Information and free will (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 24, 2011, 13:41 (4780 days ago) @ romansh

In response to your gentle rebuke that I ask too many questions, I confined my last post to complaining about your equation of will with “unconscious desire”, whereas in the expression “free will” you yourself defined it as the “ability to make choices”. I did not respond then to what you wrote about Susan Blackmore’s article, but since you’re continuing that discussion with David, I hope you won’t mind my stepping in again. Our exchange was as follows:

Dhw (14 Oct. at 15.52): We don’t know the nature of consciousness, but if you accept that it includes awareness of one’s own thoughts, you will also have to accept that if our thoughts are about awareness, we are aware of our awareness. We will also be aware of our awareness of our awareness, and so on. There are layers of consciousness, and Susan Blackmore appears only now to have realized it. I would say that animals have far fewer layers than we do, and that computers and snooker balls have no layers at all...

ROMANSH (14 Oct. AT 19.52): But don't you find like Blackmore most (if not all) your daily activities are as if they were done on autopilot. I can look back on my day or the last half hour and not find any truly conscious spots (memories yes, but consciousness less so). And when I ask myself the question Am I conscious now?, I find what I perceive as my conscious raised, yet I know from experience this apparently conscious will be in gone in five minutes.

I see no difference between us, except that I talk of “layers of consciousness” and you talk of “less” consciousness and “conscious raised”. I don’t know the nature of your work or family life, but I can’t imagine any employer, client, student or family member putting up with you for long if you did not consciously act, react, interact, weigh up options, choose words, make commercial, academic, ethical decisions. This is the basic – but often extremely complex – level of consciousness (level 1 if you like) at which we operate most of the time, but introspectives, philosophers, mystics, psychologists switch more frequently to different levels, at which they become conscious of consciousness, and conscious of consciousness of consciousness. Even at the basic level, though, we can be made to switch if, for instance, our decisions require us to examine our own motives or modes of operation.

In relation to the free will argument and definition, we have unconscious desires, but when we have a choice, we become conscious of those desires (level 1), and our decisions are made consciously. Whether or to what extent the decisions will then depend on influences beyond our conscious control – e.g. our upbringing, our genetic make-up, the star under which we were born (I’m kidding, but some people aren’t) – is the big question.