Is Dreaming an Encryption Procedure?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjg0NwsHCCA
Robert Stickgold - Mysteries of Free Will - 30 Oct 2021 - Closer To Truth
Robert Stickgold:
"I mean free will is a tricky question because we rarely in our waking life think about having free will. What we think about is making choices and that sort of comes automatically without sort of this metacognitive reflection of this is my choice. Sometimes there's the angst of making a choice where we're really aware of it but i think normally when we talk about free will it's for making the everyday decisions that we make all the time. What we notice when we're dreaming what our dreaming selves tend to notice is that we don't have that capacity; we don't feel like we have free will when we're dreaming. We feel like we're being taken up in the flow of events and although we're an active player in the dream we also feel like we're a passive observer who's just taken along. So whether we actually have free will such as we have in waking in dreams only seems to be the case when we have lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming is that state where people become aware of the fact that they're dreaming and when we do that we also gain a certain kind of control. So this is a different kind of control and free will because it's much more than we could imagine having in waking. So if you decided you wanted to fly free will wouldn't help you; you can't. But in a dream it can and so you can fly in the dream and when you become lucid. Interestingly when people become lucid of all the things they can freely choose to do in a dream flying is actually what they like to do most. But then what you see is you see the limits of that kind of free will because you can't for example like you can when you're awake just having a fantasy or doing some daydreaming. You can't put yourself in Paris by just deciding to. If you want to put yourself in Paris in a dream you have to walk through a door or walk around a corner or spin around in space for five seconds and stop and then you can suddenly be in Paris. So it's like you have control over some of those brain processes that we normally think of ourselves as having control over."
Robert Kuhn:
"So let's try to figure out if there's anything we can learn about the real free will in the waking state from dream state. We know that in in dreams if we don't have the same kind of sense of free will; we're sort of being taken by this (and) we also know that the forebrain is less active in the dreaming life than it is in... waking up."
Stickgold:
"That's right but it's even more than that so you've got the the the prefrontal cortex which is usually involved in decision making but in REM sleep you also have a change in the chemistry of the brain and the release of norepinephrine or noradrenaline and serotonin. Two major neural chemicals is completely shut off and those are the chemicals that your brain needs to direct action. You know if you want to really do something; you feel the adrenaline build up in your body that's matched by noradrenaline (which is) a slightly different chemical in your brain and they're really good at focusing your attention and initiating behaviours. In rem sleep those are completely shut off so not only don't you have the frontal control systems but you don't have the chemicals in your brain that would normally let you choose an option with free will."
Kuhn:
"So this seems to be at least the beginning of a biological clue as to the how free will can work... If we if we don't feel free will phenomenologically in our dreaming state and we see the biological... correlates in terms of the prefrontal areas of the brain and the the neurotransmitters that you're talking about; we see that correlation different in the dreaming state than in the waking state. We also have the phenomenology that in the dreaming state we have less free will apparently than in the waking state. Maybe that's beginning to be a nice correlation."
Stickgold:
"So let me tell you how it really works. What you have in fact with free will is a balance between these two neuromodulators norepinephrine and serotonin which are very good at bringing your attention back to a focus and to direct action. When you're in rem sleep you have an increase in the neuromodulator called acetylcholine and we know that shift allows for the brain to see more distant connections. Okay so if you're thinking about words and what they're connected to when you wake up out of rem sleep you will find more distantly related words than if you are awake or if you wake up out of non-rem sleep. What free will is about is letting your brain go cholinergic if you will. Consider the possibilities then coming back to norepinephrine and serotonin that'll focus you down onto one of those possibilities and then you either lock it in and choose it or you go back to the cholinergic state and have a new shaking of the bucket and another choice comes out. It's sort of an evolution on the second by second basis."
Robert:
"Now this is is fascinating in terms of its biology but we have a natural complexity here in that we're talking about the you doing this and then we're talking about the biological system making it happen. So is it the biology of the cholinergic, the acetylcholine and the combination between them and all this stuff is that the thing that is giving us the illusion of free will? Or is that us in some top order wanting to do this and therefore the biology is following that?"
Stickgold:
"I think the biology is following. I think that what the prefrontal cortex is doing and what free will in whatever form you want to define it is doing is it's deciding... it's no more meaningful to say that the free will is an illusion than to say that the chemicals are are an illusion. You're going to tell me that those chemicals decided i would go to the movie? That makes no sense to me. It's just a different level of description of the same process."
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https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/ ... e-problem/
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2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
2023 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023