Are Consciousness and Free Will insparable?

[ManInTheMoon]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

Additionally, it seems to be that there can be no will that is not free. How could I will anything if I'm not the one choosing what I will? If I can't make choices, I don't really have any will of my own, do I? Is it possible for a conscious being to not have any will at all?

[Sy Borg]

... to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts?

That appears to be our situation. We have so little idea how our thoughts are influenced by outside factors. Only today I saw a food delivery truck on the street and noticed that I felt warmly towards it, because they feed us. I noticed that I don't feel the same way about the garbage trucks, although they provide a similarly essential service. However, I have a subconscious narrative of food vs rubbish that taints my perceptions.

It calls to mind the hot/cold drink experiment: https://news.yale.edu/2008/10/23/hot-co ... chers-find

In the October 24, 2008 issue of the journal Science, Yale University psychologists show that people judged others to be more generous and caring if they had just held a warm cup of coffee and less so if they had held an iced coffee. In a second study, they showed people are more likely to give something to others if they had just held something warm and more likely take something for themselves if they held something cold.

[PoeticUniverse]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

Additionally, it seems to be that there can be no will that is not free. How could I will anything if I'm not the one choosing what I will? If I can't make choices, I don't really have any will of my own, do I? Is it possible for a conscious being to not have any will at all?

You are defining the 'free' in free will to mean that the will (brain) is free to make choices, which indeed it does, as it is usually free to operate, but one is never free of the will, for it does as it must, given its state at the moment from what it has become in its range up to then. Consciousness, though, makes no choices, for it comes too late in the process, ever sequential to the brain's (will's) analysis of collapsing scenarios of consequences into the final result that then arrives in consciousness after about 300-500 milliseconds of all kinds of gears turning and neurons firing through vast networks, this processing and its duration being opaque to consciousness or introspection.

[stevie]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

Additionally, it seems to be that there can be no will that is not free. How could I will anything if I'm not the one choosing what I will? If I can't make choices, I don't really have any will of my own, do I? Is it possible for a conscious being to not have any will at all?

I would not say that consciousness and free will are insparable but I would say that affirmation of self and affirmation of free will are inseparable or in other words: the issue of self and the issue of free will are inseparable.
If one conceives of what you call "conscious being" as an open system processing a diversity of stumli where even what appears to us as "will" is just a momentum of a processing response the concept of "free will" ceases to be an issue.

[stevie]

strange typo: please replace "stumli" by "stimuli"

[LuckyR]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

Additionally, it seems to be that there can be no will that is not free. How could I will anything if I'm not the one choosing what I will? If I can't make choices, I don't really have any will of my own, do I? Is it possible for a conscious being to not have any will at all?

You are defining the 'free' in free will to mean that the will (brain) is free to make choices, which indeed it does, as it is usually free to operate, but one is never free of the will, for it does as it must, given its state at the moment from what it has become in its range up to then. Consciousness, though, makes no choices, for it comes too late in the process, ever sequential to the brain's (will's) analysis of collapsing scenarios of consequences into the final result that then arrives in consciousness after about 300-500 milliseconds of all kinds of gears turning and neurons firing through vast networks, this processing and its duration being opaque to consciousness or introspection.

I think I agree with this. I would just word it differently. Namely that will operates prospectively while consciousness ooerated retrospectively.

[Sculptor1]

Consciousness is the means by which we observe our deterministic brain and its activities.
When we like what we have achived this can cause the brain to have its behaviour reinforced; when we do not like what we have achieved that can cause the brain to modify its behaviour.
Sometimes, when the deterministic urge is too great the brain continues to behave in ways we do not like, on reflection, but is unmoved by our conscious remonstrations; like taking yet another cookie out of the jar, when your conscience knows you are too fat.
But all the while, over the course of your life, the condition of the consience is at all times determined by the brain state.
So in a very important sense the will is not "free", except from external foces, but never free from ourselves.

[Pattern-chaser]

What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts?

We exist in a context: life, the universe and everything. The behaviour of the universe is noticed by us; we respond to it. Maybe we are proactive too, but we do respond to our environment/context. Living creatures exist within an environment, and they/we must interact with it to survive. This interaction surely means that "influence", in both directions, is inevitable?

So yes, of course this universal context influences our thoughts, but does it determine our thoughts? That's a different question, to which my answer is 'probably not'.

[Nick_A]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

Additionally, it seems to be that there can be no will that is not free. How could I will anything if I'm not the one choosing what I will? If I can't make choices, I don't really have any will of my own, do I? Is it possible for a conscious being to not have any will at all?

You may appreciate this poem by Yeats. Is Man a conscious being or is consciousness just a potential for Man? Is all our life force just consumed by a dying animal?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... -byzantium

Sailing to Byzantium
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.


III

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.


IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

[PoeticUniverse]

that will operates prospectively while consciousness operates retrospectively.

How's this poem about rumination:

The Prospective unto the Retrospective and Back…

The will’s function is to provide future,
And thus its quale lights the global stage’s lure
To fish for the will’s parts of interest,
This scheme soon closing in on what’s the best.

[Leontiskos]

Is it even conceivable that a conscious being could not have free will? What could it be like to be fully aware of yourself and your environment, but not feel like you have any influence over even your own thoughts? It sounds kind of like dreaming. I don't know if that would even be consciousness. Is consciousness without free will incoherent?

I think consciousness requires free will because consciousness requires a kind of knowledge of oneself and one's environment, and knowledge requires free will. Even if you are restricted in any number of ways, that minimum knowledge involves some level of free will.

Given all the determinists around here you might want to ask a second question, "Does consciousness require the perception of free will?"

[PoeticUniverse]

gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.[/b]

NOW AND ZEN

Everything that is part of us—
Our cells, tissues, organs and organ systems—
Has come about over billions of years
Because it proved successful
In the great survival stakes
During our perilous evolutionary
Descent (ascent) with modification.

The brain, being no exception,
Evolved in part
To allow a creature to learn
From what happens in its life,
To retain key elements that
Could influence future actions.

We are geared for self-preservation;
We will do anything to avoid facing the possibility
That who we are now cannot continue.

We ourselves are mainly the cause
That we are interested in.
The self is preoccupied with staying alive,
Which is why our species is still around today.

It is a prime biological function to be afraid of death,
And so the self as thus contrived
Is able to fully play its crucial survival role.

We want to equip our brain with a soul
That offers us an escape when the brain dies
Since the self cannot come to terms
With its own extinction.

From a subjective standpoint,
We are all born equal and undifferentiated,
(Before that, ‘we’ were dead),
But as mature selves we make a distinction
Between the individual and the surroundings.

Still the brain keeps changing throughout life
In a pattern of the shifting flux of its neurons;
We gain and lose memories and feelings,
Essentially creating a new person again and again.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
These moment-to-moment changes differ from death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

So, we are not at all static things.
Other neural networks will come to be in other,
Future people, albeit with an “amnesia”
Of what went on before in
The brains of the previous others.

Why should we be happy about this?

We never can be because the ‘I’ cannot operate
Outside of its own boundaries.
The only viable alternative is to think of a way
In which it is possible to ever continue on.

What will it be like to be a part
Of someone else after we die,
With our own particular
Narrative of life cast aside?

That is the ‘zen’
Of now and then and when.

[Nick_A]

gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.[/b]

NOW AND ZEN

Everything that is part of us—
Our cells, tissues, organs and organ systems—
Has come about over billions of years
Because it proved successful
In the great survival stakes
During our perilous evolutionary
Descent (ascent) with modification.

The brain, being no exception,
Evolved in part
To allow a creature to learn
From what happens in its life,
To retain key elements that
Could influence future actions.

We are geared for self-preservation;
We will do anything to avoid facing the possibility
That who we are now cannot continue.

We ourselves are mainly the cause
That we are interested in.
The self is preoccupied with staying alive,
Which is why our species is still around today.

It is a prime biological function to be afraid of death,
And so the self as thus contrived
Is able to fully play its crucial survival role.

We want to equip our brain with a soul
That offers us an escape when the brain dies
Since the self cannot come to terms
With its own extinction.

From a subjective standpoint,
We are all born equal and undifferentiated,
(Before that, ‘we’ were dead),
But as mature selves we make a distinction
Between the individual and the surroundings.

Still the brain keeps changing throughout life
In a pattern of the shifting flux of its neurons;
We gain and lose memories and feelings,
Essentially creating a new person again and again.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
These moment-to-moment changes differ from death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

So, we are not at all static things.
Other neural networks will come to be in other,
Future people, albeit with an “amnesia”
Of what went on before in
The brains of the previous others.

Why should we be happy about this?

We never can be because the ‘I’ cannot operate
Outside of its own boundaries.
The only viable alternative is to think of a way
In which it is possible to ever continue on.

What will it be like to be a part
Of someone else after we die,
With our own particular
Narrative of life cast aside?

That is the ‘zen’
Of now and then and when.

Your trapped mind and its will vs your dying animal. Who wins? Your dying animal. Over time it has learned your weaknesses assuring its victory. It must win. To lose means its death and it doesn't want to die.

[PoeticUniverse]

To lose means its death and it doesn't want to die.

OUR TRUE COLORS

We are the Eternal Smile of Being,
The Joy of the Universe’s Creation!

In us the Cosmos has come alive,
And has evolved into our consciousness,
From primordial matter and energy.

We have arrived! We are the Cosmos itself.
We are the Universe—life from Stardust!

We live but for one of Eternity’s heartbeats,
Borrowing Life from Death for just a while.
All that we are we owe to Time, Death, and Stars.

Truly from the stars cometh our help;
The Stars are the creators of atomic matter.
Within a star’s heart, matter transforms itself
And gives off energy; this is why the Stars shine!

Death is the ultimate evaluator
And the director of all evolutionary progress.
Death selects the wise from the silly;
Death chooses the useful from the useless,
But it takes a long mind numbing Time.

It is this long yardstick that sticks in the throat.

For what seemed like Forever,
Our sleepless spirits have waited
To catch light, life, and delight from Heaven’s smile.
Finally, we are so lucky and we live.

We stand atop the pinnacle of Nature’s tireless toil,
Which has at last brought forth our souls
From that black and endless eternal deep.
What a joy to Be!

In what far and fiery depths of space
Burnt the fire of your Spirit?
In what distant star was born your eye’s gleam?

Know it well, for one day Death will ask you
“What did you do all of your life?”

But for now we are alive.
Our mind and senses interpret and disperse
The base Reality into the colors and sensations
Of the phenomenal world.

We can become either rainbows or ugly stains!

Our minds, like Shelley’s prisms of many-colored glass,
Strain the white Radiance of Eternity,
Into our life—until Death tramples us—
And back we go to stardust,
After relentless time has wasted us away.

Yes, our creators of Time, Death, and Stardust
Must also write our epitaph;
They devour us in order to return
The life-dream which was lent to us.

But here we are now, and perhaps we come to know
That the simpler things in life are still the best:
A glass of water from the well in the morning;
To love, laugh, and sing with family and friends.

And so we live out our lives with honor and love,
Kindness and generosity—these are our true colors.
Life for the sake of life! Good for good’s sake!
Enjoying everyone and everything and every season.

Many think that they are more important
Than they really are, that they deserve some reward—
Of a divine destiny in Heaven where their every whim,
Wish, and fancy can be fulfilled for all of time.

Well, to me, such endless satisfaction and pleasure
Sounds really rather prideful, wishful, even decadent.
The ultimate humility is for us to realize
That we are just electrochemical organisms.

Are we quite lucky and fancy organisms? Oh, yes.
Are we specially created by a Master? Oh, no.
We are the embodiment of the Cosmos
As ever the results of natural laws.

Death will be forever, but man,
With his exaggerated view of self-importance,
And not wishing to see a final end
To his glorious life—and I can hardly blame him—
Desperately grasps for immortality’s promise.

For me I will continue to catch life’s joy and smile
And will bathe in the light of its constant sunrise.

On my last night on this Earth,
I will not be haunted by regret
When the Sleep of Death comes
To take me to Corruption’s dim dwelling place—
For I will know that I lived for color and smile.

And what of the Stars?

They remain, as Eternity’s Love-lamps,
Representing our good works and deeds,
Which even the fathomless night cannot quench.

Perhaps one day, at the end of forever,
The Stars too will die and grow cold when
Time conquers all; but as long as they live
They will shine and radiate the hues
That paint the colors of our ashes
Reborn again on the phoenix wings of Time.