Patrick Haggard - Free Will: Key to Consciousness?

Why might free will be a key to understanding consciousness? What is it about the problems of free will such that addressing these problems can elucidate the deep structure or underpinnings of the mind? The key is how free will works in a wholly physical, material world? Or perhaps it doesn’t work?

Patrick Haggard is a neuroscientist and current Deputy Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, where he is a professor in the department of Psychology.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[meesalikeu]

he’s wearing the dark red sweater today instead of the johnny cash all black orthodox rig — thats practically cutting loose 🎉

[ianrobbins]

We think of things happening like a chain or a linear series one event after another but that way of conceiving of reality leads us to fruitless ends. Everything happens in parallel at the same time in a network of interactions so complex we can't grasp it. And that's part of the reason why we keep asking these same questions over and over and never finding satisfactory answers.

[fig]

Many of these interviews are like interviews with politicians. We often don't get an answer!!

[kallianpublico]

He should be talking about experiments on learning not just doing or choosing. How people learn, where in the brain that learning is indicated, should be studied. Different types of learning. Motor skills such as pronouncing unfamiliar words, as well as skills of understanding such as recognizing lies or deceit.

[CrowMagnum]

Consciousness is in the feedback paths of control/regulation, and some of those paths are very short giving the impression of a separate Will

[catherinemoore]

Some memories are different from those which help us make up our biography. They are specific and seem to be chosen or selected by fate or destiny in order to remind us that who we are is a process we cannot direct ourselves. Rather, we are witness to the process, like a spectator watching a film.

[DS-vqdm]

It's the other way round. Consciousness gave rise to the illusion of free will. Man likes structure, stability, security and certainity, therefore likes to "control". Free will is his desire to control. It arouse from his fear of unknown.

[angeleverable]

"Genius is memory". Ford Maddox Ford. So is consciousness. Memory is the well, and consciousness is the bucket that hauls the water. Free will is dropping the bucket to alleviate your thirst and that, if necessary, of others. Not everyone can do this; creativity is key. This makes freedom both a necessity and a conclusion of thinking. Creative persons act from memory and not impulses. Genius is the highest sort of memory and freedom.

[chyfields]

The same deck of playing cards can be arranged into any of 8 followed by 67 zero ways. Therefore, all possible sequences are, theoretically, known and possible. However, how each of us chooses to arrange the deck is discoverable.

[achillecasciaro]

I’ld like very much to see a conversation with Federico Faggin

[feltonhamilton]

Every time a decision is made through consciousness and mind the body experiences stress when new cells are replacing old cells every second of a minute this is because of a constant working mechanism that triggers infrared body heat through cell development similar to how a projector reflects light through the film to print or reflect an image, this is the same way new cells are developed before they break away from old cells that are constantly reflecting infrared body heat with little time to heal after departure.
This is the real reason why body temperature is so important.
Your mind depends on every individual cell inside your body every second of a minute and every hour of a day for your survival and awareness.

[dr_shrinker]

Physics is the mire which holograms must trudge. Thoughts are material and like everything that exists, our will is bound by physics.

[peweegangloku]

Physical material stuffs do not have thoughts and feelings. The source of thoughts and feelings, the inner subjectivity, still presents a conundrum. Where does the inner experience come from?

[jamesruscheinski]

an agent having a measure of free will would want to consciously experience its actions (in contrast to causation ) to know what it is doing is a necessary requirement for voluntary or free will action?

[dongshengdi]

Science has determined that we live in a determinist universe. Therefore, everything can be predicted according to all laws of physics.
But we have free will, therefore God exists.
Dennis Prager: Freedom is dependent upon a God who wants us to be Free .
Freedom is dependent on Free Will.
If we have no freedom, then we would behave According to the laws of physics, because of freedom to choose our actions, then our actions are not entirely based on physical laws of the universe.

[johnwoods]

Giving someone a first kiss is definitely a deliberate concious action, but I'm not sure receiving one is, even if it results in an awakening.

[YinYangPanda]

I don’t understand why everyone always argues that “choice” is why free will exists…maybe someone can help explain to me what experience is without choice or if consciousness can exist without choice? If it can’t, then choice is no argument for free will, because we have no choice but to choose.

[raleighwalter]

Why doesn’t the channel look at cases where conscious experience has remained fully during times of clinical death? If there are accounts where temporal events were recalled by a person during clinical death, then consciousness could be considered to reside, to some extent, separately to the brain. Is this not valid?

[jamesruscheinski]

could be that causation (free will?) in back of brain both sends neuronal signal to body for physical action, and backward causes conscious experience to prefrontal cortex in front of brain to have awareness of physical action?

[realitycheck]

Consciousness does involve the past memories.

ACIM
Lesson 289. The past is over.
It can touch me not.

Unless the past is over in my mind, the real world must escape my sight. ²For I am really looking nowhere; seeing but what is not there. ³How can I then perceive the world forgiveness offers? ⁴This the past was made to hide, for this the world that can be looked on only now. ⁶For what can be forgiven but the past, and if it is forgiven it is gone.

Father, let me not look upon a past that is not there. ²For You have offered me Your Own replacement, in a present world the past has left untouched and free of sin. ³Here is the end of guilt. ⁴And here am I made ready for Your final step. ⁵Shall I demand that You wait longer for Your Son to find the loveliness You planned to be the end of all his dreams and all his pain?