The great delusion
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| | The concept of free will has long been debated. The materialistic school of thought denies freewill, claiming that the actions of our brains is essentially mechanical. Given identical stimulation and environment, we will always respond in the same fashion.
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| | This article hopes to give a different slant on this matter. I propose that any free will we might have is more the property, and therefore at the disposal of, the subconscious rather than the conscious mind.
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| | The conscious mind is deluded into believing that it is in control of both mind and body. Or at least, is able to exercise such control at its choosing.
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| | That it is a delusion is because the conscious mind represents only the tip of the mental iceberg. Not only is an enormous amount of our mental activity autonomous (performed by the subconscious), but likewise the physical activity of our bodies is independent of conscious thought. I will illustrate how we slip into a subconsciou state of mind, even when we feel we should be in conscious control.
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| | But much more subtle, and almost amusing, is the way that the subconscious mind deludes us into thinking that the conscious mind originates all of its thoughts and ideas.
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Streams of 'thoughts'
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| | It presumably never or rarely occurs to people to observe what happens when they sit and think. This simple act is performed many times in every day of your life, but very little thought (meta-thought) is given to this process.
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| | There are two obvious kinds of thinking. One where where you are trying to consciously think about something. Such as when resolving a problem. The other where your mind freewheels along a stream of thoughts.
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| | In the latter, it is easy to see that we are in effect listening to some of the noise of activity of our sunconscious mind.
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| | And it would appear that in the former, the conscious mind is very much in control. But next time you try to do such conscious thinking, have a look at the insights you make, the thoughts that 'appear'. They originate from the subconscious - the conscious mind is merely teasing them out.
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| | Returning to the former, where we recognise that the subconscious mind is revealing some of its activities, try to consciously stop this mental 'chatter'. You will find it extraordinarily difficult - you cannot even 'only' think of one conscious thought. The subconscious mind is nothing but persistent.
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| | It illustrates how it fuels a lot of so-called 'conscious' thinking.
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| | But do not think that the loss of conscious control represents a loss of freewill. Do not deny your subconscious the liberty of sharing in some of this free-will ownership.
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| | The point I want to reinforce is that the subconscious feeds a large amount of what we perceive as conscious thought. But ther are more twists to this tale to come.
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Swapping tasks
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| | I only noticed this phenomenem very recently. Or more precisely, the mechanics of it. It is enormously common, but we rarely reflect upon it. It was quite late at night, and I was reading in bed, as I am apt to do most nights. By the bottom of the page, I had noticed that I was no longer aware of what I had read. A typical bit of day dreaming. Yet I know that I had in fact read the page.
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| | What appeared to happen is that my subconscious coerced my tired conscious mind to swap tasks - the subconscious took over the task of reading, and in its place gave me something it deemed important to mull over.
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| | This illustrates that the subconscious mind hijacks the conscious mind when it decides it safe and appropriate to do so, when it has something pressing to deliver. Now I ask you, who is in control? Or rather, are you in control?
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We are not in control
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| | I have to admit to a poor memory. This is frustrating, not least because I cannot remember all of the details of 'facts' I know. The particular 'fact' of concern here was an article in a Scientific Journal. I do not remember what journal, nor even the year.
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| | But what I do remember is the crucial part. The article described surprising results from consciousness research. Devices were connected to a test subject that allowed them to observe the action of nerve signals. They asked the subject to raise his leg, or something very similar to this.
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| | The nerve impulses were observed to start their travel to the leg muscles before the conscious mind 'generated' the request to raise the leg.
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| | The conclusion of the article was a proposal that the conscious mind in this subject was not the initiator of the action, but was merely informed of the 'decision' by the subconscious after the deed was done. The conscious mind was deluded into believing that it was the initiator.
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| | This article has always stuck in my mind, and during my subsequent mullings on the mind I have not seen any evidence to contradict what it portrayed.
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Connections
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| | There is a delightful feeling I experience every once in a while, where my subconscious makes a connection between two not so obviously connected things. It happened this week. I was due to visit a neurologist about my continuing headaches. By the way, it's not cheap to visit Bupa if, like me, you are not medically insured. But the NHS wait was 1.5 years.
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| | Prior to the visit, I made a connection between my 10 years of headaches with my 14 years of sporting injuries. Maybe, just maybe, the two were related. If my muscles across my body are in a state of tension, then headaches can form, and muscles can tear.
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| | Of course, this connection may be an entirely false one. But the point is that the process of investigating the connection is entertaining, enlightening, and broadenening to my outlook on life.
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