Free Will and The Subconscious...

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I was just thinkin lately about all this "free will" business, and I then thought that if I'm ultimately controlled by my subconscious then how do I have any free will.

I just thought I'd pass that on.

You ask a question that has perplexed better minds for hundreds of years.

"Free will" ultimately (based on computer concepts) is the ability to act contrary to "core programming."

If a machine was sophisticated enough to "think" but could not violate a "prime directive" in its programming, it may have the ability to think, but it wouldn't have "free will." If it was capable of modifying its "prime directive" so that it could do what it wanted, or even ignore that "prime directive" it would possess "free will."

Organic minds are trickier because we don't really know if we have "directives" we are incapable of violating. We have the "will to live/survive" but people routinely commit suicide (via depression) or sacrifice themselves to save others. Is that "free will" or just having an aspect of our "directives" overpower the most common of instincts?

Example: SURVIVAL unless DEPRESSED or SAVE ANOTHER. As compared to SURVIVAL.

The "subconscious" isn't like a computer running lower level processes in the background. It's a poor analogy at best because machines are nothing like organics.

A computer does nothing unless it's on and running some program. Background processes enable it to run more sophisticated programs. We call it a "subconscious" but it's not a good analogy.

Humans have a ton of things our bodies do without any thought involved. Our DNA/RNA does billions of complex chemical tasks without any input from the nervous system, and without these processes, we die.

Our "subconscious" is all the stuff our brains process which we are not consciously aware of. My best analogy is peripheral vision. We see so much with our eyes, but we don't really process stuff unless we focus on it. With training, we can learn to regularly "process" a lot more than we normally do, but our "subconscious" mind picks up on all the stuff we see, not just what we are focusing on.

Dream analysis often focuses on what we experienced in the past 72 hours because we often process this information in our sleep...with stuff we didn't focus on in our waking hours finding representation in our dreams...stuff we should have paid attention to, but did not.

In any case, I digress.

Let's take depression or guilt. If you did something that made you very sad, or made you feel very bad, it can overcome your "free will" because you make a subconscious choice.

In my life, I did some bad things. I felt I deserved to be punished. I began a path of self-destructive behaviors. I did not consciously recognize what I was doing for some time. My conscious mind wanted to see there was nothing wrong with what I did. My subconscious mind was dealing with the fact that I felt I deserved to suffer for my bad deeds, and if I wasn't going to do "penance" then it was going to make me do it one way or another.

Once I confronted WHY I was doing these things and addressed the fact that I did something bad and felt I deserved to be punished for what I did, I was able to stop the pattern. The pattern began by a choice made by a part of me that was incapable of being in denial over what I had done. My conscious mind (for whatever reason) wanted to avoid accepting responsibility for what I did.

I see this "subversive" thought process as a chief problem with organic thought processes. People who are "out of touch" with themselves don't really understand why they do what they do. Hence, their subconscious mind can drive a lot of their conduct...which they ultimately don't understand or control. Someone who is "in touch" with themselves generally don't have this problem because they don't shy from confronting issues within themselves.

"Free will" is often described as a persistent illusion. In other words you believe you have free will but whatever course of action you "choose" is determined by the bioelectrical processes within your brain at the time of choosing. How could it be otherwise? fMRI studies have actually shown that the brain reaches a decision up to a second before that decision reaches your conscious mind. So yes, you are ultimately controlled by your subconscious. The conscious mind is just a spectator to the decision - but the illusion persists that your conscious mind made the decision.

Thanks then!

It's given me good food for thought all of this.

I wonder if the illusion of free will came about when humanity became so successful. In our more primitive times we would have had a lack of choice and would have had to obey our instincts and act on hunger, fear, defense, etc whenever the situation called for an action.

But as we started to learn and take control of the natural environment then the concept of choice came along. We could choose what to grow, what to eat, what to wear, how to defend ourselves etc. So with that came the illusion of free will.

I think what psychologists are discovering is that our modern day choices can be reduced to our primitive instincts of fear, hunger, desire for surviving etc.

And the best of these have pretty much come to the conclusion that it does not exist.

Everything is based on rules. Breaking rules, has reason that makes more rules. Free will is something people will not like you for. You can end up in prison because of it. Too many rules. If you have free will, I would recommend you keep it to yourself. Free will, or freedom is actually something that people are afraid of. It sounds good though .

You are free, if you like, to regard yourself as a sort of helpless robot, mindlessly reacting to stimuli (behaviorism) ? or as some sort of helpless puppet, mindlessly tugged this way and that by warring incomprehensible forces (Freud). However, you must still live with the consequences of your choices.

And yes, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

So if I'm walking down the street on a hot day and decide to stop for an ice cream cone, is this my subconscious talking/deciding?

And when I look at all the delicious flavors and decide I want vanilla, is this my subconscious talking/deciding?

And when I remember I had two ice cream cones yesterday and so I'll skip one today and instead I'll have one tomorrow, is this my subconscious talking/deciding?

So what do you think about conscious control over the subconscious functions.....in other words "directing the subconscious" to think about agendas you consciously choose?

It seems to work well for me. But I'm not sure if this violates your decision concerning "free willy." (Willy being our brain)

I think the reality is more, "The subconscious mind does all the 'thinking and deciding' but our conscious mind is only aware of SOME of the decision making process."

Hence, we are unaware of all the thoughts going on that lead to a decision, hence we really have no "free will" because we don't direct every thought in the decision making process.

I guess a good comparison would be hiring someone for a job where you get to interview, review, and decide, but someone higher up or in another department will look over the same things (and more) and validate your choice. Without that validation, your choice means nothing on its own because you don't really have the final say about if the job is extended to that person you picked.

That test may be flawed in some way. To say dodging punches is not a part of free will, because it will take a full second to decide, is a really strange theoretical test.

Extrapolate please?

If you are a boxer and your opponent throws a fast right punch at your face; there is no free will involved... at the conscious level there are no thought processes along the lines "I can see he is throwing his right fist at my face; I should try to avoid it, so should I try to block his punch with an uppercut of my left arm or should I sidestep to the right or to the left, hmmm which would be the best strategy"... by which time you'd be lying flat on your back with the referee counting to ten. The mental processing happens at a subconscious level. Boxers get this subconscious automation down to a fine art with practice, more practice and even more practice. They don't have time in the ring to consciously direct their movement, it is down to the subconscious to dictate the rapid movements needed based upon what it has learned from practice.

O.k. the subconcious must know that you got hit right away too, and not the conscious. I know right away "hey, I just got punched in the face"! The subconcious, makes the decision to punch back right away too, because you don't have time to decide.

Soo, when all this is going on in the real world to save your arse, the only thing that is concious is the thought of the blood running out your nose, and none of the rest is free will. Like for instance, taking less than a second to decide not to make the wrong move and kill your opponent? Does your subconcious take these things into consideration too, or is it all just a reflex reaction? Something is telling me that your subconscious has just as much free will, as your conscious. It is just faster, and puts everything into memory (conscious).

The issue that would likely hamper our discussion further is the definition of "free will". The subconscious merely collates the data being sent to it; analyses it in association with data stored in memories and sends a course of action to the parts of the brain that deal with physical movement, it may also route instructions to the adrenal glands telling them to release adrenalin to speed up your body's responses. Finally, almost as an afterthought, it may also send a summary to the conscious mind, which only receives two words "Oh s**t!"

So if you define free will as the conscious analysis of situations and the choice of an outcome, then no, there is no free will as the conscious mind is simply presented with what subconscious parts of the brain have already decided. If you want to say that the subconscious has free will, then here we may run into problems with semantics because the subconscious is just running its bioelectrical software... there is no "me" as such involved in the choices at this level; just the hardware and software of your brain.

The tests with fMRI scanners show that even if we try to make conscious decisions about something simple e.g. guessing heads or tails on the toss of a coin, the subconscious has already decided which to choose up to one second before your conscious mind thinks to itself "I choose heads". Software running in association with the fMRI scanner was able to predict people's choices before they consciously made the choices themselves. So in this respect, the conscious mind is merely a spectator to our decisions.

Please excuse me if I use fighting again (I got beat up alot). I just wonder if they have done any testing in a fight or flight situation. Heads or tails doesn't exactly require a fast response. You already know what is going to happen. I may be misinterpreting something, but under the coin toss situation, it is quite obvious they created a situation that is not free will. Proving most definately that there is no such thing as free will. I have an issue in my brain with theory of mind for some strange reasoning like this too. Telling a kid what is in a box, and asking him if his friend thinks so too? Of course! You just told him what is in the box! Stuff like that.

The faster the response required, the less free will is involved. Animals have evolved mechanisms to use the fastest possible means to avert physical injury. If we accidentally touch something hot, our pain receptors send a signal to the brain telling it about the problem. The longer the hand is in contact with the burning object the more damage will be done. The signal only reaches as far as the spinal column (or brain stem... I forget now) before it sends a signal back to the muscles telling them to contract. This reflex action happens automatically. Only afterwards does the signal get processed by the subconscious then finally the conscious mind feels the pain and says "Ouch!".

The subconscious brain has also learned though evolutionary history that snakes are dangerous; so we (and other apes) are likely to leap / be startled if our subconscious sees something resembling the shape of a snake in the corner of our eye; especially if it is moving!