Conscious decision is impossible

Quoting bahman

2) We can be conscious of one choice at any given time

Says who?

Quoting T Clark

Says who?

Everybody can only focally be conscious of one thing at a time.

Quoting bahman

Everybody can only focally be conscious of one thing at a time.

Don't agree, but we don't need to get into it much. I don't believe that decision making is primarily a conscious activity.

Reply to bahman
Is this thread going to descend into a discussion of Buriden's Ass?
As I have a solution.

Quoting bahman

Everybody can only focally be conscious of one thing at a time.

Then the decision and all the options form a coherent whole, which is one thing, of which the decision-maker is conscious.

Quoting charleton

Is this thread going to descend into a discussion of Buriden's Ass?

Why should it go to that direction?

Quoting charleton

As I have a solution.

What is your solution?

Quoting BlueBanana

Then the decision and all the options form a coherent whole, which is one thing, of which the decision-maker is conscious.

Interesting. But then why we are not aware of content of the whole? Perhaps we are disturbing consciousness by reflecting on decision while the consciousness is busy with making conscious decision.

Quoting bahman

Everybody can only focally be conscious of one thing at a time.

So we could decide on whether or not to do it? We have two choices at least?

Quoting apokrisis

So we could decide on whether or not to do it? We have two choices at least?

It seems that we are only aware of choices sequentially. I want this or that. This or that is sequential mental state. I have never experience this and that as a coherent mental state at the spot.

Reply to bahman Even so, we can be conscious of a decision. We can attend to a choice presented to us. The choice could be whether or not to hit a button. The choice could consist of a whole panel of buttons, as in a vending machine.

So yes, attention is a thing. It narrows our focus on the world, or even out thoughts, by suppressing whatever seems extraneous. So attention itself involves a decision. It is the choice not to be focused on anything else at some moment. And that choice could exclude a vast range of other possibilities already.

Then conscious of some particular area of action or choice, like the bounteous variety of a vending machine, we might narrow our attention still further to the Mars bar. And even then, there is the choice to buy it, or not.

If buying the bar is our daily habit, then we could just hit the right button with little attention. There is also habit or automaticism. As much as possible, we want to make our choices in a learnt and routine fashion. Attention is there to deal with choices and decisions that are surprising, novel or significant.

The fact that attention is a narrowing of awareness - an active exclusion of many alternatives - is the feature, not the bug. It is how we avoid just acting out of unthinking habit, even if mostly we want to learn to act out of unthinking habit.

Quoting apokrisis

Even so, we can be conscious of a decision. We can attend to a choice presented to us. The choice could be whether or not to hit a button. The choice could consist of a whole panel of buttons, as in a vending machine.

Yes, we can conscious of a decision. The question is whether we can decide consciously: having both option at the same time in mind and deciding. How could we possibly decide on a situation when only one of options are consciously available to us? There is even moment that we are conscious of non of options, when we switch between options.

Quoting apokrisis

So yes, attention is a thing. It narrows our focus on the world, or even out thoughts, by suppressing whatever seems extraneous. So attention itself involves a decision. It is the choice not to be focused on anything else at some moment. And that choice could exclude a vast range of other possibilities already.

This is an area which is very confusing for me. We need the attention for specific purpose and for attention we need attention. Paying attentions seems to me that is enforced unconsciously, like when you are deriving and something disturb your deriving.

Quoting apokrisis

Then conscious of some particular area of action or choice, like the bounteous variety of a vending machine, we might narrow our attention still further to the Mars bar. And even then, there is the choice to buy it, or not.

Yeah, but the process of narrowing down always involve two choices.

Quoting apokrisis

If buying the bar is our daily habit, then we could just hit the right button with little attention. There is also habit or automaticism. As much as possible, we want to make our choices in a learnt and routine fashion. Attention is there to deal with choices and decisions that are surprising, novel or significant.

Yes, I agree.

Quoting apokrisis

The fact that attention is a narrowing of awareness - an active exclusion of many alternatives - is the feature, not the bug. It is how we avoid just acting out of unthinking habit, even if mostly we want to learn to act out of unthinking habit.

Well, I think we are not evolved enough to perform conscious decision.

Your argument seems to boil down to the observation that the experience of contemplating two things together, whether simultaneously or in quick succession for sake of comparison, is vague and hard to describe in contrast to the two things contemplated separately.

But why should experiential vagueness be interpreted epistemically?

Take another example; the problem of identifying colours that are poorly illuminated. One reports that the hues are ambiguous. But why should colour ambiguity under poor illumination be considered 'evidence' that poorly illuminated colours are hard to determine? For if the illumination is increased we are no longer comparing like for like.

One is simply conscious of alternative possibilities. I look in a refrigerator. I see several foods that creates an image. I then might gradually widdle it down to two or three possibilities, all envisaged as a single image in memory. Then I choose one course of action. Reach and grab the apple.

Quoting sime

Your argument seems to boil down to the observation that the experience of contemplating two things together, whether simultaneously or in quick succession for sake of comparison, is vague and hard to describe in contrast to the two things contemplated separately.

I don't think if we can focally experience two things together. I am familiar with the experiencing options sequentially but that doesn't help when it comes conscious decision since you cannot compare options simultaneously.

Quoting sime

But why should experiential vagueness be interpreted epistemically?

What do you mean?

Quoting sime

Take another example; the problem of identifying colours that are poorly illuminated. One reports that the hues are ambiguous. But why should colour ambiguity under poor illumination be considered 'evidence' that poorly illuminated colours are hard to determine? For if the illumination is increased we are no longer comparing like for like.

How this example is related to the topic?

Quoting Rich

One is simply conscious of alternative possibilities. I look in a refrigerator. I see several foods that creates an image. I then might gradually widdle it down to two or three possibilities, all envisaged as a single image in memory. Then I choose one course of action. Reach and grab the apple.

I think you are explaining unconscious decision. You can neither be conscious options as an coherent image nor you can consciously give them a weight.

Quoting bahman

I think you are explaining unconscious decision. You can neither be conscious options as an coherent image nor you can consciously give them a weight.

I have no idea what you are experiencing in your mind but I described what I am experiencing in my mind. It is quite conscious and deliberate.

Quoting Rich

I have no idea what you are experiencing in your mind but I described what I am experiencing in my mind. It is quite conscious and deliberate.

Are you conscious of the options at the moment you decide?

Quoting bahman

Are you conscious of the options at the moment you decide?

Of course. There is an image in my mind and I consciously decide to take action in a certain direction. What's going on in your mind? Are you groping in the refrigerator and removing what ever you touch? Don't you see all of the choices and choose one? Maybe your mind works differently?

Reply to bahman You seem to be working with a homuncular notion of awareness. Language demands that we speak of the “I” who is the self behind every mental doing. And so when we are attending and consciously deciding, there is this elusive “we” now apparently an extra part of the picture. We lose sight of the fact that this we-ness is part of the process, part of the construction, part of the action. It describes the fact that the brain was doing something, and that included taking a point of view, and a point of view implies “an observer with a choice”.

So you seem to accept functional talk. There is what it is like to be behaving habitually or to be behaving attentionally. However you also want to assign a further identity to the doer of any doings. Language demands that there be an efficient cause. And you believe grammar more that you believe psychological functionalism.

Quoting Rich

Of course. There is an image in my mind and I consciously decide to take action in a certain direction. What's going on in your mind? Are you groping in the refrigerator and removing what ever you touch? Don't you see all of the choices and choose one? Maybe your mind works differently?

That is how I make a decision: (1) I collect options one by one and memorize them, (2) I retrieve option one by one and contemplate about each option separately and then (3) I decide about an option while I am not aware of anything but my decision.

Quoting apokrisis

You seem to be working with a homuncular notion of awareness.

What is homuncular notion of awareness?

Quoting apokrisis

Language demands that we speak of the “I” who is the self behind every mental doing. And so when we are attending and consciously deciding, there is this elusive “we” now apparently an extra part of the picture. We lose sight of the fact that this we-ness is part of the process, part of the construction, part of the action. It describes the fact that the brain was doing something, and that included taking a point of view, and a point of view implies “an observer with a choice”.

I agree.

Quoting apokrisis

So you seem to accept functional talk. There is what it is like to be behaving habitually or to be behaving attentionally. However you also want to assign a further identity to the doer of any doings. Language demands that there be an efficient cause.

I agree.

Quoting apokrisis

And you believe grammar more that you believe psychological functionalism.

Could you please elaborate on this part?

Reply to bahman Wow, if I made choices like that on the highway, I would have been dead by now, not to mention the hapless fate of others who happened to be on the road with me at the time, as I one by one tried to memorize the dozens of cars surrounding me and then unconsciously choosing the one that I will not hit (the others will just have to avoid me the best they can).

Reply to bahman When we say the river flows, is there something more than the water and the channel carved over time?

The landscape certainly has developed a habit. We can give a name to the dent in the ground that usually has water draining down it. But do the Volga or the Elber exist over and above the particular drainage function they have in their settings?

There is more to the identity of an individual brain, an individual psychology. But the basic point is the same. If we can discover a functional description that seems a true explanation of what we observe, then that is when we should be wary of the reification - the habit of language - which then demands we turn a process into an object, a verb into a noun.

If you speak of some doing, it is the rules of grammar that insist on the presence of some doer. Yet you just described the doings in a functional way where there is no object, just a process.

So again, do you believe a habit of language and insist there is some missing doer? Or do you believe the functional description that looks to have included all the causality you could find? A process is just a process. Giving the process a name doesn’t mean there is now the further thing of some object standing behind all the actions of the process.

“Oh no! The Volga flooded and washed away the village. Why did it decide to do that?”

“Oh no! Brahman decided to pick the hazelnut whirl rather than the Turkish delight from the box of chocolate All Sorts. Why did he decide to do that?”

Grammar wants us to think about things a certain way. A functional or process view - the one science is seeking to take - is the attempt not to get sucked in by the usual games of language.

Reply to Rich
I don't know if it is like this for you but I can derive miles without being conscious of deriving, unless an expected thing happen.

Reply to apokrisis
I believe that there is a doer which can initiate or terminate a chain of causality otherwise there is no free will.

A conscious decision is one we know we have made.
I see no problem here at all.

Quoting bahman

I don't know if it is like this for you but I can derive miles without being conscious of deriving, unless an expected thing happen.

You are driving while unconscious? Ok.

Reply to Rich
Yes. Have you ever heard of sleepwalker?

Reply to bahman Of course there are habits that one isn't always conscious of. But you are claiming you drive while unconscious - and live to tell about it. This is an entirely different matter.

Quoting bahman

I believe that there is a doer which can initiate or terminate a chain of causality otherwise there is no free will.

But apparently you also believe you can drive unconsciously, and that consciously you are only aware of a single thing. So how does it all fit together for you if you reject a more scientific view?

Quoting charleton

A conscious decision is one we know we have made.
I see no problem here at all.

If the self is by product of brain activity then it could not create a chain of causality since brain activity respects causality unless we are dealing with a magic.

Quoting Rich

Of course there are habits that one isn't always conscious of. But you are claiming you drive while unconscious - and live to tell about it. This is an entirely different matter.

I am conscious when I am deriving. I think of something else rather than deriving. Deriving seems that is is done automatically. I cannot make any memory of deriving all the time that I am unconscious of deriving too. Maybe I just cannot recall.

Quoting apokrisis

But apparently you also believe you can drive unconsciously, and that consciously you are only aware of a single thing.

I normally think of something else than deriving. That is true in most of the time something bothers the field of my consciousness.

Quoting apokrisis

So how does it all fit together for you if you reject a more scientific view?

I don't see what is the problem.

Quoting bahman

Deriving seems that is is done automatically.

Part of driving is learned habit (body/muscle memory). Part of it better be quite conscious as I described. You are perceiving an image and consciously making decisions based upon what you perceive. You might see dozens of cars in front of you and make a decision to leave the road, or otherwise.

Quoting Rich

Part of driving is learned habit (body/muscle memory). Part of it better be quite conscious as I described. You are perceiving an image and consciously making decisions based upon what you perceive. You might see dozens of cars in front of you and make a decision to leave the road, or otherwise.

Sometimes I see the car in the background. It is matter of focus. I can just focally focus on one thing at any moment. I do mistake if what I am trying to do is new otherwise things seems to be automatic.

[sorry for the bad english]

well, I think that the question is: how to conciliate the 'becoming' with the 'will'?

the 'forever changing' with the necessity to make decisions, to be objective;

and how to grasp the reality from inumerals appearances;

at least seems to be, 'ontologically';

Quoting bahman

I don't see what is the problem.

I get the impression you believe nature is Newtonian deterministic and therefore free will becomes a problem. But that is a limited view of causality even within physics these days, let alone neuroscience.

I am talking of a view of brain function where it accumulates many degrees of freedom - all the many things it might concretely do (and so also, not do). And then attention acts top down to constrain or bound these freedoms in useful, goal achieving, fashion.

So free will is just rational choice, voluntary action. There is a vast variety of things we could be thinking or doing at any instant. We accumulate a vast store of habits and ideas - concrete skills and notions. Then we must constrain this huge variety of possibilities during every conscious moment so that we limit ourselves to thoughts and actions best adapted to the needs and opportunities of the moment.

To speak of free will is really just to note that we have a socially constructed sense of self that lies over our voluntary behaviour - another level of filter to bound the possible variety of our behaviour. We can consciously weigh what might best suit us personally against what might best suit some wider communal identity we participate in.

So a constraints-based causality avoids the philosophical problems that a physical determinism would seem to create.

Quoting bahman

Everybody can only focally be conscious of one thing at a time.

I think that the average person is aware of about six objects at once, without having to count them. So this premise is incorrect, we are focally conscious of numerous different things at the very same time.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover That’s more a measure of how many items we can hold at once in working memory. Each item needs to be processed serially or individually. That is why tests present you with a succession of items to be remembered.

In computational terms, you are talking about the mental scratchpad used as temporary storage for what you want to keep close of hand. Attention is needed to fetch them back into close focus.

You’ve mixed up that story with the other one which tests perceptual grouping. At a glance, we can see that there are one, two, three or then “many” of some object in a collection. If the objects are arranged - as a square, as a hexagon - we can then see the wholeness of the pattern and the number we associate with it. With a random arrangement, we would have to go back to some form of serial inspection.

The take home is that cognition is hierarchical. Attention is at the top of the tree as the narrowest useful view. We only want a single viewpoint defining our state of mind at any time so as to “arrive at a decision” about what we are experiencing.

So attention has to balance the conceptual possibilities in terms of lumping or splitting. It is a dynamical choice itself, not some fixed bandwidth spotlight. It can see the whole just as much as it can see the parts. It’s job is to find the particular perceptual balance at any given moment.

Quoting apokrisis

You’ve mixed up that story with the other one which tests perceptual grouping. At a glance, we can see that there are one, two, three or then “many” of some object in a collection. If the objects are arranged - as a square, as a hexagon - we can then see the wholeness of the pattern and the number we associate with it. With a random arrangement, we would have to go back to some form of serial inspection.

No, I'm talking about the number of different objects around us which we can be consciously aware of at the same time. This is what you call holding in one's working memory.

Quoting apokrisis

That’s more a measure of how many items we can hold at once in working memory.

I would say that this is another way of saying the same thing as me. To be in one's working memory, means that the person is consciously aware of that thing. So if the person is able to hold six items in one's working memory, this means that the person is consciously aware of all six of those items at the same time. Bahman claimed that we can only have one item at a time in our working memory.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

To be in one's working memory, means that the person is consciously aware of that thing.

Working memory is one step back from the attentional spotlight (granting that all these distinctions are somewhat crude and computational).

So you can only have a definite working memory having been consciously attentive of something. But having it in working memory doesn't have to mean you are currently attending to it. It is only close at hand and being held as a distinct "snapshot".

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So if the person is able to hold six items in one's working memory, this means that the person is consciously aware of all six of those items at the same time.

There is also iconic memory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconic_memory

This shows how we can hold "a whole scene" in mind as an unprocessed sensory pattern before selective attention gets to work on it.

So while I find the cog-sci approach clunky, the various component processes it identifies are based on solid experimental distinctions.

If you want to talk about working memory being "conscious", that boils down to its contents being easily recallable, highly discriminated, and so generally reportable.

The whole concept of "being consciously aware" is problematic as it imports an unwanted degree of binary definiteness into what is going on. It leaves us with little else except the claim neural activity is either conscious or unconscious. It is implicitly dualistic.

Yet even so, it makes more sense to talk of working memory as being what we have just consciously attended and could easily bring back into attention. It is not the bit of the world - some particular viewpoint - that is our currently experienced one.

Although as also said, attention itself can range from tightly focused to a very defocused and vague state. We can gaze off and not be thinking anything in particular. We can even switch to a deliberate vigilant state where we have cleared the decks to allow the unexpected to break through.

So attention itself can be decomposed in a variety of ways that can be explained in terms of neurological structures or paths.

Quoting bahman

1) We need at least two choices for a decision
2) We can be conscious of one choice at any given time
3) Therefore conscious decision is impossible

Say you have a choice between two courses of action.

Consider each of the two options separately, one at a time, writing down its merits and demerits.

Now, repeatedly look from one option's merit list to the other option's merit list. Remembering how you felt about the first option's merits, do you feel as strongly about the 2nd option's merits?

Do the same with the demerits.

Follow your impression, your intuitive feeling.

Michael Ossipoff

Quoting apokrisis

I get the impression you believe nature is Newtonian deterministic and therefore free will becomes a problem. But that is a limited view of causality even within physics these days, let alone neuroscience.

This is basically physicalism to best of my understanding rather than only Newtonian determinism. Under physicalism we are interested to know what would be final state of a system given initial state. That is determinism too.

Quoting apokrisis

I am talking of a view of brain function where it accumulates many degrees of freedom - all the many things it might concretely do (and so also, not do). And then attention acts top down to constrain or bound these freedoms in useful, goal achieving, fashion.

So free will is just rational choice, voluntary action. There is a vast variety of things we could be thinking or doing at any instant. We accumulate a vast store of habits and ideas - concrete skills and notions. Then we must constrain this huge variety of possibilities during every conscious moment so that we limit ourselves to thoughts and actions best adapted to the needs and opportunities of the moment.

To speak of free will is really just to note that we have a socially constructed sense of self that lies over our voluntary behaviour - another level of filter to bound the possible variety of our behaviour. We can consciously weigh what might best suit us personally against what might best suit some wider communal identity we participate in.

So a constraints-based causality avoids the philosophical problems that a physical determinism would seem to create.

I agree. I can achieve this understanding by simple introspection. The question is how we could mentally reach to such a state of affair which we could act freely. Given a brain, I cannot see how free will is possible within physicalism/determinism.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think that the average person is aware of about six objects at once, without having to count them. So this premise is incorrect, we are focally conscious of numerous different things at the very same time.

Perhaps you could. I can be only be focally conscious of one thing at any time. I of course could keep a few thing in my working memory.

Quoting Michael Ossipoff

Say you have a choice between two courses of action.

Consider each of the two options separately, one at a time, writing down its merits and demerits.

Now, repeatedly look from one option's merit list to the other option's merit list. Remembering how you felt about the first option's merits, do you feel as strongly about the 2nd option's merits?

Do the same with the demerits.

Follow your impression, your intuitive feeling.

Michael Ossipoff

This is selection based on weight.

Quoting bahman

Perhaps you could. I can be only be focally conscious of one thing at any time. I of course could keep a few thing in my working memory.

It seems to me, like I am always consciously aware of many things at the same time. I hear many different things going on around the room, I look around and see many different things. Perhaps you are different from me in that respect, but don't you hear many different things going on at once?

Quoting apokrisis

The whole concept of "being consciously aware" is problematic as it imports an unwanted degree of binary definiteness into what is going on.

I guess it depends on how one defines "conscious", and how one defines "at any given time". But I think bahman's premise that we cannot be conscious of more than one option at any given time is clearly false. To me "conscious" specifically implies being aware of a multitude of things. "At any given time" is quite vague, but we'd have to shorten that period of time to an unreasonably short duration to have any hope of limiting the conscious mind to being aware of just one thing at a time. I think we would probably have to shorten that duration to the point where we couldn't say that the mind is even conscious of anything. So to give the mind a long enough time to qualify as being conscious, would be enough time that the mind would be conscious of multiple things. Therefore I believe that being conscious is being aware of multiple things at the same time.

Quoting Rich

You are driving while unconscious? Ok.

This is an interesting question. I've often found myself arrive at a destination with a fully fledged plan, devised whilst on the journey, of who to meet, what to say, or what to buy, shops to visits etc... With not a single conscious memory of the journey I just made; that is to say - not in any detail, never consciously choosing a gear, never thinking about how much brake to use, or whether I chose to take the racing line across the roundabouts.

Reply to charleton As I said, certain aspects of driving (and many, many or things in our lives) are habitual. However, if you are driving while completely unconscious, in all probability you and other people will be dead pretty fast.

I wish people, when creating a philosophical paradigm, would just observe what is happening. It's so much more useful to have a philosophy that actually makes sense.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It seems to me, like I am always consciously aware of many things at the same time. I hear many different things going on around the room, I look around and see many different things. Perhaps you are different from me in that respect, but don't you hear many different things going on at once?

I can hear many things in a noisy place but they are garbled. I can of course focally focus on one thing to hear carefully.

Reply to bahman
To be aware of many different things is distinct from focusing on one particular thing. To focus on one particular thing requires a conscious decision concerning the many different things which you are aware of.

Okay what about this.
I often read late at night in bed. Sometimes what I read sends my mind off in a different direction and though I do not stop reading, I am thinking about something completely different within a few seconds. I can cover two or three pages reading away happily yet not taking in what I am reading.
When I swipe back I can find the exact place where I seemed to have left the narrative, and when I re-read the same couple of pages, it can seem familiar but I'm not consciously aware of having taken in the contents.
Anyone have this experience?

Reply to charleton
Take me in.

Reply to bahman you're suggesting that the sub-conscious makes the decision before you're conscious of it?

Quoting David Solman

you're suggesting that the sub-conscious makes the decision before you're conscious of it?

Yes.

Quoting David Solman

you're suggesting that the sub-conscious makes the decision before you're conscious of it?

Quoting bahman

Yes.

Checks out.

Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain:

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively ‘free’ decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

Reply to Michael
Thanks for the reference.

Reply to bahman but you can still change that decision. Even if you're subconscious makes a choice you're still able to think twice and change the outcome instead of not thinking at all and going with the first decision that pops into your head. In fact, I don't believe that most decisions are made like this. I think that when it comes to an important decision, one will certainly think about it and make a conscious decision.

Stupid things that don't have any consequences will likely only require a quick decision without a thought process so I think it really depends on the individual and the possible consequence of the decision. If the decision has possible bad consequences then that person is likely to think about it and make a conscious decision on what will be best for them.

Reply to David Solman
What if the second decision is also unconscious?

Reply to bahman if the choice you had to make requires you to come up with more than one decision then you need to have put some thought into it, otherwise you would have decided already with the first subconscious choice. if there is a second choice then that one has to be a conscious one