The non-conscious nature of being
“Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that ‘consciousness’ contains no top-down control processes and that ‘consciousness’ involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it. In our view, psychological processing and psychological products are not under the control of consciousness. In particular, we argue that all ‘contents of consciousness’ are generated by and within non-conscious brain systems in the form of a continuous self-referential personal narrative that is not directed or influenced in any way by the ‘experience of consciousness.’ This continuously updated personal narrative arises from selective ‘internal broadcasting’ of outputs from non-conscious executive systems that have access to all forms of cognitive processing, sensory information, and motor control. The personal narrative provides information for storage in autobiographical memory and is underpinned by constructs of self and agency, also created in non-conscious systems. The experience of consciousness is a passive accompaniment to the non-conscious processes of internal broadcasting and the creation of the personal narrative. In this sense, personal awareness is analogous to the rainbow which accompanies physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over them. Though it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting. This in turn allows recipients to generate potentially adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary advantage—not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself.”
I’ve read about half of it so far and was amazed that it’s still using Libet’s work on the readiness potential to prove our responses are unconscious. Much research has been done since then refuting the veracity and meaning of Libet’s work. For just a few examples:
1. The point of no return in vetoing self initiated movements: http://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/1080.full
2. An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/E2904.full
3. This analysis of Peter Tse’s work on downward causation from his book The Neural Basis of Free Will: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/tse/
Here’s a short 10-minute video by Tse on free will, volition, attention and consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7zHdkCTKv4
And here’s a 7-minute video of Tse discussing Libet, willing and the readiness potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1jrmrr2ULE
The article states: “It is only the personal narrative, we argue, that is accompanied by personal awareness.” This flies in the face of a lot of neuroscientific work by for example Antonio Damasio, which posits a proto-self, a core self and an autobiographical self (akin to the ‘personal narrative’ above). And all of which have personal awareness.
http://bigthink.com/experts/antoniodamasio
“Free will and neuroscience: From explaining freedom away to new ways of operationalizing and measuring it.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2016. Abstract: “The concept of free will is hard to define, but crucial to both individual and social life. For centuries people have wondered how freedom is possible in a world ruled by physical determinism; however, reflections on free will have been confined to philosophy until half a century ago, when the topic was also addressed by neuroscience. The first relevant, and now well-known, strand of research on the brain correlates of free will was that pioneered by Libet et… Read more »
“Neural antecedents of spontaneous voluntary movement: A new perspective.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2016. “Now a series of new developments has begun to unravel what we thought we knew about the brain activity preceding SVMs. The main new revelation is that the apparent build-up of this activity, up until about 200 ms pre-movement, may reflect the ebb and flow of background neuronal noise, rather than the outcome of a specific neural event corresponding to a ‘decision’ to initiate movement. In particular, two independent studies, one using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings in humans [5] and the other using single-unit recordings in rats… Read more »
You can read some excerpts of Tse’s The Neural Basis of Free Will at the following Project Muse link. From the section on readiness potentials: “Here I argue that conscious feelings of willing or agency are not central to understanding the neural basis of free will. Simple actions, such as repeatedly lifting a finger, or even complex actions, such as driving a car while daydreaming, may not generate conscious feelings of willing at all. Consciousness of willing appears to primarily arise in cases that require endogenous selection and inhibition of options held and assessed in working memory. As such, Libet’s… Read more »
One can find Evan Thompson’s 6-part video series on the topic at the link below. From part 1, quoting William James: “Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will” (7:10). From the conclusion of part 6: “Free will then is not exempt from causes and conditions but is rather the flexible coordination of attention” (4:05). In part 2 he starts to talk about the self related to meditation (around 7:00). Around 7:45 he notes it has 2 aspects, the present-centered “I” and the narrative self which adds past and future. He relates it to Damasio’s ideas. The end… Read more »
Damasio: The neurological basis for free will, a 12-minute video. It starts around 6:00 in.
“We do have a measure of control […] but it is not true that we have full control and it is not true that when we are executing an action we are necessarily controlling it at that moment consciously.”
http://bigthink.com/videos/a-neurological-basis-for-free-will
I have posted this elsewhere, and hope i am right in assessing that it is our Feb. 5, 2018 discussion topic… I urge members to ponder this basic and I think irrefutable principle, although it is seldom if ever applied to assessing the working relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind/brain, which both clearly exist. Human quality consciousness is a capacity that requires an elaborate cortex. (The cortex clearly in necessary, but not sufficient for human quality consciousness – to be defined at meeting). PRINCIPLE: Like any capacity in any organism, it must coevolve with a regulatory system (i.e., based… Read more »
This link provides Tse giving an overview of his book The Neural Basis of Free Will. It’s a good summary and primer for his research on downward, criterial causation. The abstract follows with Tse given more detailed description following it at the link. “In my book I use recent developments in neuroscience to show how volitional mental events can be causal within a physicalist paradigm. (1) I begin by attacking the logic of Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument, according to which mental information cannot be causal of physical events. I argue that the exclusion argument falls apart if indeterminism is the… Read more »
Whew. I am going to need, and welcome, a lot of help making heads or tails of the Tsu Abstract. Oakley and Halligan is very intuitive to me and corresponds well with my thought and training and teaching over the the past 30 years. Watched the You Tube interview with Tsu and thought it very weak. Operating in default mode, I have no more volitional attention than I have conscious control over my next brilliant or dumb sentence. Hoping for epiphanies! Ready to listen. Best to all, Paul
I agree, it is very technical and difficult to follow. In the link following the abstract he briefly explains the points in it. Difficult as it is, it is well worth the investment. The problem I have with Oakley and Halligan is not that there are unconscious processes at work but that there is NO room for top-down causation. They say in in the first sentence and repeat the idea throughout: “Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that ‘consciousness’ contains no top-down control processes and that ‘consciousness’ involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any… Read more »
Just to be clear, it is the Tse abstract I find opaque. RE: Oakley & Halligan and their view — Yes, I believe in top down causation. Even operating in normal default mode (no special / skillful introspective effort, etc.) there would be no point in having a Top if it could not have profound effects on the Bottom in a way that changes he Bottom’s outputs and our consequent cognition and behaviors. However, I do not see a reason to insist that such top down causation would involve consciousness. The whole brain processes that produce conscious experience and action… Read more »
I would love to have this view of things revised or changed altogether if it is contra neuroscience data or runs counter to important principles to do with CNS function. I look forward to our meeting on Monday. — PJW
Tse’s book The Neural Basis of Free will is at this link and is virus free: http://dlx.b-ok.org/genesis/1166000/c05bacf5ea7803a252cb155dac76f9ac/_as/%5BTse,_Peter_Ulric%5D_Neural_Basis_of_Free_Will__Cri(b-ok.org).pdf
Damasio’s book Self Comes to Mind is at this link and virus free: http://dlx.b-ok.org/genesis/639000/701f729bcbfd474084e446599de1d932/_as/%5BAntonio_Damasio%5D_Self_Comes_to_Mind_Constructing(b-ok.org).pdf
From Tse: “I argue that consciousness plays a key role in mental causation by providing a common format for endogenous attentional and other executive operations that permit the assessment of possible behaviors and thoughts against highest-level criteria for successful attainment of goals and fulfillment of desires” (237). “It is the deliberative and volitional manipulation of contents of working memory via endogenous attentional operations that offers the primary causal role of consciousness and the primary domain of free will, regardless of whether or not such operations are associated with conscious feelings of willing or agency. Free will is not limited to… Read more »
More from Tse:
“It is important to understand that even seemingly high-level, executive processes, such as those involved in shifting attention, must involve unconscious and preconscious processes. […] There is a hierarchy of types of attention. From the most primitive to the most complex these are: (i) retinotopically location-based salience specification, (ii) object-based salience specification (also at this level would be feature-based attention), (iii) exogenous or automatic and stimulus-driven object tracking, and (iv) endogenous or volitional object tracking” (200 – 01).
” Jiang et al. (2006)have provided evidence that (i) computations of salience occur at locations unconsciously, and that these in turn influence the conscious placement of attention. In addition, others have recently shown (Chou &Yeh, 2012 ) that attention in the sense of (ii) appears to be allocated to objects even in the absence of any awareness of the objects that have been attended. Data collected in my lab suggest that (iii) unconscious attentional allocation to an object does not trigger automatic, unconscious tracking of that object. Finally, (iv) endogenous attentional selection, tracking, and inhibition of nontracked items over seconds… Read more »
The philosophy of the self: From spirituality to neuroscience, a podcast interview with Evan Thompson. The blurb follows: What is the self? Does the collection of neurons in our brains define the entirety of who we are? Modern day neuroscience attempts to explain who we are through understanding how the brain works, sometimes even trying to find a single entity that can be labeled as the “self”. Yet, for thousands of years, thinkers of Hindu and Buddhist traditions have sought to understand the philosophy of the self through different means – that of meditation and contemplation. Can these two schools… Read more »