Consciousness is a huge topic in which a whole lot of the discussions can be had about “the hard problem” that extends to “qualia” (e.g. the experience of “redness”), how it happens, why it happens (a faulty question in my opinion), how it relates to the brain, and so on.  These discussions about consciousness can be had  without addressing the “free will” question.

One of the questions are about the nature of conscious experience itself. The so called mind-body problem. And though “free will” is logically incoherent regardless of dualism (the idea that mind and brain/body are in some way separate) or monism (the idea that the mind is simply an extension of the brain/body – an output of it), there are some people who assert some sort of dualism, and often they suggest such dualism can allow for some type of free will.

Such can be combated by a number of ways. The first way is to give such the benefit of the doubt. It’s to, for the sake of argument, agree with some type of dualism, and then show how free will is equally as impossible. Another way is to address what the scientific evidence points to. That’s what this article will be concerned with.

It’s easy to give consciousness some sort of special status outside of “physical reality”, since it appears so different from anything else in the universe due to the way we perceive, the way information feeds into our minds, the way such info is thought about and parsed, the way we can imagine and in a sense create, how we sense (see, smell, feel, hear, taste), and so on. It’s such a bizarre occurrence that each of us can only experience individually (at least currently).

But this “special status” goes against literally mounds of scientific evidence that a functioning brain and mind (conscious experience) are one in the same and that consciousness is actually what an active brain state produces when it’s doing what it does. In some way, it’s similar to “roundness” and “rolling” of a ball down a hill.  That’s what certain “round” things do when they are on a “slope” in a gravitational field. No one considers “roundness” or  “rolling” the object itself, but rather properties of the object and it’s behavior due to those properties. Likewise, the output of conscious experience is just what “brains do” when very specific electro-chemical reactions occur.

Some mistakenly place the cart before the horse (mind proceeds brain), or they suggest a partial or complete separation, or they place the mind in some more “magical” realm.  Some use their misunderstandings of quantum mechanics to give some special-ness to consciousness. One needs to look no further than documentaries like “What the Bleep Do We Know!” or “The Secret” or to the absurdities of the likes of Deepak Chopra, to see examples of such.

But what do we know? What types of evidence can we touch upon?

Here is a small list from the mounds of evidence out there: Continue reading »