Consciousness: brain lesions remove free will (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 06, 2019, 13:30 (1934 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I suspect, however, that most of us – myself included – are convinced that we do have freedom of choice, and I remember in our discussions with Romansh pointing out that even if it is indeed the cell communities (principally of the brain) that make the decisions (= materialism), they are MY cell communities and no one else’s. No matter how many external factors may have influenced me, those influences have become part of MY individuality. And so to deny free will is to deny my individuality, but how can you do that? I AM my cell communities and all that they contain, and so their decisions are MY decisions, which are not controlled by anyone or anything else – an important element in defining free will. Whether those cell communities can also generate something greater than the sum of their parts (a possible compromise between materialism and dualism) is another subject dealt with in my Theory of Intelligence.

DAVID: Good discussion of how everyone feels about free will. What confuses the materialistic attempts to explain consciousness is that it is obvious the brain has evolved to have helpful mechanisms to overcome how wet biology creates our perceptions of reality, in that the brain catalogs previous experience to fill gaps. Ask yourself: Why do we look at clouds and see patterns of known objects? (dhw’s bold)

dhw: This is a totally different topic: the subjectivity of perception and the forming of “Gestalten” (as in gestalt psychology), or patterns. I don’t know why you, as a dualist, say the brain “overcomes” our perceptions of reality: for a materialist, the senses do the perceiving and the brain forms the patterns, and you seem to agree. I would have thought that as a dualist you would argue the opposite: that the soul processes perceptions and forms patterns out of them. However, I’ll leave you to argue with yourself on that topic! It has nothing to do with the subject of free will. (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Not off point at all! What I was describing was the interaction of brain and soul to have experienced memories solidified into helpful patterns of reality used to fill the blanks in our perception. Well shown in research.

The subject of this thread is free will, and now you have changed it to the subjectivity of perception, which of course I accept totally. I note, however, that in your reply you claimed that it was the brain that filled the gap, which I have bolded, but now that I have pointed out that this makes you a materialist, you have switched to “the interaction of brain and soul”. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us as to why you changed the subject from free will to subjective perception, and whether your decision was made of your own free will, and whether it was made by the soul or by the brain. (I'm teasing.)