Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[Whateverist]

Imagine a master painter creating a masterpiece one brush stroke at a time. Each movement of his hand meticulously chosen to create the desired effect. Yet, what if each of those motions was chosen for him before he was consciously aware of the choice and only took credit for it upon the moment of that awareness? Experiments by Libet, Soon, Fried, Haynes and others suggest exactly that.

No they don't.

Experiments suggest that our brains decide what we're going to do it before we're conscious of it.

This is very different.

Are you conscious of all the visual processing going on in your brain to determine that what you are looking at is an apple regardless of whether someone moves it up, down, sideways, further away, throws it, partially hides it or shines a blue light on it?

Moravec's paradox tells us that the majority of intelligence is devoted to these kind of tasks that we take for granted. Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg.

You know this is a good point to make regarding what is wrong with scientism which you brought up in that other thread.

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No they don't.

Experiments suggest that our brains decide what we're going to do it before we're conscious of it.

This is very different.

Are you conscious of all the visual processing going on in your brain to determine that what you are looking at is an apple regardless of whether someone moves it up, down, sideways, further away, throws it, partially hides it or shines a blue light on it?

Moravec's paradox tells us that the majority of intelligence is devoted to these kind of tasks that we take for granted. Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg.

If decisions are made in the brain before we are conscious of having made them, then "we" didn't make them, our brains did this unconsciously, just like processing visual information to identify an object. If we (our conscious self) can't take credit for having made a given choice, then we attribute this choice to an unconscious process. Unconscious processes are natural processes since a vital component of intelligence (as many would define it) is conscious choice. Without it there is no distinction from any autonomic response in the body.

I see no reason for such a dramatic disassociation between what your brain is doing and "you".  A good deal of our subjective/intentional/volitional life involves riding the waves of preconscious processing - and we are much more versatile and adaptive because of it.