Monday, January 28, 2008

Herpes Outbreak For A Month

The non- too free will

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Decide now ask whether you want to read this text!
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Decided? And if so - of free will? want to think



who have their own thoughts and decide on their own decisions come quickly into trouble. So the old question of "free will" of the people is much debated, but until now not been solved last authentic. The free will of the people were ready when it came despite the supposed goodness of the alleged God to explain the atrocities in the world, he was also regarded as an essential difference between the "divinely inspired" people and "stupid", instinct-driven animals . The latest findings in brain research shed some more light on the debate and may the hassle out of merely theoretical and abstract discussions of the last centuries, a little place on the earth.

to do something is the most natural thing in the world. (There is a fun to do a macabre way disease , really because of the people nothing more - and they do not interfere). However, there is first the surprising finding that our "will" is far less active than we think. Too many processes are automated, caused in part by quirky little things. Thus, John Bargh shown by the Yale University in an experiment that students who when age-related words like "wrinkles, gray, tired, sick," read, after it went slower than a comparison group. They set out to just read the attributes appropriated, without whose will also be aware in the slightest. People looked to by a poster (!) A pair of eyes, behaved unconsciously honest than usual, it was found in another attempt . Almost Charlie Chaplin-worthy the experiment , in man, during a cartoon show a pencil held horizontally with the mouth (ie like a smiley) the cartoon were funnier than those in which it like a lollipop forward stood out. People who put themselves into a professor in had performed better at Trivial Pursuit off than those who have a football hooligan hatten.Wir front of ourselves that is already in general much less under control than we think.

But when the man comes time to decide to be aware of, and the decision is "free" should be, this assumes, first, that it is subject to the decision not perceived by him constraints - are in it, everyone agrees. If he wants, he can lift the right finger - or the left. Commit a crime - or remain law abiding. Is that enough already for the adoption of free will? Or rather, the decision free from any restrictions yes causes, arise from a kind of autonomous, independent Black Box? Probably not - because the universe is subject to causal processes. A decision as an electrochemical process in the human brain must be strict causal criteria also. A 'decision' in which leaves the brain power "free will" the laws of physics and non-causal and therefore, as it randomly chooses, would be anything as my own. It would be a non-decision, one springing from the vacuum process, which I would watch in amazement. A decision is only "free" if it is through me (through my recent experiences, traits, current mood, etc.) reasons. Condition of freedom, so understood (or rather self-determination) is thus ironically determination.

interested Wen neurophysiology, dare a look at the circus in our skull. Firstly, there were the experiments of Benjamin Libet, who in the early eighties has shown that precede any conscious impulse Will unconscious brain activities in the tenth-second range. Awareness therefore not really take the decisions, but is the prior decisions only "informed" and formed into place, it would have even decided. Its not enough: 10 years later, Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues clearly demonstrates that one can make people willing puppets. They generated magnetic fields in the area of the brain responsible for movement of the left or right side. Then they asked the subjects who knew nothing of all this, move the right or left finger, as they want to. Depending on the stimulation of moving subjects corresponding exactly to the magnetically treated brain finger. However, this worked only when - surprise, surprise - the stimulation of the decision was preceded by exactly the Libet measured by tenths of a second range. The subjects were, however - even after they have been informed of the magnetic fields - which adamantly convinced themselves and decided to have "free". Stimulation of various brain areas resulted in one subject in a further attempt to marry the experimenter "voluntarily" to do. Also in other experiments people were manipulated, without that they felt manipulated.

Eckart von Hirsch Hausen aptly put it - the awareness is not the government, rather it is the government spokesman, dress of the decisions already taken in beautiful words and must be represented to the outside. This also makes sense from the evolutionary point of view: an awareness that the unconscious is completely under control, no right to exist. Because the area of the brain responsible for consciousness (cerebral cortex or cortex), is to hundreds of millions of years later emerged as the primary, unconscious instinct-driven "reptilian brain". That the "newbie" like control of the whole "store" would assume - as in real life - not very likely.

And now? So we are all robots, dolls and bio-mechanisms? To some degree already. Our decisions are determined - even if we insane because of the complexity of the human brain can predict with certainty can never be. This makes But nothing - we have a will, we subjectively - would be free call - quite rightly. Allowing a person make a decision and then you rewind the clock back 100 times, there are good reasons to believe that he is 100 times choose exactly the same - in full awareness, to act freely. That's confusing, but still compatible with one another contradiction between the first and the third-person perspective. "While we can have to do what we want, but we can only do we want to necessarily because of our experience": to the great Schopenhauer easy to modify.

(See here on the effects of the missing Anders-action-ability of the criminal law)

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

How To Dry Italian Soppersata

of axes, ships and souls

"This is my grandfather's ax," Americans care to tell sometimes. "Her head was indeed replaced three times and its handle four times, but it's still the same good old ax of my grandfather." This tongue in cheek sentiment is a good introduction to the problem of identity. What do we mean when we say "the same"? And what you have to change so that "the same" is merely "the same"? An older, slightly more civilized version of the question is, among many other metaphors the so-called ship of Theseus been disclosed in a Work of Thomas Hobbes, but probably already thought of Plutarch. Suppose there is a ship sails from port A. While it is sailing, rotting planks, and eventually all, of which it consists. However, they are then immediately replaced by new ones. When the ship arrives in port B, there is a ship not a single "original plank", since all have now been replaced by new ones. - Is it still the "same boat"? If they had built from new components right at the beginning of a second ship, we would certainly say - no, it was not the same boat, only an identical. But if the planks are built gradually in the old ship, as in our example, then most tend to say, the incoming ship in port B is the same. Why? - It has the same identity, same story.

tell Why all this? - Because it fits well on us people. "I" is one of the most used words in our language, but what we really mean by that? We all are ships of Theseus, which sail through the ocean of life. Although this statement seems to come from a penny dreadful, they are absolutely right for a closer look. Because what makes our identity? What led us to predict, we are "the same person as last year? Our body? - Not determined. For as the ship of Theseus, our "building material" changed regularly - old cells die, resulting in new their body looks the same and perform exactly the same function - as the boards of the ship. Our body - and that's the good news for people who do not want to age - is never older than 7 - 10 years . Only a few nerve cells in the brain are always the old one. Statistically, however, they are negligible. And even in this "change resistant" cells are the building blocks - organic molecules - replaced again and again. A constant physicality would chase us so vain - that does not exist. Someone once used the image of a dune, the wind drives away in the desert sand - the form remains, but the sand grains are always others.

So if our body is, the basis of our uniqueness, what then? You'd think it would be the memories, the entire wealth of life experience we have accumulated, the path traveled by us, as the ship of Theseus. Or our character traits that make up our personality? Both are not convinced. Our memories of the past disappear, the more we will get around to our way of life. On special experiences we can remember more, but the rest we forget. Only the current events are still halfway present. Or you can still remember what you made before 8, 18, 28 years, so what was important to you, what you has hung around? - Than in very broad strokes. Even our character changes. Now feel and behave most of us, but significantly different than at puberty. What remains? What ever the word "I" when neither the body nor the mind remains the same? Perhaps this - perhaps unconscious - longing for constants in an ever-changing self-image and self-understanding what has led our ancestors to believe that there is some mysterious "soul", which always remains the same, in spite of all external and internal changes are .

The adoption of a "soul" but answered nothing but - as well as the concept of a God - a joker card without proper meaning. We are now again - and at this thought it is a bit fishy to me - just not constant, not identical but somewhat diffuse, constantly changing, adaptive and evolving - even most like life.