There is reason to believe that the pieces of the brain that we believe are associed with unconscious and autonomic functions may lead the conscious mind by some amount of time. Embedded electrodes show activation some miliseconds prior to a volitional behavior for areas of the brain that are not under conscious control.

Various hypnotic experiments also lead one to suspect a below awarness that is running ahead of consciousness in real time. Can anyone elaborate?

Possibly professional baseball player's hitting the ball may be another example since I gather that there is not enough time to do it consciously.

What does this say about free will?

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

Answers

Dave,

If awareness is an emergent property, ie something that results as a synthesis of all kinds of data, then it necessarily would lag both the "reception" and the synthesis of the data.

"Consciousness" strikes me as something even more "removed" from experience than awareness. You can become conscious that you've been aware of an annoying noise for some time now... It seems to me that for a statement like that to have meaning that there are a lot of autonomic processes running "below" consciousness.

With respect to "free will" I think that it exists, but not at the moment of "action" so much as later in time >>>if<<< the choice point is reflected on.

My statement for this is based on my sense that my behaviour is "structurally determined", by which I mean the disposition of structure that composes me accounts for the result. If the same structure was presented with the same conditions it would make the same choice. So -- in the moment there is no "choice" or "free-will".

However, by reflection (post or prior) I can create alterations in my structure, that will allow more choices than had I not reflected. I think the key to this is that by "consciousness" we are normally referring to "self-consciousness" which is a recursive phenomena where we are aware of our selves in a context, and an awareness that is normally mediated in language. When I observe another from the "outside" I can see lots of choices that they could make, and I therefore posit that this person is choosing from them. From the inside I don't think that the same situation applies at all -- the person may not see the same or any choices, the personal weighting factors on the choices are invisible to the exterior observer, and with what I "am" I will go with one of the "choices".

The political concept of "free will" I think is a necessary assumption to the functioning of our legal system and philosophy of individual responsibility. Sort of like the "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" axiom being necessary also to operation of the system.

Finally, some of the training sessions in the Neuro-Linguistic Programming area have very much to do with invoking responses that make a mockery of the concept of "free will". One of the exercises we practice is the setting of "anchors". These are the establishing of context cues that invoke a response in an individual. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? By establishing a state of "rapport" with another individual by subtle mimicry of their breathing rate and body analogs, it is possible to quickly "set" such an anchor. Now, for the NLP training section on "Front of the Room" skills for giving lectures, the recommendation in one course was that you early on set an anchor for the "tip of the tongue" state. As you've no doubt experienced, this is when you know something, and you know that you know something, and you just can't state it, but feel like its "right there". Such an anchor is very useful for forestalling questions from persons that are hogging too much "air time" in the class, or for forestalling questions when you don't want something made explicit at that part of the training.

Now, if I can coordinate my behavioural dance with you such that my providing a cue to you has some aspect of your neurology "block" your consciousness from your own experiental material -- then how can "free will" and "captain of my own fate" possibly hold? And if such methods are applied in a courtroom context against witnesses, jury members, the judge, opposing counsel, or otherwise -- what are the implications?

As you may recall from one of my earlier emails, I said that if a black belt martial artist worked you over, you would wake up with bruises and some idea of what happened to you. In the sort of domain where the NLP master practitioners play, your consciousness is normally just along for the ride.

A final trivial example in the area of sales (touted as a "really good" place for these techniques (if ethics is unrequired)). A car salesperson with some capability in this area is taking you for a tour of the lot. As part of the patter s/he is asking you about previous purchasing experiences. As you talk, they are using the ongoing conversational interaction to establish a state of rapport. After satisfactorily establishing it (simple test -- you scratch your nose, if in rapport other person will idly touch their face within 15-20 seconds -- analogical following occurs...) they ask you about your satisfying purchases in the past. As you recall them, they set an anchor - linking a cue that they can act-out with a personal "satisfying" experience of yours. Then they change your state ("Hey, isn't that someone that knows you over there?") and "fire" the anchor. If you shift back to the "satisfied" state, then they can be confident that the anchor is "set". Now, they have at their disposal a particularily useful influence tool for using at the point of sale or point of decision on your part.

So - if done properly your consciousness doesn't even get to know what is going on. Wherefore has "free will" gone?

Now... how given the reality of these practices -- how do you decide a system of ethics?

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

"Does Pavlov ring a bell".... too clever....

Well, I'd like to submit the following. One may be a crank, the other may be just trying to seel some books....

Possible Crank

Physics of Counsciousness

The first tries to point out the magnetic fields surrounding the brain create what may be a "space-time torus with an Einstein-Rosen bridge connecting its median points"

The second postulates quantum theory holds only for inanimate (unconscious) matter, and that counsciousness is beyond quantum theory.

Free will? What's that? NLP is the suave sophisticated older brother of the cannon. If I fire my cannon at a head, it will die, regardless of its will. If I hook a ring in a dog's nose, it will follow. If I ring a bell before feeding a dog, it will grow accustomed ot the sound and associate it. If I speak in a low, soft voice while standing to the right of my listener, they will "follow" the points of my speech closely. What is the difference between using an intentional frequency/amplitude of voice and using a cannon, if not subtlety?

Here's the classic "quantum darwinian slection", regarding free-will:

"The choice of measured observable is also determined externally to the system being measured, but there is no self-measurement in quantum physics, therefore, no possiblility of conscious free willed choice."

Sorry, folks. Either you're in.....or you're out.

ken

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

You know, all this appeal to "hyperbolic, non-linear Einstein-Rosen bridges" reeks of "this way to the egress". As in, if I dress it up with fancy enough language and imply use of the latest technology (using both the SQUID sensor helmets and a special helmet designed by Dr. Z having Delta-T and Delta-Wye transforms)the audience may miss the parody I'm presenting. Sort of ironic performance art via high-tech name tongue in cheek name dropping.

Let's hide the origins of consciousness in a quantum effect. Now are you dazzled enough that you won't go and say "Please sir -- but you haven't explained yet?" If you do I can talk about tensor calculus and hyper-spatial dimensioning...

Sorry - I can get complex emergent behaviour just by putting together simple electronic circuits. Even the simplest motorized mouse with a light sensor will look like it exhibits purposeful behaviour, and by watching it respond to us moving the light we can clue into what we think "purpose" and "purposive" look like, and why we might label a behaviour such.

As for the second, maybe I'm missing the point. By "beyond" are we implying that it is even more subtle or sophisticated? Or that quantum theory is a bad set of tools for which to model the behaviour? Hell's bells, I can't use quantum behaviour to model family dynamics either, but I don't see family dynamics as being obtuse or needing something beyond quantum mechanics. And I do think that consciousness is more like family dynamics than atomic particle behaviour.

You jerking our chain here Ken?

With respect to NLP being a more subtle cousin to a cannon I beg to differ. My "following" your speech has to do with my internal dynamics. You fire a cannon at my head and the sheer physics of the situation takes over. Someone used a metaphor of kicking a beach ball versus kicking a dog. The physics describes the subsequent path of the beach ball. Whereas the dog may actually respond to the kick by reversing direction and coming back to take your leg off. As soon as you have an independent source of power that is directed by internal relations, then the internal relations are going to set the behaviour up to the point that you "break" the system. ...as so graphically suggested in using a cannon to vaporize someone's head.

The point about NLP was that if "free will" is related to consciousness, and lots of choice making is going on inside your neurology below consciousness, then "free will" is going to be very circumscribed as a useful concept in terms of describing someone's choice making. And I would argue that its so circumscribed as to be not useful at all.

Maybe we could stick with personal experiences -- do you feel that you have free will? And what is this ??? that you feel that you have.

Cheers,

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

Mumm. Brain torque.

Dont think of consciousness in terms of the immediate, or what we think we know. Seems far more mallable, and for more supra than that.

Case in point... during the twelve and a half years Ive been studying (and practicing metaphysical applications to everyday life), one of the abilities I picked up along the way was to facilitate past life regressions. A true facilatator allows the Regresse to follow their own consciousness memory trail while youre just along as a guide. If you can couple that with a psychic ability, then the Regressor can also see the pictures of where the individual is going before they speak the words. (It may be that thoughts have more reality, or at least move faster than awareness).

That aside, its been my experience that the simultaneousness of life is changable... across time. Wouldnt that be an ultimate expression of free will?

There has been ample documentation by people like Brian Weiss, et. al., that unexplained phobias experienced by people--the kind that compellingly rule ones actions in this life--can be eliminated when the root experience is unlocked, and the lesson learned and carried forward into the now.

Havent had much experience with NLP but its seemed to me that it works better with people who are unaware that anchors can be set by others. For those who can bypass those techniques, think it would be much harder, if not impossible to direct their actions, awareness or consciousness.

Diane

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

Well Hi Tom (et al)

Okay, I'm jerking everyone's chain a little, but no one has stated yet from whence the jerking comes.

In my view, the keyword is "inanimate" matter.

The other half of the quote is

"The thoughtlike quantum pilot-wave of indeterministic quantum physics provides only 50% of the animating wholistic life force to its attached deterministic classical matter. This is not enough for life and consciousness. Post-quantum "back-action" of classical matter on its quantum pilot wave provides the other 50% to create conscious life. The feedback-control loop between the indeterministic thoughtlike quantum wave and its attached deterministic classical material body forms a self-determining living conscious complex adaptive system. Environmental decoherence generally washes out the back-action effect. However, biological room temperature Bose-Einstein condensates, ie Frohlich modes of microtubules, form the seat of the soul, the Eccles gates connecting the mind to the brain."

Okay, now I've got brain torque. Tom, could you lend a little clarity? I think what it's saying is the quantum wave connects an external awareness to a material event, providing there is not too much "environmental interference" so the event goes unnoticed.

Also, it seems the Bose-Einstein condensates may be connected to the vortex strangeness we had previously discussed. Now, do the condensates actually have to be at room temp? Is that one of the keys to "escape" during an NDE, as the brain approached ambient temp, the "gates", if you will, begin to open?

-- Anonymous, March 20, 2000

Good morning folks,

I was thinking last night (dangerous, yeah).... physicists go around making observations, and trying to define "laws" for what they have perceived, but never seem to question the validity of the context of the observation. How can the designation of "inanimate, non- sentient" matter be made? Just because matter does not display a recognizable awareness does not mean it isn't there; the instrument of observation may be defective or limited.

So, as fascinating as I find the quantum wave postulate, I'm going to have to put it on the shelf and tag it "requires further data".

Now for a further chain-jerking......

There is another idea recently put forth, that the future already exists, in the near term, and we in the present are just arranging our affairs to fit that future.

Then there was a report of an experiment back in the 1990s claiming a person had travelled forward in time several milliseconds, and found only a gray fog, no world by anyone's imagination, indicating the future was being determined in the present.

And then there was another proposal that time actually ran backward from our perception, that our "memories" were just a recollection of the list of things we still had to do. Effect and cause, rather than cause and effect...

Okay, I'm done.

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Diane,

When you use the term "unexplained phobias" I take it that it is unexplained (inexplicable?) by the person experiencing the phobia at a conscious level. Yet for the phobia to have influence on their behaviour it strikes me that some "part" of them must "know" the phobia. And the resolution of the tension between the conscious mind and the out-of-conscious compulsion occurs when the root experience is unlocked for **consciousness**. The resolution is via the dissolution of the "not-knowing". In my practice working with people with "hidden" behavioural compulsions it seems to be a matter of creating a safe enough context for them to "know" what they've not allowed "themselves" to know. (Sorry about all the quotes - trying to track multiple versions of the self in text is problematic.) Reminds me of a quote given by an alcoholic: "...everyone wants to talk about my drinking, but nobody wants to talk to me about my thirst."

So I'd have to say that this again supports that "conscious me" is not "in control" and "captain of my fate".

You said "... but its seemed to me that it works better with people who are unaware that anchors can be set by others. For those who can bypass those techniques, think it would be much harder, if not impossible to direct their actions, awareness or consciousness."

Well, actually I have found that its more of a function of the person's permeability to what they themselves are doing outside of consciousness. Since an "anchor" consists of a cue proffered by one person, and a response proffered back, it is more like a dance than a "control" maneuver. For your being to accept a cue from me as an "anchor" it has always struck me that we have to be in a form of relationship where some part of you finds it acceptable to do so.

Really "repressed" people are in some ways easier to dance with as their consciousness has no idea of what is going on with the rest of them. People that spend a lot of time reflecting/connecting with themselves/attending to the cues they give themselves are much more likely to notice being in "dance" mode. It's less like control and more like a jazz performance where one person proposes and the other disposes.

Ken made a comment about his training (in a set of emails that predated this forum) that "Many forms of majick are actually a mutual symbiosis, that is, the "target" cannot be affected by the "caster" until they consent. This does not have to be a conscious consent, it may occur at the subconscious or unconscious levels, astral levels, if you will....One of my Wiccan teachers told me the best way to ward off a curse or any negative majick is to "just don't let them do it". Same thing here, if you don't want to be manipulated by mental force or "majick", just say no." and it says the same sort of thing -- that the "dance" requires cooperation at some level.

To me awareness not of techniques of anchoring, but of what is going on inside of oneself is the key. You don't need to know the specifics of what someone is doing to know that some part of you doesn't trust them, or that they are "playing games with your head".

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Ken - I'm going to have to chew on your item about time travel a bit, but with regard to the first item about "...How can the designation of "inanimate, non- sentient" matter be made? Just because matter does not display a recognizable awareness does not mean it isn't there..." I might be able to proffer a point of view.

The old "Occam's Razor: not to multiple explanative entities without reason" or sometimes phrased "the simplest explanation is the preferred" would be sufficient to account for the physicists' behaviour.

If the hypothesis, theories, and laws are constructed to model some observable behaviour ("...physicists go around making observations, and trying to define "laws" for what they have perceived...") then where's the tension about them saying nothing about what isn't observable?

I'm cognizant that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but what explanation is being sought? If the matter under consideration is inanimate and further (though I thought it was implied somewhat from being inanimate) displays no recognizable awareness -- then what is to be explained?

I don't consider myself a positivist yet I do consider the Popper criterion of science being composed of explanations whose "false-ibility" can be tested as a pragmatically useful one.

There's a story of someone giving a lecture at Esalen, and during the week they were residing there, there was quite a commotion about the fact that one of the resident's children having scribbled all over several paintings produced by a visiting "medium". Now the understanding about the medium was that they were channelling the spirit's of the great masters, and both the community and the medium were quite upset at the damage wrought to these new works. The lecturer took a slightly different stance at one of the evening talks, saying that perhaps what was going on was that the medium was falsely representing themselves as a channeller, and the affronted spirits of the masters were borrowing the child to express their true sentiments about the fraud... Beyond the uproar and rupture of relational sentiments (not to mention challenging of worldviews) that this (perhaps) less-than-respectful analysis induced -- was the notion that neither "hypothesis" or explanation was testable. So the "explanatory value" in terms of connecting the event to any larger understanding was pretty nil.

So - going back to why physicists take inanimate, non-sentient matter as not requiring an explanation; it seems to me that there is no mechanism of activity that needs elaboration.

Is this a sufficient answer?

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Hi Tom,

Nope. Insufficient.

Example: Yellowstone, Dec 23, 1998. I've watched one particular bear from a distance diligently for three days and nights now. It has not moved. Therefore the bear is dead.

The bear is not dead. The bear's animation has merely slowed to an imperceptible (to me) level. It is the nature of the beast.

There are two flies on the wall, father and son. The father fly tells his son, "See that Man over there? He was here when I was young, and when my father was young, and his father before him. That Man is immortal."

Obviously not factual, but to the diligent observer, it seems to be the most obvious answer.

How can I say, with any confidence at all, "That rock is an inanimate object, with neither sentience nor life"? It is possible, I am inadequate to judge the probability, the rock is just living at a very leisurely pace.....

If basic, root-level awareness is defined as knowing there is a difference between "here" and "there", who am I to judge what another is aware of? Or not?

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Ken - Aha!

In the light of your statement I think I see where the sufficiency is missing...

You seem to be talking about TRUTH, as in "How can we know that the rock is not truly alive?" whereas I thought you were talking about human behaviour and explanation making, specifically that of say physicists.

You raise an interesting question it seems to me which goes something along the lines of "When are we sure that our explanation is complete?" or "How do we know when we've sufficiently explained a thing?"

From a pragmatic point of view, it seems to me that the answer to those questions depends what you want to do with the object or strongly relatedly --- what you want to do with the explanation. To a fly we do have an exceptionally lengthy lifespan (in terms of fly lifespans). Vis a vis the immobile bear the alive/dead question seems to have relevance (value) if you have plans for the bear; autopsy vs zoo shipment vs protection from poachers.

I'm treading this line of thought because it strikes me that notions of "sufficiency" are value judgements, which of course imply a valuer.

There is the whole aspect of curiosity which manifests in me as a desire to know about how things work (or "are") without having a particular specific task in mind. So maybe your question is along those domains? "Does a rock have consciousness?"

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Tom - Aha! I think we're on the same track.

Aha! - I think you have unspoken plans for the "stuff", too. Share with us sometime?

So, I have to fall back on my much-hated axiom - Our current working model is inadequate, and when we find how inadequate it really is, boy are we going to be embarassed.

So, from our working (or not) model, we cannot surely say whether consciousness runs in real-time, forward or backward, or a few milliseconds ahead or in front. What does that mean for "free- will"? Makes me cringe...

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Ken, I don't think any of us doubt that our current models are inadequate, flawed, etc. If all we are is embarassed by the "true nature of things" I'd feel I'd got off easy.

Tom is stocking up on knowledge to better fill the role of science officer/general purpose wright/tinker.But also the shift to process rather than product (entity) gives greater explanitory/manipulative power.

Going to weird mental states where reality is postulated to be wildly different from our consensual science model/physical reality (cannon ball model)is not going to get your house built, my ghouse done, etc..its fine to play in those spaces but I want physical change or some pragmatic utility as a test of belief/model.

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Okay.

David, you already know but I'll share with the others.

It is my firm belief, by the preponderence of the eveidence, that the vast majority, 99+%, of humanity are idiots and are getting less than what they justly deserve.

Theirs is conventional awareness/consciousness. Theirs is the world produced by that awareness/consciousness. I have no desire to participate in nor propagate that sort of world.

Getting physical change through awareness/consciousness is going to be the roughest row any of us have ever hoed. The mass's lack of imagination, laziness, mental inertia, unawareness of the world any further than 100 feet away is just absolutely overwhelming.

You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.

You can tell Joe Six-pack his world is dying, his resources are being consumed at an alarming rate and his progeny are facing the bleakest of futures, and all you'll get is a glassy stare and "hey, did you see my new lawn mower?" for your trouble.

(Okay, I've finished running around in circles and franitcally waving my hands in the air... for now)

Is NLP the tool? I don't think there are enough skilled practioners to get around to enough people to make a difference. Is majick the tool? Agian, there is that skilled staffing shortage. I don't thinkk we can really change the world, maybe just our little corner, with enough people, a larger corner...

Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely.... I dunno...

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000

Dave - I'm sympathetic to the sentiment if differing in a few of the particulars. (Plus - how can the lawnmower guy live near you? He's in the suburbs near where I work!)

More seriously I'm going to take my fuller answer over to Dave's new thread.

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2000