well, i guess i just look crazy then. It's not like there is any number of chemicals both inside the brain and from external sources that can give someone a sense of out of body experience.... oh wait, yes there is.

You are joking, arent't you ?
Only scientific advances ?
Do you know that in the 19th century, 11 years old kids have been condemmed to death by British court of theft ?

what i was trying to says is that you and only you can know what is right, everyone else just has their own version of right, all valid for their own individual experience.
So you are not wrong unless you think you are.

That makes a whole lot of sense, actually. So this logical "flaw" is pre-programmed, because every "flawless" thinker eradicated themself from the gene pool.

Hard to believe but true
I read a book by E .Kandle, nobel price for medicine "In search of memory "
It seems that human beings take decisions a fraction of time before that they become aware of what they have decided themselves
If so free will is just a mere invention

Your CPU also calculated 1+2=2 before the Desktop can display it.
This does not mean the calculation was not intended.

Awareness on ones own thoughts has a natural delay in a time.delayed calculation network.
If you get aware you decided something wrong, you can still check
and correct it, before doing an action.
Thats why complex thoughts get iterated first in the head many times,
before a conclusion is taken.
Otherwise its a reflex. (like taking a leg up when walking)
You can let it run, or manually correct it. (dogshit)

The time delay doe NOT mean there is no free will. It just
means that concludions, or responses can be valued to
be analysed, changed or just intuitively and immideately chosen.
If every though would be "handcrafted" and constructed from logical rules,
our thinking would be much too slow. The brain needs to automise
responses. But these responses can be trained and altered.

Look at the following example:
Girlfriend asks "Should I wear these clothes tonight, how do i look?"
It requires a either an intuitive answer (likely wrong) or complex iteration of answers (likely wrong too).

tell that to the people who thought they could fly off of a building on acid... oh wait, reality hit them to hard and they died.

Truth is not democratic, its not made up in your head. truth is truth.


Edit:



true, but if we are strictly talking consciousness and the role it plays on action/decision making then that means that decision was not made consciously, the inner workings of our brain created that output, and then consciously we feel like we just decided it.

Look at memories.
They spring up on triggers.
Either intentional (trying to remember an event) or unintentional
(a familiar smell)

Retreiving long term memory is not a conscious action. But
asking your memory to "look for it" is a conscious action.

You give the memory system a trigger (like a face or name or situation), and await a response.
If it does not fit, you alter the trigger and await for a different response.

At least this is how I see how the memory works.

Not the memory can be a "decision", But the decision to use this decision can
be evaluated, and changed.
Or split up into smaller decisions which are evaluated in more detail.
Or in the long run retrained / intentionally learned.

I dont see this as unconcious decision making.
More of a decision how much effort one wants to spend on doing so.
How much you want to reflect on your "reflexive" thoughts.

See the way i look at this, and this area of science is new and I am by no means an expert on this topic, but even the decision to "look for it" might feel conscious, but it is really just your brain responding to whatever input asked for it. non-consciously. in this case the "looking for it" covers up the fact that it is still triggered by an outside source and your brain still decides whether its worth looking for or not.

Yes and no
Honestly I dont remember the details of the test
I read the book 5 years ago
In principle
Scientists asked some people to take a simple decision such as to push a button
"Do it when you want"
As you know some area of the brain are mapped
Nobody knows where coscience is but for sure we know which area of the brain must be activated to move a finger
The results where amazing
all subjects first activated the "finger" area and only a fraction of time after other parts of the brain have been activated

When I was a school I asked my religion teacher this question
If someone was born with killing instincts why should he be punished
He said that the killing instinct come from the body but our soul can stop them
God takes it into account
More or less your explanation which , btw, never convinced me

A better explanation, may be, in my opinion the following, even though Mr Kendal do not mention it
The subjects take a decision to push the button with some time delay then they activate a sort of internal clock
The clock automatically trig the event