The human body is an amazing piece of work. I often find myself wondering how so much can be happening within me without even knowing it. Everything just communicates and gets done, my heartbeats, my lungs breath and my feet walk. How much of what I am doing is really me, how much control do I have over my body? Often time people used phrases like, “I consciously made an effort” or “where is your conscience?” What if anything am I consciously doing? What does that really mean, it seems that 50% of the time we make a conscious effort to do something, we end of not doing it. Did we really make an extra effort, or was the decision already pre determined? I truly believe that people have choices in life and have control over their action, for some reason I can’t get myself to believe that we are just run by neurons, it just seems too black and white. If decisions were just black and white, cut and dry, wouldn’t everyone act the same? In all honesty I don’t really know, but it seems that all the confusions for me, at least, comes form not knowing where the line is drawn, where does the ability to make a decisions come from?
What for example, makes a person raise their hand? Is this ability coming from a higher level or is it just the results of lower level neurons firing. It seems scientifically, that when a question is given to a subject, the subject reads the question and automatically begins to process the information. If the information corresponds to something that they have “learned” then it seems no questions will be asked, but when even a part of the information is foreign its seems a new process starts. Most of the time when we raise our hands it is to ask a question about something we do not understand or something we are confused about. When the information is foreign to our brains, it seems that there must be some interruption in the pattern of the firing neurons. When something is not understood, I tend to think the neurons fire a signal saying “help.” This help signal tells the brain that more information is needed, so the brain must re-think it steps. It knows from a past experience (or learning) that raising the hand allows for a question to be asked. The brain then sends an output signal to the motor system, which then fires neurons to raise the hand. If we think of it this way it seems that the process of raising a hand is not a conscious decision but rather a pre-determined output for the lack of understanding. But what about those times when something is not understand but no hand is raised to ask a question?
The ability to not raise a hand when confused points to the fact that in some way there is conscious control over this ability. If a question was not understood a person could a, raise their hand or b, not raise their hand. The person makes the decision. Although the neurons may be firing as described above, some higher-level system received the information and process it to make the decision to raise the hand or not.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” Shaw seems to believe that if you imagine what you want, you can create it, a way of thinking that marketing companies go gaga over. Consciously, you imagine and then you create. If you believe, you can and will succeed. This idea of where decision comes from can never really be proven one way or another. After all who knows how much of anything we are really controlling. For example am I consciously writing this paper or, was it all pre-determined thoughts upon which I had no control over.
Em, you have some interesting points that you’ve brought up. I like the idea of conscious and unconscious as it is easy to understand, and makes sense. It relates especially to the idea of control and the idea of whether or not one can control oneself at all. The example of raising a hand seems pretty straightforward when asking whether or not it is a “conscious” effort (or even if “consciousness” exists) to raise one’s own hand. (Raising someone else’s hand is probably not feasible, that’s outside the bounds of this thought experiment.)
I especially like how you brought free will into the mix at the end. Very thought-provoking 🙂
Emily
I love how you are having trouble believing neurons completely control us because i am too! It does seem far to simple. However i wonder if this is because I am so used to dissecting the functions of a neuron rather that looking at the brain as a system. As for raising a hand in class, I have pondered how i actually do raise my hand in class. Often i know i am thinking about raising my hand so i know its not a reflex but is it a reflex to think about if i should raise my hand? Great point!