The Mind and the concept of free will Flashcards
1
Q
What is Agency?
A
sense of control
2
Q
What is Volition?
A
- power of using will
3
Q
What is Will
A
- one’s intention/will
4
Q
What is Free will?
A
power of acting without therestriction of fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.
5
Q
Why are you here?
A
- not random
- explanations scientific
- genetic influences; evolution - humans would hunt for food, protect themselves from other tribes (man’s responsibility so more likely to die, women needed to reproduce and maintain human population (apply to modern society, gender roles? decrease in birth rates?)
- previous experience; parent’s influence
- social situation; IQ - intelligence (link to personality), more intelligent = higher survival
- culture; family styles
- neuroanatomy
- simpler explanation: because I CHOOSE/WANT/CONCSCIOUSLY WILLED IT
- link to unconscious bias
6
Q
The MIND quote
A
Descartes: “I think, therefore I am” (1637, Discourse on the Method)
7
Q
What is the mind?
A
- Product of working brain
- emotions - needed for survival, biased and quick
- thoughts - long and conscious
8
Q
Where does it arise from?
A
- Evolutionary?
9
Q
Is the mind an emergent property?
A
- Recently: misappropriation of early assistance: hypersensitivity metric of world, is mind even needed? AI, train announcements make thoughts for us - less need to actively exercise brain functions?
10
Q
Do tables/dogs have minds?
A
- NO, only human species aware of death, will to survive adapts behaviour
11
Q
Do 1 year old children have minds since 18 months is time taken to be cognisant of oneself as a separate entity
A
- role of genes?
12
Q
Visual perception:
A
- blind spot - not actual perception
- brain inverts image of world
13
Q
Controversy in physics
A
- around space & time: doesn’t exist
- figment of imagination and construct of our mind to make sense of the world
- subjective/personal experience
- change in mind?
- does brain lie to us?
- is anything real?
- a simulation…?
14
Q
BIAS OF PERCEPTION
A
- addicts react to stimulus quicker than average perception
15
Q
Modern scientific view of mind
A
- is it an emergent property of a working brain?
- mind from meat?
- brain already made decision before action e.g. picking up pen
- changes in brain → neuronal changes = is it free will? or is brain in charge?
- unaware of making free choices = problem → unconscious free will but what about conscious?
- could mind be outside body?
- How do we know someone loves us? real friends? you never know! can’t enter their brain or mind…but experience and consistent action aid in believing in it
16
Q
Conscious what?
A
- “aware of and responding to one’ssurroundings”
- Free will → brain alters perception of time routinely
- Will
- Actions can feel willed or not — its the feeling of voluntariness or doing something
Its a feeling = a perception
- Actions can feel willed or not — its the feeling of voluntariness or doing something
17
Q
Wegner & Erskine (2003) experiment:
A
- The capacity of the will to cancel itself may underlie phenomena in which people experience involuntariness for actions despite external indications that the action has arisen voluntarily
- Participants either
- suppressed thoughts of their intention to perform the task
- concentrated on such thoughts
- monitored their thoughts without trying to change them
- Suppression resulted in reduced reports of intentionality as compared to monitoring, and concentration.
- Weak trend for suppression to enhance reported intentionality for a repetition of the action carried out after suppression instructions had been discontinued.
- People in this study who were asked not to think about their intention before they performed an action described the action as seeming less intentional as a result.
- Although, it is possible to produce ‘‘voluntary involuntariness’’ through thought suppression, such suppression did not have an effect over time, and may yield a rebounding sense of intentionality for actions that were previously put out of mind.
- Limitations:
- the repeated- measures design of the study ⇒ demand characteristics
- It remains a question for future research whether suppression or concentration prompted spontaneously, without social pressure?
18
Q
explain Feelings accompanying Actions
A
- Intentions, goals and plans are often experiences yet actions can still be unwilled as long as the individual reports they are
- consciously willing an action requires that one feels they were consciously willing it
- many and possibly most actions are companies by this feeling
- but not all….
19
Q
Alien Hand syndrome
A
- “Alien hand syndrome isa phenomenon in which one hand is not under control of the mind.”
- often results following damage to middle of the frontal lobe or Corpus Callosum
- Epilepsy sufferers are prone to this
20
Q
role of frontal lobe:
A
voluntary movement, expressive language and for managing higher level executive functions; capacity to plan, organise, initiate, self-monitor and control one’s responses
21
Q
Damage to frontal lobe:
A
- behavioural changes
- personality changes, difficulty concentrating or planning, and impulsivity.
- Conclusion: we’re all ‘naughty’ but restrain ourselves
22
Q
Role of Corpus callosum
A
- hemispheric communication
- inhibits unwanted movements
23
Q
Patient reports from alien hand syndrome:
A
- one hand operates as if it has a mind of its own
- the alien hand operates autonomously/not their own
- e.g. a patients reports their right hand automatically doing something regarded inappropriate while left/normal hand restrains it
- e.g. their left hand unbuttoning a shirt they’re trying to put on
24
Q
Critical Distinctions
A
- voluntary action = we do something and feel we do it
- normal action = not doing anything feel like we are not
- automatism = no feeling of will, yet we are acting e.g. driving home ⇒ get home ⇒ no knowledge of how
- illusion of control = video games
25
how is Will a force
- Will refers not only to an experience but can also be conceptualised as a force
- for example when we ourselves we experience a perception of our consciousness as ‘causing’ the control of action
- we seem to have a power within that ‘cubes’ our actions..but does it?
26
Causality
- psychology and psychiatry are sciences therefore needs experiment BUT NOT IN theoretical aspect
- how do we judge causality?
- **HUME**: causality is not a property of objects or things we cannot see causality we infer it
27
How do we infer causality
- Priority - causal events precede their effects in time
- e.g. turning on the lights (Michotte, 1963)
- Priority helps humans perceive causality as thoughts usually precede actions
- Consistency - the resulting action should be consistent with the prior motion or action - in human terms the prior thought is consistent with the result
- exclusivity - we discount causal inference if other potential causes are apparent (Kelly, 1972)
28
Human causal agency
- Causal agents are goal seeking - we often feel a desire to describe phenomena like the **Heider and Simmel** video in goal directed terms.
- “causal perception can also arise for social causation”
- create a false representation of what you see
- fast and slow thinking - our brains produce automatic representation by mere movements of objects (Kahnenman, 2012)
- what about autistic people?
- We understand the world around us by goal based terms - where things are headed
- Causal agency helps us to understand events
- E.g. we understand behaviour by reference to goals, beliefs, desires, plans, motion
- How do we explain things?
- NOT: Who wants to **move around the room in time to the music**
- BUT: Who wants to **dance**
- link to language?
- WHY?
- explains hunger, sexual drive etc.
- needed for survival
29
Humans have two explanatory systems
- one for minds
- one for everything else
- neonates have nothing innate to help them with causal ascriptions
- EXCEPT:
- feeding/sucking
- eyes for looking food source
- everything else genetic/environment
30
Real and Apparent Causation
- The real causes of human behaviour are strongly overdetermined (actions) - i.e. we would need to measure everything to explain who an individual completes one action versus another
- Its just simpler to say I did it because I wanted to but its insufficient as an explanation
31
Spinoza (1677)
- Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, ignorance of the causes by which they are determined. Their idea of **freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions.**
- Fodor modularity of mind - modules are functionally impenetrable
- Time for consciousness in ms?
32
Wegner and Wheatley (1999)
- "People experience conscious will when they interpret their own thought as the cause of their action"
- We think of ourselves as causal when:
- We experience relevant thoughts of the act in advance of the act and infer our mental processes have "caused" the act.
- Third variable problem?
33
Free will
- Consciousness fails
- Turning back the clock
- Free wont
- conscious veto of action started in brain
- Thoughts are mental
- For thoughts to occur some brain process already
34
Libet studies
- thought → action
- EEG machine and hand movements and conscious decision to move hand
- brain activity initiates movement 100s of ms before conscious decision reported
- conscious decision didn't cause movement
- free will illusion
- conscious decision are reports not causes of actions
- Limitations:
- difficult to record time of a subjective decision to move
- application to complex conscious decisions based on reason such as reject claims of experiments
35
Do humans have truly free will?
- role of intuition
- good/bad luck
- didn't pick parents/cell structures
- what tools you do with luck?
- insight is antidote for hatred = compassion
- human soul mystery
- freedom? reality? law of nature?
- knowledge is power
- religious views?
36
Beliefs around Free Will or anything have....
consequences, must put those in order
