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Quote from: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 21:17:30Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brainEven by 2007 (prompted by specific volitional deficits due to brain impairments), sufficient specific studies of volition had been done to demonstrate that the sense of volition, free-will, and agency are (to many people's surprise) retrospective and post-hoc introspective. For example: Volitional Control of Movement: The Physiology of Free Will. Since then decision pathways have been traced at a neuronal level, and the origins of decision have also been extensively modeled, for example, Neuronal correlates of decisions to speak and act, or Selection and inhibition mechanisms for human voluntary action decisions to pick a couple of relevant papers at random.These discoveries and ideas are no longer controversial in neurophysiology. As already mentioned, the empirical evidence that brain activity alone generates these behaviours and that the sense of agency, volition, self, etc., is not what it subjectively seems, is overwhelming. Regardless of the number of incredulous articles and papers you post, the evidence speaks for itself (a little ironic joke there). There are still gaps in our knowledge, but no space for magical immaterial volitional agencies. There's no need or place for any such influence - to paraphrase Laplace, 'We have no need of that hypothesis'.
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain
Answering the chicken-and -egg question : question of what's causing what ? : Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition , or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? : Evidence I :"...Selectively focusing attention on target images significantly enhances neuronal responses to them. This is especially true when nearby stimuli, if not for the power of attention, would distract us....
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 16:41:02Answering the chicken-and -egg question : question of what's causing what ? : Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition , or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? : Evidence I :"...Selectively focusing attention on target images significantly enhances neuronal responses to them. This is especially true when nearby stimuli, if not for the power of attention, would distract us....Selective attention is a great example of top down control, and doesn't require any immaterial element. The brain is set in a specific state or working mode according to requirements that are updated from the outside world dynamically. The construction of a subjective percept (what am I looking for and why am I looking for it? ) involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences.Top-down expectations and hypotheses are initially set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. The brain has an abundance of two way tracts that allows complex information at higher stages of processing to influence processing, or select for information information to attend to, from lower stages. The flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas plays a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. There is no starting point for information flow. You can't point to any part of the loop and say the cause is here, and the effect is there. Criticism of material mechanisms in neuroscience always seem to be wildly neglectful of the dynamic nature of mental activity, and approach the material construction of the brain as if it were as unmodifiable and unvarying as a household appliance, ignoring learning, ignoring our constant interaction with a changing environment. What's more, the immaterial version of will or volition that seems to exist in some acausal vacuum while violating all sorts of physical laws, is never specifically explained, either.
Don't jump to premature conclusions , sis : Just try to read the above carefully first , please .Thanks .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 21:17:30Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain :How the mindful effort of volition through the power of focus or attention can change the brain ....In short :How the mind or mental force can change the brain through the dynamic effort of volition via the power of focus .In other words :Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.As magical as will or volition might seem, there are disorders that interfere with volition and motivation (akinetic mutism, apraxia,) as well structures in the brain associated with volition. According to Ramachandran, "Wanting, it turns out, is crucially dependent on the anterior cingulate." And we've also discussed Libet's studies that show a choice has been made in the brain before a person becomes consciously aware of making it.Or Beuregards studies that ironically showed the opposite of what he set out to demonstrate, as explained below:For review:Lets break down one of his studies, where he showed a series of erotic images to males and imaged the brain's response to these images. Unsurprisingly he found activation primarily in the limbic and paralimbic regions (amygdala, right anterior temporal pole and the hypothalamus). This region of the brain is long known to be associated with reward assessment and baser drives such as sex, hunger, thirst, fear, and anger. He then asked subjects to repress any sort of sexual thoughts or feelings in regard to the images and showed them again. This time he showed little to no activation in the paralimbic and limbic system, but saw extensive activation in prefrontal regions such as the superior frontal gyrus.[15] The prefrontal regions are associated with what many of us refer to as the normal day-to-day consciousness of ourselves. It is the executive controller and one of its primary roles is that of an inhibitor. It's the part of your brain that tells you when something is really not a good idea, and lets you control yourself; it's the part you use when you are "biting your tongue" to keep from saying what you really want to say.[17]Working from the theory that it is the material constructs of the brain itself that alters firing patterns this is exactly what we would expect. We see an area of the brain that is activated by stimuli that are known to cause excitation in that region. When asked to inhibit that excitation subjects show brain activation in regions that have been demonstrated to be involved in inhibition. This is one area of the brain putting the brakes on another area of the brain. If we were working from the posit that it is the "psychological space" that is putting the brakes on the limbic system, why would we posit any other area of the brain needing to be activated? If Beauregard had shown that the only change when actively suppressing a response was that the previously activated regions did not show any activation it would be a lot more problematic to explain.
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain :How the mindful effort of volition through the power of focus or attention can change the brain ....In short :How the mind or mental force can change the brain through the dynamic effort of volition via the power of focus .In other words :Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.
Cheryl : Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .
"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:07:07"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "And what does that tell you?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:17:44Cheryl : Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .I'm not rejecting the findings themselves, but your interpretation of them. They indicate that people can act to change what they attend to, but your authors don't prove that the shift in attention or "mindful effort" is non-biological or immaterial. In fact, their findings really suggest otherwise. Shift is always accompanied by a change in activity in another area of the brain, not just simple suppression by will acting in the "psychological space." Like Stapp, they completely ignore the question altogether, and assume will or volition is immaterial from the start. Stapp concedes this in his own articles.
Quote from: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:47:20Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:07:07"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "And what does that tell you?lol That says that self-directed neuroplasticity through the mindful and active causal effect of volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain cannot be accomplished by stroke patients whose brain regions that are related to attention are damaged ,and vice versa: it's only through the maintained volitional effort of focus or attention that self-directed neuroplasticity can be accomplished .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 19:01:45Quote from: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:47:20Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:07:07"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "And what does that tell you?lol That says that self-directed neuroplasticity through the mindful and active causal effect of volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain cannot be accomplished by stroke patients whose brain regions that are related to attention are damaged ,and vice versa: it's only through the maintained volitional effort of focus or attention that self-directed neuroplasticity can be accomplished .And yet, strangely, that volitional effort is completely ineffective and nonexistant without those intact structures, which again, tells you what?
Quote from: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:44:32Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:17:44Cheryl : Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .I'm not rejecting the findings themselves, but your interpretation of them. They indicate that people can act to change what they attend to, but your authors don't prove that the shift in attention or "mindful effort" is non-biological or immaterial. In fact, their findings really suggest otherwise. Shift is always accompanied by a change in activity in another area of the brain, not just simple suppression by will acting in the "psychological space." Like Stapp, they completely ignore the question altogether, and assume will or volition is immaterial from the start. Stapp concedes this in his own articles.You couldn't have possibly read all what i posted on the subject on such a relatively short notice , unless you have some sort of a sophisticated scan implanted in your head lol :One can choose intentionally and voluntarily either to make the necessary conscious mindful volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention or not : that's what actually makes the difference, either way thus = Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.. .Those above mentioned experiments do speak for themselves in unmistakable ,cristal-clear and "eloquent " ways,so ,read them,and then try to report back on that , please , thanks .Cheers .
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445828#msg445828 date=1417638226]I will happily discuss any particular example or experiment your authors refer to, and it is an area I am not wholly unfamiliar with already. But do not hand me a lengthy homework assignment just to ignore all my responses anyway, as you typically do. It's a waste of my time.
You speak as though these experiments in attention, perception, or learning is somehow new, uncharted territory and can't be explained without invoking the immaterial. It's been studied extensively for years
.....James was scrupulously fair in giving equal time to the view that attention is a fully determined result of brain function rather than a causally efficacious force. As he notes, it is entirely plausible that attention may be “fatally predetermined” by purely material laws. In this view, the amount of attention we pay a stimulus, be it one from the world outside or an internally generated thought or image, is determined solely by the properties of that stimulus and their interaction with our brain’s circuits. If the words you hear or the images you see are associated with a poignant memory, for instance, then they trigger—automatically and without any active effort by you —more attention than stimuli that lack such associations. In this case, “attention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association bring ‘before the footlights’ of consciousness,” as James put it.That is, the stimuli themselves provoke neural mechanisms that cause them to be attended to and fixed on. This is the attention-as-effect school of thinking.But James did not think that attention was always and only a fully determined effect of the stimuli that are its object...." Same source .
Cheryl, You were just repeating the refuted materialistic stuff on the subject ,and that before reading my posted evidence also . You haven't read about all those mentioned experiments here above yet , so, how can you tell then ?Those experiments just prove the causal efficacy of the effort of mindful and active volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the neuronal correlates accordingly (The mind can change the brain , can have causal effects on the brain ...) , a fact that has been denied as such by the intrinsic reductionistic epiphenomalism of materialism , in the sense that the mind cannot have any causal effects on the physical brain , let alone on the rest of the physical reality .The evidence for which you were asking all along is there above : you can either deliberately choose to check it out while paying the necessary effort of attention to it through your mindful effort of volition , or not .That's entirely up to you then . I know it takes quite some time to read all that , but it's worth it .
Well, then read my above posted evidence to the contrary of what you were saying here above , to see for yourself : prepare yourself for a surprise, big time : Your baseless and blind confidence in all that related materialistic non-sense on the subject will be shaken, big time : It has been proved ,via many experiments mentioned here above and more , that the mind can alter the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain through the effort of volition via the effort of attention or focus : that's called self-directed neuroplasticity .
dlorde : Volitional effort is effort of attention.
Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will :
My take on the free will issue can be inferred from the above , in the sense that we do choose from all those existing infinite possibilities...