I watched the video. A brilliant YouTube film. Thanks for sharing it.
See: https://youtu.be/2_BTVN68-ZA
Someone brilliant, maybe Einstein, said that you cannot solve a problem using the same methods that were employed to create the problem. The implication being that we need a new POV in order to resolve the problem. This question of Free Will is a lot like that.
We are the ones who’ve created the conceptual divisions between Body and Mind and between Conscious and Unconscious. And we’ve created them because our minds and our reasoning are simple. We cannot see existence moving interconnected and seamlessly all at once.
But in truth, we human beings are not functionally divided into the divisions we’ve artificially created. We are evolved biological beings. Functionally, we are one thing. My foot is as much a part of me as my memories of childhood or my next desire for an ice-cream.
The self-aware part of us is the observer of our experiences most of the time. This is just as the narrator in the video said.
It is an illusion that our self-awareness (the ‘observer’) suffers that it is is the decider in most cases.
But I stress that while we are just deluded observers most of the time, this is not the case all the time. Sometimes the self-aware part of us does get to be the decider.
Think of yourself as a vertical assembly of parts. Think that this assembly came together over vast periods of time through the processes of biological evolution.
When decisions that concern your biological self need to be made, they are dealt with by the appropriate level of your assembly.
If you suffer a burn, the signal goes directly to your spinal cord. And the spinal cord send bacl signals directing the muscles in the affected area to MOVE now to end the problem. None of this involves the brain. It becomes aware of the event after-the-fact. But, it has the illusion that it played a part.
If you become hungry, motivations to end the problem begin to arise. And the biological unit you are, as as whole, takes action to quell the hunger. Again, the self-aware part of you observes all this, suffers the illusion that is was the ‘decider’ and then it takes credit for the decision to eat.
But sometimes, things collide and in order to resolve what to do, information has to be passed up to a higher level.
You want to go and see your mother. But your car is not working. You can take the bus but now you have to find and read the bus schedule to see if the bus departure times will work for you. And then there’s the issue of buying a fare – do you have enough money?
These decisions are not going to get automatically made by any of the layers of your assembly lower than your self-aware self. These sorts of problems have to be pushed up the stack to the level of your biological being that is best prepared to deal with them.
Your self-aware mind can reason about them, it can imagine and hypothesize about them and it can call up memories relevant to them. All of this will take place in your self-awareness; as will your decision about what to do. The decision will usually arise from an abstract consideration of the facts.
Of course, such decisions do not take place in a state of pure isolation. Your emotional desire to see your mother is speaking there. Your tiredness when you consider the duration of the journey is speaking there. Your calculations about how much money you have are also speaking there.
And sometimes, the emotions will weigh in so heavy that they drive the decision. And sometimes the tiredness is so profound that it becomes the controlling factor. But also, sometimes, it is just the mental juggling of the various pieces within your self-awareness that leads you to a rational, considered decision.
In the video, he talked about how reading a book can affect us and thus it can change the future decisions we make. So, was that an act of Free Will?
I’d say that this is ‘either-or’ reasoning again. It is not one or the other. It is an all seamless interplay – we affect existence and existence affects us.
The biological brain evolved in animals so they could better track what’s happening outside of them. So that they could process the incoming information and then make decisions that benefit our own specific survival.
As evolution has moved along and animals have gotten ever more complex, because of survival of the fitness pressures, so animal brains have gotten smarter. And this wasn’t just random. It was driven by maximizing the survival potential of the animals involved.
Self-awareness developed because it provided survival capabilities that didn’t exist before.
It is not coincidence that we human beings have utterly taken over the planet. This newest evolved capability of ours for self-awareness is the most powerful adaptation nature has ever come up with.
But our self-awareness is a very problematic thing as well.
It suffers under the illusion that it is the sole decider (Free-Will). And it is like putting a Magnum 44 in the hands of a toddler. All the evidence gathering all around us is that we are not using our self-awareness very well at all.