Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[The__Chameleon]

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. So let us presuppose that what we think of as free will is in fact the product of natural laws acting upon the brain at a subconscious level and then appearing as conscious choice the moment before it's acted upon. Free will would therefore be an illusion. If this is true, then it would logically follow that all characteristics of, or stemming from free will would then also be illusions, including, but not limited to, human intelligence, and personal identity. And if one considers this at least plausible, then what we have defined as intelligence comes not from us, but from the sum of natural laws acting upon us. Therefore, by our own benchmark of intelligence, the sum of these laws qualifies, and therefore they can not technically be considered natural at all.


The sum of all physical laws must either be considered to have intelligence or the word "intelligence" must be considered meaningless. For if we consider intelligence to be, at it's source, the product of purely natural phenomena, then it loses all meaning. I propose the former to be the case. And I call this new found "god" The Puppetmaster as it predetermines everything people think and do and does not bestow upon its robotic  creations free will, but merely the vain illusory perception thereof.


... Your thoughts?

[Anomalocaris]

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. So let us presuppose that what we think of as free will is in fact the product of natural laws acting upon the brain at a subconscious level and then appearing as conscious choice the moment before it's acted upon. Free will would therefore be an illusion. If this is true, then it would logically follow that all characteristics of, or stemming from free will would then also be illusions, including, but not limited to, human intelligence, and personal identity. And if one considers this at least plausible, then what we have defined as intelligence comes not from us, but from the sum of natural laws acting upon us. Therefore, by our own benchmark of intelligence, the sum of these laws qualifies, and therefore they can not technically be considered natural at all.


The sum of all physical laws must either be considered to have intelligence or the word "intelligence" must be considered meaningless. For if we consider intelligence to be, at it's source, the product of purely natural phenomena, then it loses all meaning. I propose the former to be the case. And I call this new found "god" The Puppetmaster as it predetermines everything people think and do and does not bestow upon it  srobotic  creations free will, but merely the vain illusory perception thereof.


... Your thoughts?

I would not want to succumb to the illusion of thinking.

[Chad32]

I'm sure it's a mix of both. A lot of what we are comes from things outside of our control, either by nature or nurture. Yet I'm also sure that some things are in our control too. This is probably one of those really big philosophical things that doesn't have one simple answer. Even if we don't have true free will, we should still probably act as if we have some. Just to keep us from getting stagnant in the idea of traditions. One of the things that hold back progress is the thought that "This is just how it is. Why change it?"

[Brian37]

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. So let us presuppose that what we think of as free will is in fact the product of natural laws acting upon the brain at a subconscious level and then appearing as conscious choice the moment before it's acted upon. Free will would therefore be an illusion. If this is true, then it would logically follow that all characteristics of, or stemming from free will would then also be illusions, including, but not limited to, human intelligence, and personal identity. And if one considers this at least plausible, then what we have defined as intelligence comes not from us, but from the sum of natural laws acting upon us. Therefore, by our own benchmark of intelligence, the sum of these laws qualifies, and therefore they can not technically be considered natural at all.


The sum of all physical laws must either be considered to have intelligence or the word "intelligence" must be considered meaningless. For if we consider intelligence to be, at it's source, the product of purely natural phenomena, then it loses all meaning. I propose the former to be the case. And I call this new found "god" The Puppetmaster as it predetermines everything people think and do and does not bestow upon its robotic  creations free will, but merely the vain illusory perception thereof.


... Your thoughts?

"Mental masturbation" to me will never replace the scientific method of collecting data, observation, control groups, testing and falsifying and peer review.

And I really do not care if it is someone selling old mythology or si fi woo.

[The__Chameleon]

I'm sure it's a mix of both. A lot of what we are comes from things outside of our control, either by nature or nurture. Yet I'm also sure that some things are in our control too. This is probably one of those really big philosophical things that doesn't have one simple answer. Even if we don't have true free will, we should still probably act as if we have some. Just to keep us from getting stagnant in the idea of traditions. One of the things that hold back progress is the thought that "This is just how it is. Why change it?"

The theory proposes that both nature and nurture are purely predetermined by an entity that operates as the sum of all physical laws. Our sense of self is a side-effect of this entities choices as they are made manifest through the actions predetermined for us. There are those that say there is no god (divine intelligence). But this is the idea that there is no man (human intelligence). And the neat thing is, the data backs it up.

[Chad32]

I will agree that the more we find out about ourselves, and animals, the more we find that there isn't much difference between us. A lot of us just have too much time on our hands to think about things beyond basic survival.

[I_am_not_mafia]

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.

[LostLocke]

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

This is one of the issues these types of "philosophies" seem to exhibit a lot. The people who push what the OP is saying often times mix "low level subconscious processing" with "predetermination".

[Brian37]

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.

Our brains decide what we are going to do before we are conscious of it? I have been a Redskins fan all my life. We suck right now. Why is it I go out of my way to stay on the Titanic?

[The__Chameleon]

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.

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.


Would you consider instincts to be natural or intelligent? What I propose is that humans possess highly evolved instincts masquerading as free will. These instincts (or the parts of the brain associated with them) react to and process input automatically rather than in response to a conscious choice. Our conscious awareness of these natural responses gives us the impression that our conscious mind initiated them when in fact this impression is false.