Darwinian Psychologists Deny Consciousness and Free Will – and Have to Resort to Storytelling

It’s hard to get free will and consciousness from rocks.




Joel Kontinen

If we believe that matter is the only thing that exists, we’re heading towards great trouble, as the immaterial realm is anything but imaginary.

Thus, consciousness and free will are hard dilemmas for evolutionists.

In 2014 Michael Graziano, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in which he admitted that consciousness was a “ghostly thing” - seen from a Darwinian perspective, that is.

If this evolutionary conception of consciousness were applied coherently, it would mean the end of the idea of self.

However, recently two psychologists tried to navigate around this skerry. Writing in The Conversation, David A Oakley (Emeritus Professor of Psychology at University College London) and Peter Halligan (Hon Professor of Neuropsychology at Cardiff University) attempt to explain away both consciousness and free will:

“It’s easy to assume that these contents of consciousness are somehow chosen, caused or controlled by our personal awareness – after all, thoughts don’t exist until until we think them. But in a new research paper in Frontiers of Psychology, we argue that this is a mistake.

We suggest that our personal awareness does not create, cause or choose our beliefs, feelings or perceptions. Instead, the contents of consciousness are generated ‘behind the scenes’ by fast, efficient, non-conscious systems in our brains. All this happens without any interference from our personal awareness, which sits passively in the passenger seat while these processes occur.

Put simply, we don’t consciously choose our thoughts or our feelings – we become aware of them.”

This has repercussions for the idea of free will:

“We argue that free will and personal responsibility are notions that have been constructed by society.”

This sounds like an excuse to avoid being accountable for our actions, and is very unbiblical notion.

Source:

Oakley, David A. and Peter Halligan. 2017. What if consciousness is not what drives the human mind? The Conversation (22 November).

“Atheism Is a Disease of the Soul,” British Philosopher William Fleming Quotes Plato As Saying

Plato didn’t think atheism was logical. Image courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5.






Joel Kontinen

“It is a fine observation of Plato in his Laws that atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding,” British philosopher William Fleming (1791–1866) said.

Fleming was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and he obviously found atheistic logic anything but credible.

No wonder. Today’s version of atheism will insist that in the beginning, nothing exploded, giving birth to everything for absolutely no reason at all in a world devoid of anything that is immaterial, including consciousness and free will.

This scenario involves a feature (quantum fluctuation) that is probably best described as magic, and includes an idea (cosmic inflation) that New Scientist called “totally bonkers.”

Source:

Allibone, Samuel Austin. 1880. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay.

“We Are Zombies Rewriting Our Mental History,” Darwinian Researchers Say

Image courtesy of Jean-noël Lafargue, Free Art License.






Joel Kontinen

For Darwinists, free will is a hot potato that obviously should be avoided at all costs.

This also applies to consciousness that happens to be “a ghostly thing” in a naturalistic world. Evolution can’t explain it.

And so we are treated to a Darwinian just so story.

A new version features humans as zombies. Adam Bear and Paul Bloom conducted a series of experiments at Yale University. Volunteers looked at white circles and had to guess which one would turn red.

The test subjects managed to predict the right circle more often than if they had done so by mere chance, giving them a feeling of being in control.

However, the researchers “placed different delays between the white circles’ appearance and one of the circles turning red, ranging from 50 milliseconds to one second. Participants’ reported accuracy was highest – surpassing 30 per cent – when the delays were shortest.”

The researchers suggest that it “is possible that we perceive the order of events correctly – one circle changes colour before we have actually made our prediction – but then we subconsciously swap the sequence in our memories so the prediction seems to come first. Such a switcheroo could be motivated by a desire to feel in control of our lives.”

The results prompted Bear to suggest, “We are essentially zombie agents most of the time under the illusion that we’re always aware of why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

It might do us good to remember what Mark Twain famously wrote: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

Source:

Hutson, Matthew. 2016. We are zombies rewriting our mental history to feel in control. New Scientist (15 April).

Free Will Does Not Exist, Claims Researcher Advocating a ”Counterintuitive” Theory of Consciousness

It’s hard to get free will and consciousness from rocks.





Joel Kontinen

Most people act as thought they had free will. However, since free will is an immaterial or non-material phenomenon, it should not exist in a Darwinian world that rejects the existence of anything that is not naturalistic or materialistic.

Consciousness is another hard nut for materialists to knack. Evolution can’t explain it, so they often have to resort to science fiction.

A paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences is the latest attempt to tackle these two hurdles that are far too high for a purely naturalistic framework.

However, this did no stop Ezequiel Morsella, Associate Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University, and colleagues from giving it a try.

They see consciousness as being something less than consciousness. They admit that this might be counterintuitive and in that they are right. We are either conscious – or we aren’t, zombies or not-zombies.

And they probably had the free will to write their paper, as it obviously did not drop from the sky.

So, it seems that the best and healthiest way of getting rid of the cognitive dissonance that is closely associated with the denial of the supernatural is to accept the supernatural.

There is only one real source of truth. As the Lord Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Source:

Tagawa, Beth. 2015. Consciousness has less control than believed, according to new theory. SF State news (June 23).