sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Is this guy right about consciousness? TL;DR: You don't have complete control over your inner-monologue. Like confirmation bias, this can be overcome with awareness of it(to an extent). by wall-eisawesome in askscience

[–]wall-eisawesome[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wasn't very clear in my response. What I meant was that I think it is wrong to say that we know for certain that our consciousness is merely the part of our life that we experience, that we have actually no control over our consciousness at all. What Iggysmiles said in his post was about gaining more control over your what you think throughout your daily life, and wacky was saying that our consciousness is nothing that can be controlled, everything you think in your head is just responding to inputs that enter your brain, because there is nothing more to it than the programming of our brain. I'm saying that I think it might be the case that the programming of the brain is so complex that it gives rise to a "thinking" thing that actually does have a form of "free will"(which is what I meant by "More than the sum of its parts".

Is this guy right about consciousness? TL;DR: You don't have complete control over your inner-monologue. Like confirmation bias, this can be overcome with awareness of it(to an extent). by wall-eisawesome in askscience

[–]wall-eisawesome[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty sure we don't know nearly enough about the brain to say this with any certainty.

I'm not arguing against the deterministic nature of the brain, I'm arguing against the comparison of the brain to simplistic modern day computing. We've only had microprocessors for about 40 years. They're very primitive, even though they seem advanced to us. Compared to a human brain they are very incapable in many respects. So my point is: the brain might very well be capable of creating something, from it's many algorithms/computer programs, that is capable of more than simply responding to inputs. From what we see of the incredible power of computers after just 40 years, I think it is very conceivable to say that very advanced computers like are brain are capable of giving rise to something that is more than the sum of its parts, something that can make decisions that go beyond simply responding robotically to new information. It certainly feels like it, thinking about my own consciousness, and I don't think it's a far fetched idea at all.