10 thoughts on “Your Brain Knew You’d Read This Article Before You Did”
Ah, excuse me, but “seven seconds” is not quite the same, it seems to me, “as long before you knew about it”. In the realm of other than specially decision-making, it seems humans are more complicated and this may relate to the decision making process itself. We all have a subconscious or unconscious mind that is working all the time. We continously see, for example, far more than we are acutely aware of. Many of our thoughts or thought-like processes occur outside the realm of our awareness. And, undoubtedly they precede our conscious thoughts. Perhaps it is something similar to this that these scientists tapped into. I would say we do have a “free-will” but greatly influenced by our personal history and environment, as well as our society, culture, …..
The “subconscious mind” is no longer a valid concept in psychology. It’s a long explanation, but what has replaced it is the “pre-conscious.”
That means that we all have loose ideas which suddenly focus into one main idea. You might get many signs that you’re going to be fired, and then suddenly figure it out, and it will seem like you knew it all along.
Also, freewill isn’t considered a valid concept in psychology either. Rather, it’s more like a religious and legal concept which serves to lay blame on people who violate rules.
“No longer a valid concept” – rather extreme? Psychological dogma?
Perhaps, as you say, it is “no longer a valid concept in [American] psychology,” but it or similar concepts (the unconscious or “preconscious”) are acceptable and used in psychiatry. I have no problem with your second paragraph; it works well for me.
As for “free will,” may I call your attention, as one small example, to “Neglected Psychological Elements of Free Will” by B. Heller in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology — Volume 11, Number 2, June 2004, pp. 111–118. The first sentence of his abstract says: “Two essential elements of free will — internal locus of control and confident self-efficacy — have been studied extensively by psychologists but neglected by philosophers.” By the way, the same journal devotes an entire issue to the “unconscious” (March 2005).
Whatever I feel, when a doctor attempts to communicate with her patients, she must do so using the same language and concepts her patients are most familiar with.
Many people I’ve talked to about this have been bothered by it. I’m still trying to get my head around it.
How can free will exist if we decide seven seconds before we know we decided?
That makes conscious choice an illusion, and consciousness an epiphenomena. In other words, our conscious awareness doesn’t do anything, it just is the output, the end result of our brain doing things.
Our belief that we exist and are in control of ourselves are both illusions. I find that comforting in a strange way. Sit back and enjoy the ride, right?
The idea of the subconscious comes from an intellectual trend in the late 1800s. That trend focused on looking at India as being a greater source of cultural knowledge than the mideast, as intellectuals were rejecting Bible based knowledge, and finding that Europe has more in common with India.
Freud was interested in this stuff too, and modeled his stages of development after India Chakras. The subconscious idea and Jung’s Collective Unconscious concept both share something with the Eastern reincarnation belief. The idea is that somehow are born with knowledge and knowledge based mechanisms in their brains. Also, the subconscious assumes that has complete knowledge of situations, although there’s no evidence that the person could have known the details.
All of this is mysticism. It has become part of the public vocabulary because of movies/TV and a lack of understanding.
Free Will:
Example: The first time I bought car insurance online I thought the transaction was done. I didn’t know that they were sending me something to sign to seal the deal.
They sent it, and I thought it was junk mail. A few weeks later the state contacted me looking to revoke my plates.
I was shocked and contacted the state. They said that I had no insurance and if I was operating the car, I was doing so illegally. If so, I had to turn myself in and receive a penalty. The guy on the phone encouraged me to deny using the car and sign a document saying so, he did this after I told him of my mistake.
The story illustrates the fact the state assumes Free Will so that it can punish people. It says “you Should have known” and that’s it. The word “should” is an irrational word as it implies a state which didn’t and can’t exist.
The mind is like that of a computer, what has been programmed in it determines who it operates.
Journal Article:
Such studies are part of academic business and aren’t worth much. With that said I have no idea how “free will” is being used in a locus of control study. The very concept of external locus of control assumes that a person is conditioned to have it. If free will existed, then we couldn’t be conditioned to anything.
Xeno, if you believe your will is absolutely free, then it seems you also believe you have no past — no events that may motivate, induce, persuade, influence, or sometimes even coerce your next move either directly or indirectly, however subtly, at any particular point in time. It’s kind’a silly thought, isn’t it? But you can also believe that you are influenced by your past and still have free will at the same time — this is called compatibilism in philosophy. Although there are different thoughts on compatibilism, I feel that our “free will” develops over time through increasing self-reflection and understanding of our relationship with our personal, social, cultural, and physical world. Don’t we become more knowledgeable of our environment as we grow? An infant, whose biological needs aren’t met, cries — almost machine-like, stimulus-response-like — but an older child may decide to refrain from crying and wait, knowing his needs and that they will eventually be met. Or he may actually do something to satisfy a need. Gaining greater awareness of himself and his environment, he also gains greater control in the sense that he can express a free will. But this growing awareness — this quest to know ourselves and our social, cultural environment — doesn’t necessarily need to stop in childhood, and I don’t think it does for most healthy people, at least to some extent. But then, of course, we can decide to do nothing and kick back and enjoy the ride also.
Interesting, TheAlderian — the connection you find between Freud and Hinduism. Have you read The Wayward Mind by Claxton, Hidden Minds by Tallis, or, best of all, The Discovery of the Unconscious by Ellenberger? Notions of the unconscious can be found in the writings of Leibniz in the early 1700s, Kant in the late 1700s (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View), and, if you look hard enough, you’ll find that even Ptolemy wrote on the topic. The word “subliminal” arose from limen, perhaps coined (or at least used) by Herbart in the 19th century. Also, in the 19th century, von Helmholtz (spelling?) wrote about “unconscious conclusion” in his study of perception, which he described as a result of unconscious syllogistic-type thinking. This notion — that even our perceptions are the result of unconscious processes — is central to constructivist thinking. By the mid-1800s, the notion of the unconscious was extremely popular, and Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious — consisting of (how many?) volumes over 1,000 pages — went through 12 editions. He was influenced by the writings of Schopenhauer, who in turn influenced Nietzsche. Schopenhauer also influenced Theodor Meynert, one of Freud’s mentors. Hartmann’s book influenced Henry Maudsley (mid-19th century), the father of British psychology. As it turned out, notions of the unconscious were so popular at this time that Altschule, historian of psychology, said something to the effect that it was difficult to find a psychologist who didn’t appreciate its importance. As the unconscious movement peaked, however, along came psychological behaviorism — supposedly founded by Watson.
Bear with me: although the notion of the unconscious was overcome by positivistic behaviorism, there has been a recent revival. From Watson and Skinner sprouted a new kind of thinking based on stimulus-response. Notions of the unconscious or consciousness were deemed unworthy of scientific study. Work in psychoanalytical theory continued, of course, but it didn’t focus so much on Freud’s notion of the “id” as on his notion of the “ego,” especially the part that formed representations from external reality. There was also the Gestalt movement in the writings and work of McDougall, who said — to the displeasure of Skinner — that human behavior had a purpose and that it wasn’t merely a response to a stimulus; and Woodsworth, whose works on the limits of attention gave rise to cognitive studies on such things as mental imagery and short-term memory — in other words, on consciousness (or at least parts of it).
Also within cognitive psychology, there was the influence of behaviorism — such as in “computational functionalism,” which studied human cognition in terms of stimulus and response but, unlike behaviorism, was interested in information. This wasn’t much different from describing humans as computers. This led away from notions of the conscious and unconscious. Behaviorism was making headway, it seems, indirectly influencing cognitive studies — until it was stopped (or nearly so) by Noam Chomsky, a linguist who emphasized that language was the result of deep inner grammatical structures outside of conscious awareness. Philosopher Jerry Fodor also claimed that all mental processes were mediated by mental structures (structuralism was another trend from the early 20th century in linguistics and later in the social sciences).
The current emphasis in psychology on the unconscious arose from several different strains of research. One area involved neuropsychological studies of brain-injured patients — for example, patients suffering from amnesia who were influenced by past events they claimed not to remember, and “blind spot” patients who could be made to recall details of objects they insisted they could not consciously see. There were other investigations as well. Then there were studies in subliminal perception — once heavily criticized and dismissed by behaviorists even as late as the 1950s with Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders. But all that changed in the 1980s with Marcel, who showed that the responses of test subjects could be influenced by information they had perceived outside their conscious awareness. Although his work was criticized, it has since been replicated from multiple sources. There was also work done with post-hypnotic suggestion — differentiating subjects who could easily be hypnotized from those who could not.
There is much other research, too. In fact, modern work is now less about proving the unconscious exists and more about understanding its scope and limits.
If you don’t appreciate all the work done in understanding the unconscious, you won’t appreciate that there is something called “unconscious bias” in employment discrimination. This is no trivial matter, because it was “unconscious bias” that caused Wal-Mart to lose one of the largest class-action suits ever (in San Francisco, if I recall correctly). And if you don’t appreciate the research done on the “unconscious,” especially in the area of marketing studies, you might not realize that you’re continuously being manipulated by advertising. Industries of every kind have been spending billions — literally — just to manipulate you via your unconscious. (This is another avenue of research that can be traced directly to Freud and his followers around the 1920s and ’30s.)
Ah, so I can’t be absolutely free unless I’ve also had a mild case of amnesia! Fair enough — though I suspect even without memories, my past would still tag along like an overfriendly dog I can’t un-adopt.
I like your take on compatibilism — that our freedom grows with self-awareness. I’d say free will isn’t a switch you flip on once you understand yourself; it’s more like learning jazz improvisation. You start with a theme (your past), then learn the rules (your culture), and eventually, you bend those notes into something that sounds like you.
Sure, we’re shaped by history — neurons, nurture, and whatever our ancestors put in the gene pool — but within that shape, there’s wiggle room. Maybe “free will” doesn’t mean doing anything we want; maybe it means realizing why we want it, and occasionally having the nerve to disagree with our programming.
So yes — I’ll happily take the compatibilist middle ground. I just reserve the right to disclaim absolute free will if my brain ever makes a really bad decision.
I’ve read everything by him. He suggested the theory of evolution and the subconscious. Freud was accused of stealing from him, which I sure he did, but Freud provided the most BS response ever. He said, “Schopenhauer anticipated what I was going to say.” How ’bout that!
I think Schopenhauer would have suggested something about his ethnicity over that one.
Did you know that Schopenhauer was a big student of eastern and Indian thought?
Free Will:
We don’t have it.
For instance, you can’t will yourself to think like a person raised in China. Today, I’ll think like a Chinaman, is impossible.
That’s because thousands of things go into forming the mind of a person raised in a much different culture with a wildly different language and so forth. You can’t decided to just simulate their minds. You’re trapped in your own mind and its references.
Ann:
If you like philosophy and want to talk to interesting people about whatever please come and see me at:
Iloveopinions.com
It’s not my site and there’s no money in it or anything, it’s just for fun.
Ok, I looked it up and you’re right. About the Upanishads Schopenhauer said, “It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death!” but he also said he was influenced by Kant, who I mentioned, and Plato (Remember Plato’s thoughts on the unconscious or mind: the story about charioteer with 2 horses pulling in different directions?) But, Freud isn’t Schopenhauer and I would agree with you concerning your comment about Freud. Ellenberger said as much in his history of the unconscious, i.e. it preceded Freud. Anyway, if the origins of the study of the unconscious is partially Eastern, then so be it. This doesn’t make its study in the sciences then or today any less meaningful or significant or any less pertinent in our lives.
As I wrote above it would be silly to imagine a “free will” as you might describe it. I think your idea of “free will” is much like your idea of me wanting to think like a “Chinaman,” (but I’m sure you meant to write “Asian”). Like I said, I’m a compatibilist or what Wm. James called a “soft determinist”, but I also feel our ability to will ourselves evolves as we mature.
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Ah, excuse me, but “seven seconds” is not quite the same, it seems to me, “as long before you knew about it”. In the realm of other than specially decision-making, it seems humans are more complicated and this may relate to the decision making process itself. We all have a subconscious or unconscious mind that is working all the time. We continously see, for example, far more than we are acutely aware of. Many of our thoughts or thought-like processes occur outside the realm of our awareness. And, undoubtedly they precede our conscious thoughts. Perhaps it is something similar to this that these scientists tapped into. I would say we do have a “free-will” but greatly influenced by our personal history and environment, as well as our society, culture, …..
The “subconscious mind” is no longer a valid concept in psychology. It’s a long explanation, but what has replaced it is the “pre-conscious.”
That means that we all have loose ideas which suddenly focus into one main idea. You might get many signs that you’re going to be fired, and then suddenly figure it out, and it will seem like you knew it all along.
Also, freewill isn’t considered a valid concept in psychology either. Rather, it’s more like a religious and legal concept which serves to lay blame on people who violate rules.
“No longer a valid concept” – rather extreme? Psychological dogma?
Perhaps, as you say, it is “no longer a valid concept in [American] psychology,” but it or similar concepts (the unconscious or “preconscious”) are acceptable and used in psychiatry. I have no problem with your second paragraph; it works well for me.
As for “free will,” may I call your attention, as one small example, to “Neglected Psychological Elements of Free Will” by B. Heller in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology — Volume 11, Number 2, June 2004, pp. 111–118. The first sentence of his abstract says: “Two essential elements of free will — internal locus of control and confident self-efficacy — have been studied extensively by psychologists but neglected by philosophers.” By the way, the same journal devotes an entire issue to the “unconscious” (March 2005).
Whatever I feel, when a doctor attempts to communicate with her patients, she must do so using the same language and concepts her patients are most familiar with.
Many people I’ve talked to about this have been bothered by it. I’m still trying to get my head around it.
How can free will exist if we decide seven seconds before we know we decided?
That makes conscious choice an illusion, and consciousness an epiphenomena. In other words, our conscious awareness doesn’t do anything, it just is the output, the end result of our brain doing things.
Our belief that we exist and are in control of ourselves are both illusions. I find that comforting in a strange way. Sit back and enjoy the ride, right?
Ann,
The idea of the subconscious comes from an intellectual trend in the late 1800s. That trend focused on looking at India as being a greater source of cultural knowledge than the mideast, as intellectuals were rejecting Bible based knowledge, and finding that Europe has more in common with India.
Freud was interested in this stuff too, and modeled his stages of development after India Chakras. The subconscious idea and Jung’s Collective Unconscious concept both share something with the Eastern reincarnation belief. The idea is that somehow are born with knowledge and knowledge based mechanisms in their brains. Also, the subconscious assumes that has complete knowledge of situations, although there’s no evidence that the person could have known the details.
All of this is mysticism. It has become part of the public vocabulary because of movies/TV and a lack of understanding.
Free Will:
Example: The first time I bought car insurance online I thought the transaction was done. I didn’t know that they were sending me something to sign to seal the deal.
They sent it, and I thought it was junk mail. A few weeks later the state contacted me looking to revoke my plates.
I was shocked and contacted the state. They said that I had no insurance and if I was operating the car, I was doing so illegally. If so, I had to turn myself in and receive a penalty. The guy on the phone encouraged me to deny using the car and sign a document saying so, he did this after I told him of my mistake.
The story illustrates the fact the state assumes Free Will so that it can punish people. It says “you Should have known” and that’s it. The word “should” is an irrational word as it implies a state which didn’t and can’t exist.
The mind is like that of a computer, what has been programmed in it determines who it operates.
Journal Article:
Such studies are part of academic business and aren’t worth much. With that said I have no idea how “free will” is being used in a locus of control study. The very concept of external locus of control assumes that a person is conditioned to have it. If free will existed, then we couldn’t be conditioned to anything.
Xeno, if you believe your will is absolutely free, then it seems you also believe you have no past — no events that may motivate, induce, persuade, influence, or sometimes even coerce your next move either directly or indirectly, however subtly, at any particular point in time. It’s kind’a silly thought, isn’t it? But you can also believe that you are influenced by your past and still have free will at the same time — this is called compatibilism in philosophy. Although there are different thoughts on compatibilism, I feel that our “free will” develops over time through increasing self-reflection and understanding of our relationship with our personal, social, cultural, and physical world. Don’t we become more knowledgeable of our environment as we grow? An infant, whose biological needs aren’t met, cries — almost machine-like, stimulus-response-like — but an older child may decide to refrain from crying and wait, knowing his needs and that they will eventually be met. Or he may actually do something to satisfy a need. Gaining greater awareness of himself and his environment, he also gains greater control in the sense that he can express a free will. But this growing awareness — this quest to know ourselves and our social, cultural environment — doesn’t necessarily need to stop in childhood, and I don’t think it does for most healthy people, at least to some extent. But then, of course, we can decide to do nothing and kick back and enjoy the ride also.
Interesting, TheAlderian — the connection you find between Freud and Hinduism. Have you read The Wayward Mind by Claxton, Hidden Minds by Tallis, or, best of all, The Discovery of the Unconscious by Ellenberger? Notions of the unconscious can be found in the writings of Leibniz in the early 1700s, Kant in the late 1700s (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View), and, if you look hard enough, you’ll find that even Ptolemy wrote on the topic. The word “subliminal” arose from limen, perhaps coined (or at least used) by Herbart in the 19th century. Also, in the 19th century, von Helmholtz (spelling?) wrote about “unconscious conclusion” in his study of perception, which he described as a result of unconscious syllogistic-type thinking. This notion — that even our perceptions are the result of unconscious processes — is central to constructivist thinking. By the mid-1800s, the notion of the unconscious was extremely popular, and Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious — consisting of (how many?) volumes over 1,000 pages — went through 12 editions. He was influenced by the writings of Schopenhauer, who in turn influenced Nietzsche. Schopenhauer also influenced Theodor Meynert, one of Freud’s mentors. Hartmann’s book influenced Henry Maudsley (mid-19th century), the father of British psychology. As it turned out, notions of the unconscious were so popular at this time that Altschule, historian of psychology, said something to the effect that it was difficult to find a psychologist who didn’t appreciate its importance. As the unconscious movement peaked, however, along came psychological behaviorism — supposedly founded by Watson.
Bear with me: although the notion of the unconscious was overcome by positivistic behaviorism, there has been a recent revival. From Watson and Skinner sprouted a new kind of thinking based on stimulus-response. Notions of the unconscious or consciousness were deemed unworthy of scientific study. Work in psychoanalytical theory continued, of course, but it didn’t focus so much on Freud’s notion of the “id” as on his notion of the “ego,” especially the part that formed representations from external reality. There was also the Gestalt movement in the writings and work of McDougall, who said — to the displeasure of Skinner — that human behavior had a purpose and that it wasn’t merely a response to a stimulus; and Woodsworth, whose works on the limits of attention gave rise to cognitive studies on such things as mental imagery and short-term memory — in other words, on consciousness (or at least parts of it).
Also within cognitive psychology, there was the influence of behaviorism — such as in “computational functionalism,” which studied human cognition in terms of stimulus and response but, unlike behaviorism, was interested in information. This wasn’t much different from describing humans as computers. This led away from notions of the conscious and unconscious. Behaviorism was making headway, it seems, indirectly influencing cognitive studies — until it was stopped (or nearly so) by Noam Chomsky, a linguist who emphasized that language was the result of deep inner grammatical structures outside of conscious awareness. Philosopher Jerry Fodor also claimed that all mental processes were mediated by mental structures (structuralism was another trend from the early 20th century in linguistics and later in the social sciences).
The current emphasis in psychology on the unconscious arose from several different strains of research. One area involved neuropsychological studies of brain-injured patients — for example, patients suffering from amnesia who were influenced by past events they claimed not to remember, and “blind spot” patients who could be made to recall details of objects they insisted they could not consciously see. There were other investigations as well. Then there were studies in subliminal perception — once heavily criticized and dismissed by behaviorists even as late as the 1950s with Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders. But all that changed in the 1980s with Marcel, who showed that the responses of test subjects could be influenced by information they had perceived outside their conscious awareness. Although his work was criticized, it has since been replicated from multiple sources. There was also work done with post-hypnotic suggestion — differentiating subjects who could easily be hypnotized from those who could not.
There is much other research, too. In fact, modern work is now less about proving the unconscious exists and more about understanding its scope and limits.
If you don’t appreciate all the work done in understanding the unconscious, you won’t appreciate that there is something called “unconscious bias” in employment discrimination. This is no trivial matter, because it was “unconscious bias” that caused Wal-Mart to lose one of the largest class-action suits ever (in San Francisco, if I recall correctly). And if you don’t appreciate the research done on the “unconscious,” especially in the area of marketing studies, you might not realize that you’re continuously being manipulated by advertising. Industries of every kind have been spending billions — literally — just to manipulate you via your unconscious. (This is another avenue of research that can be traced directly to Freud and his followers around the 1920s and ’30s.)
Ah, so I can’t be absolutely free unless I’ve also had a mild case of amnesia! Fair enough — though I suspect even without memories, my past would still tag along like an overfriendly dog I can’t un-adopt.
I like your take on compatibilism — that our freedom grows with self-awareness. I’d say free will isn’t a switch you flip on once you understand yourself; it’s more like learning jazz improvisation. You start with a theme (your past), then learn the rules (your culture), and eventually, you bend those notes into something that sounds like you.
Sure, we’re shaped by history — neurons, nurture, and whatever our ancestors put in the gene pool — but within that shape, there’s wiggle room. Maybe “free will” doesn’t mean doing anything we want; maybe it means realizing why we want it, and occasionally having the nerve to disagree with our programming.
So yes — I’ll happily take the compatibilist middle ground. I just reserve the right to disclaim absolute free will if my brain ever makes a really bad decision.
Schopenhauer:
I’ve read everything by him. He suggested the theory of evolution and the subconscious. Freud was accused of stealing from him, which I sure he did, but Freud provided the most BS response ever. He said, “Schopenhauer anticipated what I was going to say.” How ’bout that!
I think Schopenhauer would have suggested something about his ethnicity over that one.
Did you know that Schopenhauer was a big student of eastern and Indian thought?
Free Will:
We don’t have it.
For instance, you can’t will yourself to think like a person raised in China. Today, I’ll think like a Chinaman, is impossible.
That’s because thousands of things go into forming the mind of a person raised in a much different culture with a wildly different language and so forth. You can’t decided to just simulate their minds. You’re trapped in your own mind and its references.
Ann:
If you like philosophy and want to talk to interesting people about whatever please come and see me at:
Iloveopinions.com
It’s not my site and there’s no money in it or anything, it’s just for fun.
Ok, I looked it up and you’re right. About the Upanishads Schopenhauer said, “It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death!” but he also said he was influenced by Kant, who I mentioned, and Plato (Remember Plato’s thoughts on the unconscious or mind: the story about charioteer with 2 horses pulling in different directions?) But, Freud isn’t Schopenhauer and I would agree with you concerning your comment about Freud. Ellenberger said as much in his history of the unconscious, i.e. it preceded Freud. Anyway, if the origins of the study of the unconscious is partially Eastern, then so be it. This doesn’t make its study in the sciences then or today any less meaningful or significant or any less pertinent in our lives.
As I wrote above it would be silly to imagine a “free will” as you might describe it. I think your idea of “free will” is much like your idea of me wanting to think like a “Chinaman,” (but I’m sure you meant to write “Asian”). Like I said, I’m a compatibilist or what Wm. James called a “soft determinist”, but I also feel our ability to will ourselves evolves as we mature.
About going to the site … perhaps.
If would be fun to see you there Ann.
Conversation can be therapeutic.