Neuroscientist loses a 25-year bet on consciousness — to a philosopher

ZenMode said:
That's not what I asked. I asked what makes you believe you are consciously creating your thoughts. Are you consciously firing specific synapses in your brain? Are you consciously assembling thoughts before you think them? thoughts before you think them?
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I consciously think about things, yes, all the time. I find your descriptions to be pathological.
 
Hume said:
I consciously think about things, yes, all the time. I find your descriptions to be pathological.
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Sure, we all think about things all the time. In fact, it's almost impossible to quiet the thoughts in your consciousness.

Again, I asked what makes you believe, from your experience of thinking, that you are able to consciously create your thoughts. Do you know what you're going to think before you think it? Do you consciously assemble thoughts in your brain or fire specific synapses in your brain to cause specific thoughts?
 
ZenMode said:
Again, I asked what makes you believe, from your experience of thinking, that you are able to consciously create your thoughts?
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So, I am writing a philosophy article. I plan the topic and write and analyze concepts. What I think needs to be developed and I deliberately think the things that need to be thought out.
 
Hume said:
So, I am writing a philosophy article. I plan the topic and write and analyze concepts. What I think needs to be developed and I deliberately think the things that need to be thought out.
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That's no different than you being thirsty and deciding to fill up a water bottle. All of your thoughts, and corresponding actions, are outside of your control.

Your thoughts are directed by external events, and those thoughts may be continually related to those events for some period of time, but you still didn't consciously create them or have any conscious control over them.
 
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Hume said:
My desire to write about metaphysics is caused by an external event? What is that external event?
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I don't know, but you didn't consciously create the thought to write the paper any more than you consciously create a thought that you're thirsty. The thought....all of them.....just appear in consciousness because you have no visibility to, or control over, the neurological events that created those thoughts. Your brain creates thoughts (again, constantly) and pushes them into consciousness completely out of your control.
 
ZenMode said:
I don't know, but you didn't consciously create the thought to write the paper any more than you consciously create a thought that you're thirsty. The thought....all of them.....just appear in consciousness because you have no visibility to, or control over, the neurological events that created those thoughts. Your brain creates thoughts (again, constantly) and pushes them into consciousness completely out of your control.
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Sorry, that is just bizarre. No neuroscientist would agree with you.
 
Hume said:
I am an artist and philosopher. I spend a lot of time creating my thoughts. Maybe you just have no imagination.
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You're mistaking thoughts happening with you creating them. Like I said, do you have conscious control over which synapses fire to create specific thoughts? Do you know what you're going to think before the thought appears in consciousness? The thought appearing in consciousness is the end of the process. That's the part you experience. Everything up steam is completely mysterious and out of your control.
 
Hume said:
No, it is part of the process.
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No. It’s the end. Your brain does the work to create a thought like “I’m thirsty” based on the current state of your body. Your brain then pushes that thought into consciousness where you become aware of it. The thought exists before you consciously experienced it.
 
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