Information and free will (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 03, 2011, 14:26 (4801 days ago) @ David Turell

We are once more discussing the extent to which the will and the identity are dependent on our physical body.-DAVID: My brain is mine. I own it and I use it. It does not use me. But, I believe there is a conscious energy within the universe and without, my favorite UI. And my consciousness is part of that conscious energy. As for independent energy in my body, of course, there is: the autonomic nervous system, which runs and is the thermostat and controller for lots of automatic activities, i.e., I don't have to think to breathe, or regulate my blood pressure.
 
Materialists would, I think, argue that the physical brain runs parallel to the autonomic nervous system in that it dictates what we do and are. (It would be helpful to have a materialist argue for himself, as I'm in my usual picket-fence position.) Two fascinating articles in yesterday's Sunday Times cover various aspects of this problem. The first has the headline "Dementia risk as long-term stress shrinks the brain":
 
"Doctors have long known that people suffering from stress over a long period experience cognitive decline, with such changes observed in people ranging from soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder to people trapped in bad jobs or marriages.
It has, however, been harder to discern what is happening inside the brain to cause such decline. Now new research is offering a tentative answer, suggesting that corticosteroids ... hormones released by the body when it is stressed ... are toxic to the brain if concentrations remain high over long periods. The hippocampus, which is involved in laying down and retrieving memories, appears particularly vulnerable."-We needn't go into the details ... after all, the explanation is tentative ... but everyone knows that alcohol, drugs and illnesses can have a profound effect on a person's will and identity. Such material influences seem to run counter to the claim that will and identity are forms of energy which are independent of the physical body, and which may even survive the death of that body. -The second article concerns an actress named Marilu Henner, who can vividly recall every fact of her daily life from the age of about 12. If you name a date, she can tell you what day of the week it was, what the weather was like, what she did, and what events happened that day. The syndrome is called "hyperthymesia". She sees life on a split screen: "One side is today. On the other, half a dozen times a day, cued by a smell or a song, I am swept back to a past event, happy or sad. I cannot sleep well. Over the years, it has eaten me up."-We know that some autistic people have extraordinary gifts relating, for example, to memory or mathematics. Is Marilu Henner's heightened memory (she is not autistic) the result of some special hippocampal bonus, just as loss of memory may result from damage to the hippocampus? Is identity possible without memory, and is memory possible without the material brain? Even though I feel that I do have control, how can I know that this "I" is not simply the sum total of all the composite physical mechanisms that make up the individual self?-DAVID: A T-junction, no. That is dead-heading into a stop sign. A Y-junction, perhaps, so one can choose the best reason as to why there is a universe at all. Or as Yogi Berra said, "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."-A wonderful quote! T-junction, fork in the road ... I shan't quarrel with you over images. In both cases, either you travel faithfully along one of the roads, or you stop indefinitely at the junction, enjoying both prospects and ignoring the hoots from behind you.