to be produced. As Libet point out the conscious self can control or permit or veto the final motor action by deciding to do so and in this case the decision to initiate the action is more direct from the unconscious urge that initiated the whole process. In this way the conscious self that is intending and deciding still has a causal efficacy.(mele) Trevena and Miller (2009) disproved Libets core assumption that the electrophysiological shifts of the brain that prepare the action, that are present before the subjects are consciously aware of making the decision to move, is not evidence that voluntary action is initiated unconsciously. It is also concluded that these signs are not related only with the preparation of the movement. In the experiment that it was conducted the researchers compared the electrophysiological sign before a decision to move with signs before a decision not to move and they found that there were no significant differences between the signs in the two conditions. In this way these signs are not in charge of preparing these movements. Thus, Libet findings dont prove that voluntary actions are initiated unconsciously.

Ghengis Khan Essay -- Chinese History Mongol Genghis Essays

Ghengis Khan Genghis Khan, or Ghengis Khan as he is more widely known, was born about the year 1162 to a Mongol chieftain, Yesugei, and his wife. He was born with the name of Temujin, which means ’iron worker’ in his native language. When Temujin was born his fist was clutching a blood clot which was declared an omen that he was destined to become a heroic warrior.Very little is known of Temujin until he was around age 13 when his father declared that his son was to find a fiancà ©e and get married. After several days of travel Temujin and Yesugei came across a tribe of Mongols that were very hospitable and welcoming. Temujin was not there long when he noticed a certain girl, Borte the daughter of the chieftain. She was destined to become his wife. Temujin’s father died when Temà ¼jin was still young, poisoned by a group of Tatars. The Tatars were the chief power on the eastern Mongolia at the time, and long- time rivals of the Mongols. When Temujin heard how his father had died, vowed one day to avenge the death. Temujin left Borte, returned to his tribe, with the intention to declare himself leader. At this time he was 13 years of age. Senior members of the tribe ridiculed his plans; rejected him as chief, and abandoned the youngster and his family to the Mongolian plains. While there were noble lineages among the Mongols, such as Temujin's, they did not enjoy the automatic loyalty of others. Nor did seniority guarantee a position of influence or power. Leadership seems to have often been a more informal institution, open to those with the right to contest for it. As a result of this rejection, Temujin extended his vengeful intentions to his own clan members. Life was very hard for the family. It is related that when Temujin discovered his own brother stealing food from the group had no hesitation in killing him. News that he was a stern leader that would kill his own brother to keep order became widely known. On a hunting trip he was ambushed by an enemy tribe and taken prisoner. While pris oner he killed his guard and escaped. The enemy searched, but excellent survival skills kept him alive until he could meet up with his own tribe. This act of courage spread his name to all parts of the Mongolian plains. Shortly after, another raid by strangers left the family with one horse and very little food. Temujin took chase but could not catch them. During hi... ...y populations were put into action as siege experts, and even the cavalry was a mixture of Mongol and other nomadic groups. The success of the Mongol conquests should also be attributed at least in part to two other factors. One was military intelligence. The Mongols had an extensive network of spies and usually had extensive information of an enemy before they engaged them in battle. The other was their use of psychological warfare. Much is made of the total destruction of cities in Central Asia by the Mongols. What is normally overlooked, however, is that this was more of an exception than a rule. If a city capitulated, Ghengis Khan was usually content to let them be, once their defenses had been pulled down. Only those who resisted faced the sword. This not only wiped out resistance, but more importantly, word quickly spread of the wrath of Ghengis Khan, and many peoples found it easier to submit than to resist. In short, although the Mongol successes may appear astounding, they are explainable by ordinary means. One need not look for some mystical explanation. Indeed, to do so does a disservice to the true talents of Ghengis Khan and the Mongols of the thirteenth century.

David Suzuki

David Suzuki is the co- founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. He is an international award winning scientist. He’s just not a scientist; he’s also an environmentalist, a professor and a broadcaster. He is very famous for his programs that talks about the complexities of the natural science. He is known for expertise in genetics. David Suzuki wasn’t always interested in the environment. His father, Kaoru Carr Suzuki’s work got him interested and sensitized to nature. David Suzuki moved to London, Ontario with his family when he was in high school.He attended London Central Secondary School and was the Student Council president with the most votes combined for his last year there. After high school, he attended Amherst College and graduated in 1958 with diploma in Biology. He also got a Ph. D. in Zoology in 1961 from the University of Chicago. After getting his Ph. D. he has been a professor in the University of British Columbia for almost 40 years. Goals and Location: David Suzuki has his own organization called the David Suzuki Foundation. They think of very good projects to do to help save the environment and make it better.Their mission is to help protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life for the future. Their main goal is to help and improve the Earth! They help the Earth by doing things such as: Protecting the Climate, Transforming the Economy, Protecting nature, reconnecting with nature and Building Community. One of the main things they advise people of all ages to do its plant trees so it helps our earth to purify air and keep it a much greener place to live in. A lot of people know about his goals to help the environment and how to get involved in it because of the books that he writes.He is very successful as an author all around the world and so are his books. Some of his books are: Looking at the Environment, Looking at the Body, A Glimpse of Canada’s Future, and Earth Time etc. David Suzuki is known as the leader in sustainable ecology. The David Suzuki Foundation is located in Toronto, Ontario. David Suzuki does most of his work in Canada but also does many of his research outside of Canada, such as the USA. Major Projects: David Suzuki and his foundation work on many different projects throughout the year.There are 2 major projects that he and his organization are working on right now, which are: Race to the Top & Trottier Energy Futures Project. Race to the top is about trying to achieve the goal to slowing down climate changing affects. Climate change affects everyone and is affecting every individual out there. The action that climate change is taking is crucial and is really harming the earth. We can slow this crucial change by taking action today. By taking action, it helps protecting our future grandchildren and avoiding unwanted impacts.The biggest way we can take action for this cause is by trying to get the federal and provincial government involved so they can let the Citizens of Canada know how important this is. The second major project David Suzuki and his foundation are working on right now is the Trottier Energy Futures Project. This project is about how our future would be with a cleaner environment. It is trying to make Canada the leader in innovative clean-energy solutions. Canada can make this happen by developing energy systems that are secure, affordable, and free from harmful emissions and other environmental effects.This project is an effort to determine how Canada can dramatically reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gas that are the main cause of global climate change. Climate change is a very big problem because of the increased frequency of severe weather disasters has drawn attention to climate change as one of the most serious challenges facing humanity. This project will help because it will include scientific reviews of energy production and distribution opportunities available to Canada, taking in economic, social and environmental concerns. The Active Citizen:Anyone can get involved in making the Earth a better place. We can get involved by doing many things such as: Recycling Electronics, Reducing your Carbon Footprint, Connecting youth with nature and by making your workplace greener. Individually, you can recycle our electronics instead of throwing it away in landfills and harming the environment even more. One of the best places to recycle is with Think Recycle. You will be helping the David Suzuki Foundation to aid in protecting the nature and our quality of life. Recycling is cost-free and will help the David Suzuki Foundation to raise money.As a class, the best way to get involved is by connecting youth with nature. We could go to our family members, cousins and relatives and inform them about how we should protect the nature for the good of Earth. We could go to elementary schools and tell the children about how connecting them with nature is helpful for themselves and the Earth. Helping nature and spending time in nature helps kids improve their memory, problem solving skills and creativity. Kids also become physically healthier by doing this. On a School wide level, we can get involved by reducing our carbon footprint.We can do this by switching to energy efficient lighting, cutting our energy use, driving smarter, not polluting water and travelling sustainably. These are very successful ways to get involved in protecting our Earth. Successes and Failures: David Suzuki had a lot of successes but not many failures. The two most successful things he did in the past year is his book writing and making a huge change in BC. His books were sold all around the world which was telling citizens how we can protect the environment, what are we doing that’s harming our planet and many more exciting facts about nature.Citizens were doing things that would protect our planet and make it healthier. This all happened because David Suzuki’s books gave them interest in making our planet a better place. This was one of the most successful things David Suzuki did this year. He got British Columbia to reduce energy consumption by 7. 3% more than the rest of Canada. It was a very hard thing to do but it was accomplished. His organization plans to do more successful projects like this in the future. One of the things David Suzuki failed to do was to convince some people that we need the environment and our trees.The people wanted more growth to happen in a certain area without thinking of the harmful things that will happen to nature when we cut and destroy trees. David Suzuki was overall successful and barely experienced any failures. Global Citizenship: A Global Citizen is a responsible community member. David Suzuki is a Global Citizen because he always cared about nature and our environment. He has many goals that he has set to achieve in the future. He took the responsibility to take care of the environment that’s surrounding us. He made his own organization and got people involved to do what he always does.He makes books which millions of people read and also learn about how to protect our Earth. The project’s he does has been improving our environment more than ever. He is fighting against climate change, involving global warming, and its effects on the world. David Suzuki also plans to save wildlife in forests, which are losing their homes from industrial forest demolition. He is attempting to protect oceans and other bodies of water from pollution and the creatures living within it, with the help of people who are willing to save our water.David was nominated as one of the top ten â€Å"Greatest Canadians† by CBC viewers in 2004. This was because he was helping out Canadians by engaging the population of Canada to live healthier and use less resources offered by nature. He didn’t only win that award. He won lots more because he was determined to protect the diversity of Canada’s mari ne, freshwater and ecosystems. Lastly, he is one of the most amazing global citizens I know because his goal in his lifetime is to create a better planet for our generation and mostly the upcoming generations that are likely to inhabit our world.

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