Re: Making your mind up

On 09/04/2024 10:52, Martin Harran wrote:

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 20:51:09 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
 

On 06/04/2024 10:18, Martin Harran wrote:

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 19:19:37 +0200, Arkalen <arkalen@proton.me> wrote:
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On 05/04/2024 18:05, Martin Harran wrote:

There was quite an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on Free Will
vs Determinism but it died a death, at least in part due to the
departure of some contributors to the Land Beyond GG. I'd like to take
up some of the issues again if anyone is interested.
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One point made by Hemidactylus that didn't get developed any further
was the way that we sometimes give a lot of time and effort into
making a decision - he gave the example of buying a car. It's also
common for someone to want to "sleep it on it" before making a
decision where the decision is important but it is not clear what
decision is best. If a decision is essentially predetermined then what
is the point of that time and effort or sleeping on it?
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Tied in with that is our ability to change our minds after we have
made a decision - has determinism some convoluted way of working that
predetermines what way we will make a decision but also predetermins
that we will change it?
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A reminder that in the Libet experiments so beloved of determinists,
there was no precursor activity found in regard to making *major*
decisions or changing one's mind so how does that fit in?
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I don't know if it's exactly the Libet experiments (I suspect so, from
context) but I thought Anil Seth's "Being You" had some good points
about free will. In terms of those experiments specifically he suggested
they weren't necessarily identifying a *decision* being made so much as
*the brain priming for action* - and even more specifically that the
brain might have cycles going where, whichever decision is made, it will
only *prompt action* at specific points in the cycle, and it's those
cycles the experiments were seeing.

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I see that as a very plausible explanation. A variation I see is
related to Libet (and others) finding that brain activity before
conscious decision only applies to trivial decisions not major ones.
I'm wondering if this is the equivalent of the autopilot mode we go
into when driving, working our way through traffic and traffic lights
without even being aware of what we are doing; if, however, something
significant changes, say we spot a group of children up ahead playing
with a ball, we immediately switch into fully alert mode. Perhaps in a
similar sort of way, trivial decisions are made on some sort of
autopilot whereas important decisions put us into a greater state of
alertness.

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My intuition would be that the Libet experiments (I looked them up and
I'm pretty sure they're indeed what Anil Seth was talking about in his
book) don't represent the same thing as this "autopilot" mode, depending
on how widely you're thinking of it at least. By that I mean that
decision-making is a complex system with many unconscious components
(mostly unconscious components really, and I don't mean that in a "we're
machines" way but a "elephant & the rider metaphor" way), and I don't
know if "autopilot mode" was meant to mean "any unconscious component"
or "the unconscious components involved in that phenomenon specifically"
(which is how I usually use the expression).
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If it's the second meaning of the word then I don't think it's the same
phenomenon because that one I think involves complex strings of actions
being done unconsciously because our conscious attention is focused on
other things. They're trivial decisions because presumably important
decisions *would* require conscious focus, but the main thing that makes
them unconscious is that lack of focus. The very same actions could also
be done consciously (like Weingarten describes in his famous article).
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The Libet experiments on the other hand don't involve that at all, as
far as I can tell the conscious attention of the participants is very
much focused on the action being studied.

 I'm not all that familiar with the details of the Libet experiments
but as I understand it, the experiment basically involved participants
watching a clock and making random decisions to press a button. I
can't speak for the participants but I know that I would find it very
difficult to remain totally focused in what seems like a potentially
boring situation, my ever-active mind would start wandering all over
the place and every so often, the "little man at the back of my head"
would remind me that I'm supposed to be focusing on the clock. That
"little man at the back of my head" could be what was triggering the
detected activity.
 Just to be clear, I'm not literally suggesting "a little man at the
back of my head", but there does seem to be some sort of monitoring
element in our minds that switches us from autopilot to full alertness
as in the example I gave of spotting the playing children when
driving.
 

Right, and in that example the actual decision to press the button would be made in the alert state - "by the little man at the back of my head". Whereas when driving "on autopilot" all the driving decisions are NOT being made by the little man. An event that triggers his activation, like seeing the playing children, takes you out of autopilot mode at the same time.

 

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In terms of making your mind up I think it's even more obvious that
actions can't be completely involuntary when you consider not just
"sleeping on it" (where you could figure you end up making the decision
you would have made anyway, which is definitely a thing that happens)
but *gathering information*. While there are some decisions we hash out
at length while finally making a decision one could argue we were going
to make the whole time, there are also some where that's definitely not
the case because the final decision depends on information we didn't
have at the beginning of the process.

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