Do you sometimes feel you are separate from your brain?
Does it feel like your brain provides you with advice that you will sometimes listen to, and sometimes not?
Have you heard someone say: ‘My heart is telling me one thing, and my brain is telling me another!’
From time to time we all enter into this inner dialogue with ourselves where we sometimes reject what our brains tell us and rather just follow our feelings? Or the other way around.
Why does it sometimes feel as if your brain is a separate entity from yourself?
The debate as to whether we exert any control over our brains – i.e. if we have a ‘free will’ – has been raging on from the earliest times and is still today giving rise to lively debates. There are passionate camps for and against the concept of ‘free will’.
My Xzistor Concept brain model has managed to explain many of the mysterious things that happen in the brain to me. It has also helped me to understand why we perceive this ‘mental duality’ that makes us believe we have a ‘free will’.
The part of the brain that tells us WHAT to do…
My brain model clearly shows how one part of the brain has the specific task of telling us WHAT to do. We experience this as emotions – physical feelings based on homeostatic functions – that urge us to do things when these functions go out of balance (outside of their acceptable ranges). Some of these will urge us to pursue things e.g. food (hunger), and others will urge us to avoid things e.g. hazardous situations (fear).
Over the years we learn what to do to address these emotional demands. For instance, if you get hungry, you know you should walk to the kitchen. To achieve this you walk down the passage and at the Da Vinci print on the wall, you turn right into the kitchen. Similarly, if you are cold, you know you should walk to the drying cupboard which is located down the passage and left at the Da Vinci print – here you can turn up the central heating. We don’t know these navigational routes as babies, we learn about these over time.
We form associations and with a lot of patience from our loving parents, we eventually learn how to walk down the passage and either turn right or turn left to act on these emotions. When we get food or turn up the heat – we feel better and our behaviours that solved the problem are reinforced – stored in the brain as the correct behaviours to resolve these emotions in future.
In this way we come to form a whole database of associations (memories) that we can use when next we need to act on one of these emotions.
Part of the brain tells us HOW to do things…
Let’s now use the example where your mother has hidden a slab of chocolate in the drying cupboard. She told you that you are only allowed to eat some of the chocolate over the weekend. You are also aware that there are apples in the kitchen.
While watching TV in the lounge, you suddenly start to feel hungry. You get up and start walking down the passage. The hunger emotions will now automatically access that part of your memory where hunger solutions are stored including navigational cues. It will use visual information about your environment to narrow down the options…i.e. it will use the visual images of the passage to narrow down the options to apples or chocolate, and eliminate further afield food sources e.g. sushi, pizza, take-away fish and chips, etc.
Since the chocolate tastes better to you, the navigational cues to walk to the chocolate will be stronger and more persistent. But now the context around the chocolate reveals itself and suddenly you see your mother’s face again warning you that the chocolate is for the weekend. You are suddenly filled with fear that you will disappoint your mother, and this diminishes the appeal of the chocolate. In the end the fear is strong enough to make you rather navigate to the apples. You will feel as if you have ‘decided’ to rather go to the apples…
When we get an urge our brains will propose numerous options to us to solve the situation (in my model we call this directed Threading). It will also flash up images (along with their emotions) to create the context around each proposal. This context will eliminate certain options. The food might be too far away (restaurant), to unhealthy, take too long to prepare, etc. So the context around each food option will weaken or strengthen the emotional urge to pursue it. Negative connotations will erode the appeal of some source and positive connotations will strengthen the appeal.
It will feel as if we actually made a decision based on the options presented to us by our brains.
That is indeed true. But it is also true that this decision was made by the processes (physical mechanisms) of the brain and there was no entity involved separate from the brain itself.
This decisional interaction between two parts of the brain, where a request is put to the brain by part A (WHAT) and options are presented by part B (HOW), then weighed up and whittled down to a final answer, all happens within the brain – driven by emotions and informed by learning – totally isolated from external influence. Even if someone were to yell at you to stay away from the chocolate, that information from the environment will only serve to change the ‘context’ of the chocolate option and affect the strength or weakness of the emotion to pursue the chocolate. Deciding to not go for the chocolate, is just a result of the same process in the mind – not by a separate or external entity.
And it is easy to think you are not just your brain, that your brain is a handy companion that accompanies you on your path through life providing advice. It really feels as if we can enter into conversations and debate with this helpful mental companion – sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing. But both the ‘me’ and ‘my brain’ taking part in these dialogues, is the same entity that finally decides what you will do and what you will not do.
This squarely puts me in the camp of those believing that true ‘free will’ does not exist.
But I will never stifle a lively discussion around ‘free will’ when sitting with friends around the BBQ fire and enjoying a good glass of Merlot – as I can always decide to change my mind about ‘free will’ if I choose to do so.
Yes, I can change my mind. Or can I?
