Friday, October 23, 2009
free will and consciousness
free will and consciousness
Perhaps free will is rather too political / religious, and I prefer the idea of decision making.
It seems to me obvious that most decisions are make before one is conscious of them. The example that I like to take is that of the common experience when driving, where one cannot remember the previous mile of driving.
I do not put this down to poor memory, but rather that one's consciousness is preoccupied with something else, and one is completely oblivious to all the decisions that one has been making while driving.
Now one might not be quite as safe, given that at least some of the slower feedback mechanisms are otherwise occupied, but I think one is in pretty good hands, and should not over worry about it.
The only issue for me, is that I would like to know quite how far behind events the conscious brain is.
In Fives, I am perfectly aware that many of the shots that I play are incapable of any conscious control. There is just not time enough. Indeed one does notice that if there is plenty of time to think about ( ie be conscious of ) an imminent shot, that there is a much higher chance of muffing it. One should just trust that you can play the shot correctly rather than 'try harder' or 'watch the ball'.
I would guess that one could be at least a second behind, although one might perceive it as much less, since everything gets delayed in the conscious mind. Indeed I am sometimes amazed how I hit a shot, when I am not conscious of some change in trajectory that must have occurred before the shot.
to sum up, I am not convinced about conscious decision making, but am convinced about decision making. The conscious can feed things back into the decision making process.
sleep on it.
cheers
martinw
Perhaps free will is rather too political / religious, and I prefer the idea of decision making.
It seems to me obvious that most decisions are make before one is conscious of them. The example that I like to take is that of the common experience when driving, where one cannot remember the previous mile of driving.
I do not put this down to poor memory, but rather that one's consciousness is preoccupied with something else, and one is completely oblivious to all the decisions that one has been making while driving.
Now one might not be quite as safe, given that at least some of the slower feedback mechanisms are otherwise occupied, but I think one is in pretty good hands, and should not over worry about it.
The only issue for me, is that I would like to know quite how far behind events the conscious brain is.
In Fives, I am perfectly aware that many of the shots that I play are incapable of any conscious control. There is just not time enough. Indeed one does notice that if there is plenty of time to think about ( ie be conscious of ) an imminent shot, that there is a much higher chance of muffing it. One should just trust that you can play the shot correctly rather than 'try harder' or 'watch the ball'.
I would guess that one could be at least a second behind, although one might perceive it as much less, since everything gets delayed in the conscious mind. Indeed I am sometimes amazed how I hit a shot, when I am not conscious of some change in trajectory that must have occurred before the shot.
to sum up, I am not convinced about conscious decision making, but am convinced about decision making. The conscious can feed things back into the decision making process.
sleep on it.
cheers
martinw
