Free Will and the Choice to Focus

[GrimmsFairyTail]

On a more poetic angle, this makes volition a matter of struggle, where man is constantly working to restrain and control his mindless impulses. Man may succeed, but not without first recognizing that he has bare desires that have existed since he was born. Within us all there is a script compelling us to act, while our volition operates completely unconstrained, allowing us to overcome all and any rules placed upon us as instinct.

 

The problem is, what about all the rules of concept formation? What about the near-universal ability of humans to learn language before a baby knows the concept "I"? Sounds like you say the "script" that allows a baby to master language must be thrown away later, and serves no conceptual purpose. A choice to focus fixes any issue here with volition, and itself is a sort of script. No one "learns" to choose to focus. Yet, all our actions must rest upon that choice and "script", as adults and children.

   I doubt I will be too popular around here.  

   Learning to choose to focus and to act is precisely what happens when baby is doing all of that flailing about. At once with the flailing is learning to think, AS we learn to move. There are impulses given those flailing limbs almost random noise but more along the lines of a spring bouncing. A little cluster of neurons forms pathways, by trimming ,and what's left after the trim is the bare nugget of volition. Our very first learned skill sort of happens 'instinctually'. 

I would suggest that we lose the word instinct along with the nature/nurture dichotomy. The latter is fortunately more commonly out of favor. We could use the word instinct to represent a sort of form from which things develop though. 

   Focus is a similar skill but a bit more complex in the anatomy involved. It comes at once with the ability to categorize.  Choice to focus develops as a combination of volition and this learned ability to focus. 

[dream_weaver]

   I doubt I will be too popular around here.

   Learning to choose to focus and to act is precisely what happens when baby is doing all of that flailing about. At once with the flailing is learning to think, AS we learn to move. There are impulses given those flailing limbs almost random noise but more along the lines of a spring bouncing. A little cluster of neurons forms pathways, by trimming ,and what's left after the trim is the bare nugget of volition. Our very first learned skill sort of happens 'instinctually'. 

I would suggest that we lose the word instinct along with the nature/nurture dichotomy. The latter is fortunately more commonly out of favor. We could use the word instinct to represent a sort of form from which things develop though. 

   Focus is a similar skill but a bit more complex in the anatomy involved. It comes at once with the ability to categorize.  Choice to focus develops as a combination of volition and this learned ability to focus. 

While precision is desirable, achieving it cannot be accomplished by fiat. Terms like focus, volition, instinct, have multiple contexts to them, which can augment the question as to whether they are being used properly. Identifying to what precisely concepts refer in reality varies in complexity depending on the levels of abstraction required.

[Eiuol]

   Focus is a similar skill but a bit more complex in the anatomy involved. It comes at once with the ability to categorize.  Choice to focus develops as a combination of volition and this learned ability to focus. 

Your post agrees with my post #3 mostly. However, by learning, I mean something more specific, along the lines of acquiring information from the world. Anything that operates as an innate capacity isn't itself learning, although it may operate more efficiently in time thanks to learning. The mere choice to focus appears to be innate. Learning goes on, yes, but I'm saying focus enables learning, and to focus at all takes choice, i.e. focus appears at once with choosing to focus.

Can you explain more how you distinguish focus from choosing to focus? You seem to be saying that focus takes no choice at all, but we then learn to control focus.

[GrimmsFairyTail]

 

 

 

First, due to a philosophical turn I have not kept up on my neuroscience studies so I reserve the right be corrected on the details. I may spew some wrong facts here but the gist will be true.

 

At the start there is a system of about 150 billion brain cells. Too many for a functioning human being. There is a motor of action that is mostly noise. Baby's flailing limbs are nothing more than springs being pulsed by noise. They take on a spring-like motion due to the structure fo muscles and ligaments etc. 

 

There are five important systems here. The cortex. The basal ganglia (action selection), the cerebellum (a kind of tensor based supercomputer), and the thalamus (a gate). 

 

That's only four. The fifth is the structure of the body and the arrangement of senses. 

 

The whole machine starts to change itself by virtue of all this noise, on all that structure(instinct), in the World. The world constrains the structure to enact the instinct of the body. The machine starts to get interesting in that certain paths are worn into that mess of neurons. The pulses start to be constrained by more than noise and ligaments. A motor of the mind 'emerges'. This is baby's first free will. A habit of control develops.

 

And now it gets messy. Any focus requires an orientation of the body and that developed skill comes along rapidly. The far reach of the limb as it flails feeds back by the eyes and proprioception. Orientation of the head develops by the structure of the retina being more detailed at the center. The thalamus and the basal ganglia start to control the whole mess. Actions start to line up in sequence. 

 

But it gets so messy I can't possibly do it justice in this post. A little spark of 'will' develops in the machine quite naturally and this spark is fanned to a flame of self-control in the human animal. There is no chicken and egg thing going on here. 

 

Focus is what I call attention. Attention has much to do with the thalamus and there are two kind of attention. Bottom-up, which you experience when something in the world grabs your attention. Then Top-down, when you develop the skill to orient to something in the world and 'will' focus. It all happens in the smallest imaginable increments as the machine creates itself. 

 

 

Edited August 17, 2015 by GrimmsFairyTail

[Devil's Advocate]

Fascinating...  Would it be generally correct to describe the bottom-up attention as instinctive, and the top-down attention as volitional?

[Harrison Danneskjold]

Focus is what I call attention. Attention has much to do with the thalamus and there are two kind of attention. Bottom-up, which you experience when something in the world grabs your attention. Then Top-down, when you develop the skill to orient to something in the world and 'will' focus. It all happens in the smallest imaginable increments as the machine creates itself.

Fascinating... Would it be generally correct to describe the bottom-up attention as instinctive, and the top-down attention as volitional?

Precisely. It's a pretty good attempt to revise our concepts of consciousness, too.

I doubt I will be too popular around here.

I think you may be mistaken about that.

Welcome to OO.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Harrison Danneskjold

[GrimmsFairyTail]

Fascinating...  Would it be generally correct to describe the bottom-up attention as instinctive, and the top-down attention as volitional?

I'm reluctant to draw a line on that. I was scanning a wiki page on lipid bilayers and one part had many blue links. They 'caught' my attention then I willfully chose to focus on each one but the choice I made was a little on the bottom-up side. I randomly picked which link I would focus on and read and consider for a click. There is an interplay of these two systems and it's hard to separate them. 

 

I see instinct as more like the bedrock structures that then interact to construct the organism. In the fetus certain neurons migrate in pathways that form like the lobes on a developing leaf. Due to the last structure that developed then this new one will be constrained in some way. I haven't much use for the idea of instinct as an active process in our brains. Of course that is not a traditional way of looking at it. 

 

Buddhists talk about karma and by that the real Buddhist does not mean some crazy afterlife payment plan. He means 'habit' or tired worn pathways. In my life certain habits automatically drove me and it was by awareness and reason that I broke the karmic yoke and changed my way of life. Those would be more like the instincts wee commonly think of. Then there are the basic driving emotions and hungers. These are more like motors to me. They mot-ivate me to act. The most basic of which is the drive to get up in the morning and create. 

[Eiuol]

At the start there is a system of about 150 billion brain cells. Too many for a functioning human being. There is a motor of action that is mostly noise. Baby's flailing limbs are nothing more than springs being pulsed by noise. They take on a spring-like motion due to the structure fo muscles and ligaments etc.

Be careful about saying a baby is moving by flailing around, or that all a baby does is flail around for a while. Any appearance of flailing is a matter of gathering information, perhaps in an uncoordinated way, but there is a mental life going on. A baby is able to gain information thanks to innate capacities devoted or attuned to certain stimuli, or sometimes  a mental capacity that didn't need to be learned for it to exist. In principle, I have no philosophical issue with claiming that there's a point in which an entity can be distinguished as having its own sense of mental control, but it's not accurate to characterize newborns as being mechanical until they're sufficiently developed. A baby is sufficiently developed right away with some of its innate capacities to begin learning by directing its attention.

But once you start at "it gets messy", I agree with most of what you wrote. Focus developing simultaneously with body orientation isn't a bad hypothesis, especially since it goes with the idea that effective cognition builds directly from relations to the world.

 

I haven't much use for the idea of instinct as an active process in our brains. Of course that is not a traditional way of looking at it.

I'd say it is the traditional way nowadays, at least in conceptual development field and probably many other fields within cognitive science. People don't talk about instincts, but they do talk about "bedrock structures" that allow an organism to develop its mental representations. But then these wouldn't be mechanisms to be overridden. They need to operate well and be followed so that higher cognition works at all. That is, if one insists still that instinct is a valid concept, instinct needs to be a building block of cogntion that if taken away or ignored would be disastrous for cognition. I think it's better to label "instinct" a dead concept, like "phlogiston" or "impetus".

Note about Buddhism: Karma is mainly about causality involving sentient beings such that the ripples of their actions continue for eternity. What you're talking about is how a Buddhist alters their karmic impact on the universe, namely via meditation and various habits of thought.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Eiuol

[Plasmatic]

Grimm said:

I doubt I will be too popular around here.

Learning to choose to focus and to act is precisely what happens when baby is doing all of that flailing about. At once with the flailing is learning to think, AS we learn to move. There are impulses given those flailing limbs almost random noise but more along the lines of a spring bouncing. A little cluster of neurons forms pathways, by trimming ,and what's left after the trim is the bare nugget of volition. Our very first learned skill sort of happens 'instinctually'.

I would suggest that we lose the word instinct along with the nature/nurture dichotomy. The latter is fortunately more commonly out of favor. We could use the word instinct to represent a sort of form from which things develop though.

Focus is a similar skill but a bit more complex in the anatomy involved. It comes at once with the ability to categorize. Choice to focus develops as a combination of volition and this learned ability to focus.

To what extent are your ideas influenced by Lacan?

[New Buddha]

@ Grimm #204:

 

"....The thalamus and the basal ganglia start to control the whole mess. Actions start to line up in sequence. "

 

"....Focus is what I call attention. Attention has much to do with the thalamus and there are two kind of attention. Bottom-up, which you experience when something in the world grabs your attention. Then Top-down, when you develop the skill to orient to something in the world and 'will' focus. It all happens in the smallest imaginable increments as the machine creates itself. "

 

Grimm,

Please read my post #107 and provide some feedback, if you will.

[GrimmsFairyTail]

Grimm said:

To what extent are your ideas influenced by Lacan?

Have him on my bookshelf but haven't had time to read him. I will take a look and see why you suggest this.

 

Edit; Just did a quick review and found out why it's just on my shelf and not in my hands. I find the psychology approach hard to grasp and a little strange. My ideas are mostly due to a constant attempt to model the interplay of thalamus/basal ganglia/cortex. I keep meaning to get serious about this project, putting aside distractions. Yet here I am

Edited August 19, 2015 by GrimmsFairyTail

[GrimmsFairyTail]

@ Grimm #204:

 

"....The thalamus and the basal ganglia start to control the whole mess. Actions start to line up in sequence. "

 

"....Focus is what I call attention. Attention has much to do with the thalamus and there are two kind of attention. Bottom-up, which you experience when something in the world grabs your attention. Then Top-down, when you develop the skill to orient to something in the world and 'will' focus. It all happens in the smallest imaginable increments as the machine creates itself. "

 

Grimm,

Please read my post #107 and provide some feedback, if you will. 

 

 

 

That post is encouraging. It does ever so slightly suggest a system simpler than it actually turns out to be but then any post on this mess of systems would sound that way. The s/n ratio and bottom-up attention grabbing is accurate. I like the quote at the bottom. Lets see if we can model this thing but first do you see me disagreeing with #107 in anything I wrote so far?

 

(I am having some issues using this editor and quote system. Damn! This is my quote!)

Edited August 19, 2015 by GrimmsFairyTail

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm reluctant to draw a line on that.... 

 

LOL, your reluctance hasn't been unique in this thread.  However your reference to 'habit' sounds very much like the kind of 'natural desire or tendency that makes you want to act in a particular way' which defines instinctive behavior.  Considering the interplay between habit and focus, would you agree that the latter requires more deliberate attention than simply noticing a particular blip in a field of static?  Would you reserve the term focus for attention that is analytical, for example??

Edited August 19, 2015 by Devil's Advocate

[New Buddha]

 

That post is encouraging. It does ever so slightly suggest a system simpler than it actually turns out to be but then any post on this mess of systems would sound that way. The s/n ratio and bottom-up attention grabbing is accurate. I like the quote at the bottom. Lets see if we can model this thing but first do you see me disagreeing with #107 in anything I wrote so far?

 

(I am having some issues using this editor and quote system. Damn! This is my quote!)

 

You might also check out Posts #79 & 96, where I introduced the basal ganglia as the seat of fixed action patterns - both innate and attenuated by learned behavior.  A large part of this post has been devoted to outlining different types of behavior and how it is aquired.  Post #73 has links to some of the scientist that have formed my view.

 

I like what I'm reading of yours so far.

 

What/who are some of the influences that have shaped your views?

Edited August 20, 2015 by New Buddha

[New Buddha]

At the start there is a system of about 150 billion brain cells. Too many for a functioning human being. There is a motor of action that is mostly noise. Baby's flailing limbs are nothing more than springs being pulsed by noise. They take on a spring-like motion due to the structure fo muscles and ligaments etc. 

This was addressed touched on too in Post 83:

 

This link is from a book I'm currently reading.  At the bottom of page 59 and onto page 60 is a brief overview of how individual cells (in embryonic development) are eventually "controlled" by the nervous system.  The cells are acting long before the spinal cord is even present and long before there is a brain.

Edited August 20, 2015 by New Buddha

[Eiuol]

I find the psychology approach hard to grasp and a little strange. My ideas are mostly due to a constant attempt to model the interplay of thalamus/basal ganglia/cortex. I keep meaning to get serious about this project, putting aside distractions. Yet here I am

I don't think Plasmatic was suggesting Lacan as a good read. I don't know a lot about Lacan, but he's more about psychoanalysis than good science to back up his ideas. So, it's not really a psychology approach at all, post cognitive revolution.

[New Buddha]

Be careful about saying a baby is moving by flailing around, or that all a baby does is flail around for a while. Any appearance of flailing is a matter of gathering information, perhaps in an uncoordinated way, but there is a mental life going on.

Eiuol,

Muscle cells in vitro will contract in a coupled fashion.  Contracting is what muscle cells do.  This takes place in absence of any nervous system/brain.

 

"Single-cell motricity is derived from the activation of contractile machinery often rhythmically modulated by intrinsic voltage oscillations of the cell's surface membrane driven by transmembrane ionic concentration differences." - From link in Post #215.  This behavior occurs in absence of any neuron cells or mind.

 

It is only once cells have coupled via the myogenic stage motricity to the neurogenic stage motricity (see link) that coordinated, timed behavior of multiple muscles systems -widely distributed across the body - can begin to take place.  Early in an infants life, he has little control of his muscles - including vocal muscles, eyes, bowels, bladder, limbs, etc.  The movements/behavior of all cells are innate to the cells themselves.  And cells are in a constant state of oscillation (in a healthy organism).  This is what cells do.

 

This, in part, is what I was touching on in my post regarding Dennett's misunderstanding of Cause and Effect by trying to fix the "time" when a decision is made per Libet's Experiment.  Behavior is always internally, self-initiated at the cellular level.  It would be wrong to stay that the neocortex or the somatosenory cortex "causes" the behavior of the muscles.  The distinction/boundaries between the behavior of these systems is epistemic.  The systems, in a healthy organism are thoroughly coupled and yet largely self-directed.  This is what makes discussion of Free Will so difficult.

 

And while you yourself have not made the distinction, discussion of "bottom-up, top-down" is more metaphorical than physical.  It ties into the misunderstanding of Causality as outlined in the Atlas Society article I linked to in Post 182. 

Edited August 20, 2015 by New Buddha

[Plasmatic]

Buddha said:

This, in part, is what I was touching on in my post regarding Dennett's misunderstanding of Cause and Effect by trying to fix the "time" when a decision is made per Libet's Experiment. Behavior is always internally, self-initiated at the cellular level. It would be wrong to stay that the neocortex or the somatosenory cortex "causes" the behavior of the muscles. The distinction/boundaries between the behavior of these systems is epistemic. The systems, in a healthy organism are thoroughly coupled and yet largely self-directed. This is what makes discussion of Free Will so difficult.

Your treatment of cells as "an end in itself" is a failure to grasp the very point on entity based causation you are citing in that article. You are actually making the fallacy of composition while also pontificating about special science and then trying to derive philosophical significance from that. Discussion of free will from that method is indeed difficult. Its completely upside down. Human beings are the entity and choices are actions they make. This is a self evident fact, no cognitive psychology necessary. There are no isolated sections inside human biology. The integration of an organism ("thoroughly coupled") is what undoes the notion that the cells are "ends in themselves". None of this makes any coherent sense.

One might wonder why the whole thread isn't moved to the science and tech section because the many pages since the OP barely say anything at all about the philosophical question asked therein.

[Plasmatic]

Grimm said:

Edit; Just did a quick review and found out why it's just on my shelf and not in my hands. I find the psychology approach hard to grasp and a little strange. My ideas are mostly due to a constant attempt to model the interplay of thalamus/basal ganglia/cortex. I keep meaning to get serious about this project, putting aside distractions. Yet here I am

Lacan was insane. (Like most of the french continental junk)

I asked only because he made the assertion that children start fragmented and their bodily motions reflect this. He posited a "mirror stage" that your cog sci assertions are very similar to.

I am not saying your crazy because of this similarity. Was just wondering if Lacan was motivating your interest in the particular cog science stuff you are asserting.

Are you trying to derive an answer to questions about volition and focus from these models you posit too?

[Eiuol]

Your treatment of cells as "an end in itself" is a failure to grasp the very point on entity based causation you are citing in that article.

Cells have ends. He's not saying anything past that. It'd be strange to say they don't. Please explain yourself as opposed to making assertions of errors people make stated in a way that makes you very unclear to people besides yourself - it takes things off track. Besides, no one is doing this upside down, we're not -deriving- philosophy from science. The thread is a lot of talking about philosophy and science.

[Plasmatic]

Louie said:

Cells have ends. He's not saying anything past that.

Actually he said much more than that and I said much more than you quoted about what he said. If you want clarification you will have to ask questions that show relevance to what has actually been said. I don't know what you are missing because your statements seem to be simply an overlooking of what has been already said.

I made specific assertions that, if you know what they mean, are clear. If you don't you can ask specific questions about them.

The ends of any part of an organism is the life of the whole organism. That is, it is an integrated whole.

Louie said:

Besides, no one is doing this upside down, we're not -deriving- philosophy from science

I just quoted an instance of trying to draw conclusions about free will from special science conclusions. I know that I am not the only person here who sees this as well... Edited August 20, 2015 by Plasmatic

[Eiuol]

Your counter-argument didn't make sense, it seems like a case where what one is thinking in one's mind is clearer than what is written down. I don't know what to ask even, I don't think you understood NB's position, especially since I see about 3 different interpretations of his post that I'll post about later today. Largely, though, we're talking about literally the details of -how- free will happens, so staying integrated requires bringing up philosophical premises. Earlier, there was a lot more discussion of philosophy. That's why the thread doesn't fit into just a science subforum.

[Plasmatic]

Louie said:

I don't think you understood NB's position, especially since I see about 3 different interpretations of his post that I'll post about later today.

Its clear that you didn't understand what he said because he certainly said more than what you claimed.

As to interpreting what he said, it is very in line with what he has previously tried to shoe horn into Objectivism before. (He admitted to trying to make this point in other places) Noticing this does indeed require integration.

I will be making a post later that may help show what is wrong with the general approach in this thread.

[Eiuol]

As to interpreting what he said, it is very in line with what he has previously tried to shoe horn into Objectivism before. (He admitted to trying to make this point in other places) Noticing this does indeed require integration.

Of course, but it also takes making a clear post so we can discuss if the errors really are errors. The main issue I see in the thread is that none of us seem to agree on what focus is on a philosophical level even. So, any errors I see aren't due to the sorts of reasons you cite.

[Eiuol]

My post, as promised.
 

Muscle cells in vitro will contract in a coupled fashion.  Contracting is what muscle cells do.  This takes place in absence of any nervous system/brain.

Right, but I was talking about newborns, not fetuses or in-vitro development.  As I said earlier, I have no philosophical issue with claiming that there's a point in which an entity can be distinguished as having its own sense of mental control. As a fetus develops, it's not going to start out as conscious and would need to become conscious eventually. A newborn, though, is not merely flailing. I said be careful, because "flailing" makes it sound like newborns begin as machines. In terms of what I said constitutes focus earlier (i.e. placing attention on mental states), I'm saying babies really do -start- with the ability to focus. That philosophical premise plays out in reality, as I'd expect.

The bottom-up distinction is fine to me, but mainly in terms of how "low level" a process occurs. Your eyes tracking is low level and tracking is not necessarily going to take any willpower at all. You can, however,  be aware of tracking entities in order make a simple judgment. Knowledge, conceptual awareness, careful weighing of alternatives, and so on, play no role in tracking moving objects.

I don't think Dennett tries to fix -any- time for decisions, so bringing him up doesn't apply here. I'll look at my copy of Consciousness Explained, because I recall there being good examples along the lines of explaining consciousness as a complex process where the "moments" of making a decision are contextual. Not that his views on causality are great, but he gets this much right I think.