Can we ever have control?

[Veritas6]

Hello, what do you make of the claim that: “ALL environmental conditions that lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are ‘outside of the person’, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided”?
Also that “‘wills’ are derived through a causal process that extends outside of any person. No person has a ‘will of their own’”?

“Brain states incrementally get to the state they are in one moment at a time. In each moment of that process the brain is in one state, and the specific environment and biological conditions leads to the very next state.

Depending on that state, this will cause you to behave in a specific way within an environment (decide in a specific way), in which all of those things that are outside of a person constantly bombard your senses changing your very brain state. The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over…

Imagine that 10 years from now your brain will be configured as very different from what it is today. Your environmental and biological conditions lead to someone with many different beliefs, ideas, and the way you decide on things is drastically different. Now imagine that your brain took a leap from one state to the other in an instant. To others around you it would appear you are behaving entirely differently. That you were no longer ‘you’. Something happened to change your brain, and you had no control over that happening. Your ‘programming’ was changed and you had no say over the change! The main difference between than brain state and the one that took ten years to get to is the time and causal process.

The control you had over both is the same. One you just had more of an illusion of control, because each brain state led up to a decision and movement that led to the next, so it seems like a coherent ‘you’ persisted moment from moment. In the other, that ‘you’ seemed to change as your brain state took a leap to a different one.”

How much influence does biology and the environment have on our decisions? The materialist assumption is to assume no control, but is there any problems with that? Thanks for your help.

God Bless

 

[Veritas6]

Do you have any arguments against the idea that our biology and environment directly dictate our actions?

 

[whatistrue]

Do you have any arguments

There are numerous ones that you have seen on many threads but you seem determined to keep starting new ones ad nauseum. So nothing new from here - just keep buying the fiction of the “get out of Hell free” card of “free will doesn’t exist” if that is where you want to go. Note carefully the “you want” part because this is all you.

 

[Veritas6]

So nothing new from here - just keep buying the fiction of the “get out of Hell free” card of “free will doesn’t exist” if that is where you want to go. Note carefully the “you want” part because this is all you.

I apologize, I’ve been confused about the concept of free will for a long time and I’m simply looking for help. I realize no one is forced to help me, but I haven’t gotten complete help on my questions and it’s hurting my faith. My questions remain open and no one wants to help me out.

 

[Aquinas11]

Do you have any arguments against the idea that our biology and environment directly dictate our actions?

How about rape is wrong?

 

[whatistrue]

My questions remain open and no one wants to help me out.

On the contrary, many people have provided many answers over the various threads. You simply seem to be unable to accept them. If it is affecting your faith, and you still have some left, my advice to you would be to stop reading whatever sources are spouting the nonsense that is confusing you. Know deep down that you, me, each of us is a free agent and can make decisions to act or not act. Forget “programming”, forget “biologically determined”, forget all of that and know deep down that you are free to choose your course.

 

[Veritas6]

Know deep down that you, me, each of us is a free agent and can make decisions to act or not act. Forget “programming”, forget “biologically determined”, forget all of that and know deep down that you are free to choose your course.

Thank you. I have been unable to accept some answers here and that’s not fair. I put too much credence in atheistic arguments, and I can’t build my faith from refuting such arguments. I need more trust.

 

[Veritas6]

What do you think of the thought experiment in the OP against a “selfhood” argument? The objector assumes casualty is outside of us, but he doesn’t explain who/what does the causing (God or the Big Bang maybe).

If God produces causality, it wouldn’t follow we aren’t free. We become part of the chain of causality, and for Thomists,

An effect also does not always have to follow necessarily from a cause.

 

[Veritas6]

From this article, identical twins’ genes are not completely identical. So it would support an idea that genetics influence us. However, our souls would be exempt from the laws of nature. It is still bound to laws of logic, and it can be “caused”. Now if we accept Thomist causality, effects do not always lead necessarily from a cause. If we reject causal determinism (”all events… are necessitated by the conjunction of some past state… and the laws of nature”), then hopefully things can make a little more sense.

My voluntary will’s existence is explained by God causing it to be and operate by its own intrinsic principles, and is dependent on God for it to be this way.

How am I doing? Any Aquinas aficionados to offer additional information? I think I’m understanding some things better.

Identical Twins' Genes Are Not Identical | Scientific American

 

[Beryllos]

I apologize, I’ve been confused about the concept of free will for a long time and I’m simply looking for help. I realize no one is forced to help me, but I haven’t gotten complete help on my questions and it’s hurting my faith. My questions remain open and no one wants to help me out.

Okay, I will try.

First of all, I rarely visit atheist or anti-religious forums or websites, and I never join in their discussions or comments. I suggest you likewise avoid them. They bring some truth to the discussion – after all, they too are seeking truth – but they also bring a lot of assumptions, errors, and omissions. In those online communities, the social dynamics seem to strengthen and validate their conclusions, whether true or false.

To be fair, this forum is also susceptible to error, but I think we compensate for it by our greater willingness to consider, examine, and tolerate diverse views and even questionable religious beliefs.

Now to begin to address your questions:

How much influence does biology and the environment have on our decisions?

A lot. In Catholic teaching, a human being is a unity of body and soul. To put it another way we are a unity of material and spirit. The bodily or material aspect cannot be ignored. It’s essential to our humanity.

Our will is heavily influenced by outside factors, and weakened by biological factors including hormones, disease, neurological disorders, brain injury, and intoxication.

I count this as man’s fallen nature. Call it Original Sin if you like. As I see it, we are barely above the animals. Or we are animals, with just a little extra: larger brains, complex social behavior, communication (including music), opposable thumbs, tool-making capabilities. We are above animals in those ways, but we are as low as animals in other ways: We lie, betray, murder, and rape (yes, animals do that too).

At this point, all the adherents to materialism are nodding and following along. This is where I lose them.

(continued below)

 

[Beryllos]

(continuing from above)

The materialist assumption is to assume no control, but is there any problems with that?

Yes, there is a problem. The materialist view, by definition, does not recognize spirit, soul, or God. If the material world were all there is, they would be right about free will, and a lot more. On the other hand, if one admits the possibility of our spiritual nature, then one may see a way to understand control and free will, and a lot more.

If you are thinking, “Wait a second. How can you prove that?”
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
Um… We can’t prove it, at least not in materialistic framework. It requires faith. Can’t get around that. By faith, I don’t mean a belief that comes from human efforts, but rather the grace which God offers as a gift to each of us. Don’t you have faith, even just a little?

How does faith inform our understanding of the material world? I am a scientist, by the way. Through the eyes of faith, I see order, connections, beauty, wisdom, and love. I see the hand of God at every stage from the Big Bang to this day.

It seems to me that God created the material world not just as a setting for our existence, but as a means to bring us into existence. We evolved from animals (sorry for offending someone with that…), and we are animals (…and that), but God so loved us that he bound us to him and gave us a way to encounter him through spirit and through his Son. The Church teaches that, among all the animals, we are uniquely privileged to have that spiritual connection to God.

Getting back to free will/control: It is through that connection with God that we may know of him, hear his call, call out to him, discern his will, receive guidance, make choices, cooperate in his plan, and love him, one another, and ourselves.

Does it work perfectly? Of course not! Our material aspect always seems to mess things up. But faith tells me that maybe, in some way that we do not understand, it is necessary that we are bound to our material aspect. We should love our bodies and our biology and our weakness because it is just as God intended it to be.

 

[Beryllos]

Thanks for sharing.

Any thoughts on the topic?

 

[lelinator]

Any thoughts on the topic?

Of course I have thoughts on the subject. But at the moment I’m not real motivated to share any of them on this forum. So I’ll just go back to being obediently silent.

 

[Veritas6]

What do you make of these studies? I’m currently a neuroscience major and it’s a good subject of study, but I’m not exactly sure what to think about these:

“Neuroscience that tests whether the will or the brain decides first, shows that the brain is what decides first. The brain decides, then we become consciously aware of it, and then we act. Sometimes we act before we are consciously aware of it, or without ever being consciously aware of it, but it’s still caused by the brain. There is no good evidence that the ‘will’ comes before or causes the neuronal firings that stimulate the muscles to take a course of action.”

There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit

• Our main argument is as follows: Libet et al, (1983) had suggested that decisions to inhibit action have an important role in freedom of will, because, he argued, they do not have any obvious unconscious neural precursors. In Libet’s view, this makes decisions to inhibit crucially different from decisions to act, for which, he claimed, there is a clear unconscious precursor. Libet’s dualistic notion of ‘free won’t’ has been criticised on theoretical grounds. However, in our view, a stronger rejection of ‘free won’t’ could come from actually showing that a decision to act or not can be driven by a preceding, presumably unconscious neural activity. Our results identify, for the first time, a candidate unconscious precursor of the decision to inhibit action. These results count as evidence against Libet’s view that the decision to inhibit action may involve a form of uncaused conscious causation.
• The dualistic view that decisions to inhibit reflect a special ‘conscious veto’ or ‘free won’t’ mechanism is scientifically unwarranted.

Predicting free choices for abstract intentions

• Researchers are able to show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 s before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice.
• Previous findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices.
• In the current study, participants were not cued to make decisions at specific points in time but were allowed to make decisions spontaneously. By asking participants to report when they first consciously decided, we could investigate what happened in the brain before the decisions were consciously made. We found that both medial frontopolar cortex and posterior cingulate/precuneus started to encode the specific outcome of the abstract decisions even before they entered conscious awareness. Our results suggest that, in addition to the representation of conscious abstract decisions, the medial frontopolar cortex was also involved in the unconscious preparation of abstract decisions.“

 

[Beryllos]

I haven’t read those articles yet, but I am aware of other research at the limits of the speed of conscious awareness. For example, parts of your brain recognize sounds and may act on them a fraction of a second before you are consciously aware of the sound.

I have actually noticed this in myself when I tried an experiment to test my reaction time. I would wait for a sound and then move a lever as soon as I heard the sound. I often felt the impulse to move just before I “heard” the sound, but of course the tests showed that I always moved after the actual sound. It’s like my brain heard and decided prior to my conscious perception and intention.

I have no problem admitting that the brain is a fantastically complex information processor made of meat. And what can we expect? All that complex processing, at the speed of meat, takes a few tenths of a second. Different parts of the brain work at diffferent speeds, so things are not strictly synchronized.

Does that shake my faith? No. It’s amazing that it (the brain, the mind, consciousness, awareness) works at all. And you may recall from my previous post that I am not a strict materialist. We are more than meat. We have also a connection to our creator, which you may think of as spirit, soul, or relationship. Give thanks and praise to God!

 

[Beryllos]

I’m currently a neuroscience major and it’s a good subject of study

It certainly is. You will probably meet a few neuroscientists who try to tell you that religion is incompatible with science. Don’t let them get you down. If the science is properly done, believe it, but don’t overextend it.

Here is a useful passage from the Catechism:

159 Faith and science : “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”

 

[TK421]

Biology and environment determine who and what we are in any observable way.

The will is supernatural and is believed without seeing, similar to the Eucharist, angels, Heaven, etc.

 

[Veritas6]

What do you make of this argument about the soul? Something like would the soul be damaged with brain damage?:

“Aquinas concluded that the body-less soul would have only those powers that were not dependent upon bodily organs: faculties such as reason and understanding.

But now we can see that these faculties are just as dependent upon a bodily organ—the brain—as sight is upon the eyes… what we observe [in brain death] is that the destruction of certain parts of the brain can destroy those cognitive faculties once thought to belong to the soul.

[Some] argue… that the soul needs a functioning body in this world, but not in the next. One view is that the soul is like a broadcaster and the body like a receiver—something akin to a television station and a TV set.

We know that if we damage our TV set, we get a distorted picture. And if we break the set, we get no picture at all. The naive observer would believe the program was therefore gone. But we know that it is really still being transmitted; that the real broadcaster is actually elsewhere. Similarly, the soul could still be sending its signal even though the body is no longer able to receive it.

This response sounds seductive, but helps little. First, it does not really address the main argument at all: Most believers expect their soul to be able to carry forward their mental life with or without the body; this is like saying that the TV signal sometimes needs a TV set to transform it into the picture, but once the set is kaput, can make the picture all by itself. But if it can make the picture all by itself, why does it sometimes act through an unreliable set?

Second, changes to our bodies impact on our minds in ways not at all analogous to how damage to a TV set changes its output, even if we take into account damage to the camera too. The TV analogy claims there is something that remains untouched by such damage, some independent broadcaster preserving the real program even if it is distorted by bad reception. But this is precisely what the evidence of neuroscience undermines. Whereas damage to the TV set or camera might make the signal distorted or fuzzy, damage to our brains much more profoundly alters our minds. As we noted above, such damage can even change our moral views, emotional attachments, and the way we reason.”

 

[Veritas6]

What do you make of the above argument? Would brain damage affect the soul? If so, how so?

 

[Kullervo]

I struggled with it to. I

Even if I were a naturalist, I wouldn’t believe in a deterministic universe because of quantum physics. I would believe that the whole world is just a mess of determinism with the probabilities of quantum physics.

I don’t think it’s necessary to believe in free will if you are a Catholic , I think I read that even St. Augustin was a determinist (correct me if I’m wrong).

I believe in free will because it’s a great, intuitive and elegant answer to the problem of evil, but most importantly: it’s bloody obvious. I experience free will every single moment of my conscious life. For me it’s absolutely self evident and I don’t find the evidence against it convincing. Yes, our bodies are just very beautiful and complex machines, but we are not just our bodies. We have a soul and thus we have free will!