Thursday 18 February 2010

Faces of consciousness and free will

1. Self-awareness is contemplating self inside the model of the world. It is like you watching a chess board with all the pieces moving by themselves except one piece which moves at your will. This builds strong association between the perceived object and self. This piece you call 'I'. 2. Conscious behaviour is a prediction of the future of the world model with implications of the potential action of 'I'. You may drive a car unconsciously. But when a policeman stops you, you immediately become aware of all possible future scenarios of the current situation. Hence what you are about to do is a conscious decision. 3. Conscience is the ethical judgement of personal actions and thoughts. It is not only a perception of the facts, but also colouring them and placing on the scale of desirable and undesirable. Conscience is not really consciousness since it serves for establishing moral dogmata in relation to the behaviour. 4. Free will phenomenon appears on two levels. On micro-scale, actual movements and other muscle control is the result of a mental decision made by brain. A free will sense on this level comes from self-awareness. On macro-scale, deeds or life decisions are the result of conditional beliefs and circumstances. The beliefs or truths are a remembered result of combining the information coming from outside and internal emotional state and feelings. The truths are formed inside during the life and they condition our behaviour.