How much control do we really have over our lives? (intellectualize, characteristics)

[mateo45]

There's an old saying that, "if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans!" And a growing body of research in neuroscience is suggesting that "we" aren't really "in charge", at least the way we think we are.

But the question here is less about "free will", than about whether, and how much, we ultimately just end up 'choosing' how we respond, to whatever 'fate', 'destiny', etc. happens to throw at us.

Or, does it really all just come down to the "narrative" (aka, 'story") that we finally choose to explain it with, "after the fact"?

Scientific evidence that you probably don’t have free will

Your Storytelling Brain

[Nanny Goat]

I don't believe we have that much control over our lives, esp. the big stuff. But, the little stuff we probably do. I think most big stuff is just fated to happen and you can either go along with it or fight it. Either way, it's what is supposed to happen.

[McGowdog]

I think it's a matter of answering the question, "How much freedom do you want?"

When you get to the place of, "So our troubles we think are probably of our own making.", then you are free.

If you feel you're a victim to life or a pawn in your own life, you can make that happen too.

If you think that you can manipulate God or the Universe for your own selfish ends, then join the club. If you think you can sit back and expect God or the Universe to micromanage your life, welcome to that club too.

For me to succeed in life and/or manifest the things I want, it usually entails having things removed from my life that are blocking me from what I want/need, not having things added on.

[Jjury15]

I think it's 50/50. 50% we can control, 50% we can't.

[cloven]

I have an external "locus of control"-do not believe that I'm "in charge" of most of how/who/what I am (and the same goes for anyone else).
My genetic manifestation & formative family (and cultural/social/psychological) environment were not things I, as an individual conscious entity, had any influence over.

From "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman (2011):

"Based on what we've been learning, don't such biological processes describe most or, some would argue, all of what is going on in our brains ? Given the steering power of our genetics, childhood experiences, environmental toxins, hormones, neurotransmitters, and neural circuitry, enough of our decisions are beyond our explicit control that we are arguably not the ones in charge. In other words, free will may exist-but if it does, it has very little room in which to operate. So I'm going to propose what I call the principle of sufficient automatism. The principle arises naturally from the understanding that free will, if it exists, is only a small factor riding on top of enormous automated machinery."

There's far more to life than the miniscule slice/fraction of phenomena or stimuli that we're "aware" of or can intellectualize/rationalize about.
I *don't* mean that in a supernatural/mystical way, either-just plain anatomy/biology (and epigenetics), the reptilian & limbic areas of the brain.

Also, each person is unique-we don't all feel equally drawn to or repulsed by the same things,
so for one person it's easy to abstain from-or do in moderation-(insert name of unhealthy habit here),
yet for another person, with a different physiology/neurology, that (unhealthy habit) may be nearly irresistible.
Same goes for healthy habits (again, not going to get into which things count as healthy or not)-
some folks may find that easy to do, other folks cannot force/coerce themselves into doing that healthy thing.
Everybody has different cravings and aversions, and different preferred methods/venues/behaviors/products to get their personal needs & wants satisfied.

ETA
And yes, I've read many case study stories, such as with "split-brain" patients, where the person's explanation for their behavior/thinking is clearly flawed (in the experimental setting),
yet this is similar to what everyone's brain does, we just don't notice it because it seems to work "well enough" often enough.
The left side of brain (I think) cooks up a narrative that includes whatever it perceives, and it's rare that we're able to notice
that "in-house" (behind-the-scenes) fudging of the facts (or grasping at straws for a rationale behind the conclusion we've already arrived at).
Much of what we generate for reasoning is post-hoc, and was not at all obvious until *after* the fact (and then we might say "I knew it all along", though that's false).

[mateo45]

Originally Posted by cloven

"In other words, free will may exist - but if it does, it has very little room in which to operate."

Thanks, I love that! In his Gifford lecture series, neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga also gives a great overview of his research on split brain patients, especially his explanation of the left hemisphere's unique ability to make a "story" out of whatever information it perceives, even if it's false information. In fact the left brain is so good at this specialized task, that he has dubbed it "The Interpreter".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJKl...A0578F&index=3

[swanstone1]

As for your initial topic about how much control we have over what happens, I say none. However, you did underscore the question about how you "respond?" I say 100 %...so on average we're 50%.

[6.7traveler]

I think we have a decent amount of control in this game of life... Granted, aging and health related problems of you and your loved ones are inevitable, but in the mean time we have pretty much the freedom to do what we want. More than 50% I'd say. The trick is to remove your limiting beliefs of possibilities and go from there. Also in today's day and age I would add that money gives us more control over our lives than anything else. Money can enable health, happiness, and literally your freedom. If you have cancer with a lot of money you're more likely to live than someone who doesn't have money. If you get arrested and have a lot of money, you're more likely to walk free, etc, etc. Sad, but true. Anyways, not having the victim mentality and removing limiting beliefs gives us lots of control over our experiences.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by mateo45

But the question here is less about "free will", than about whether, and how much, we ultimately just end up 'choosing' how we respond, to whatever 'fate', 'destiny', etc. happens to throw at us.

Or, does it really all just come down to the "narrative" (aka, 'story") that we finally choose to explain it with, "after the fact"?

A lot hinges on your understanding of "I" or "self". If you are thinking of in terms of the standard concept of "ego" then there is a sense in which we don't have much, if any, control. It is fairly clear that the neural activity that constitutes the qualitative character of our conscious experience of "making a choice" comes after the neural correlates constituting this "act of choosing". Loosely speaking, neuroscience seems to indicate that "the brain" makes the choice before "you" do. I think, however, that this way to of thinking about the qualia of experience is misleading. (Qualia = the subjective/qualitative elements of experience.)

It is important to realize that the qualitative feel of agency (i.e., of being the one-who-acts or the choice-maker) is, itself, a particular type of neural activity. Some people have brain damage that prevents them from having the qualitative feel of being an agent, even though it appears that they are, in ordinary terms, just as much agents as anyone else. In other words, it is useful to distinguish being an agent from feeling like I am an agent. Based on neurological studies and anecdotes, it is possible to be and agent without feeling like you are the agent of your actions, and it is possible to think you are the agent when you are, in fact, not the agent. Consider, for example, what Christof Koch says about agency in his book Consciousness:

Like other subjective experiences, this feeling of willing has specific phenomenal content. It has a quale no different in kind from the quale of tasting bitter almond. In terms of Libet’s experiment, your brain decides that now is a good time to flex the wrist, and the readiness potential builds up. A bit later, the neural correlate of agency becomes active. It is tothis percept that you incorrectly attribute causality. […] The feeling of agency is no more responsible for the actual decision than thunder for the lightning stroke. [Consciousness, p. 107]

But the point I want to make is this: The qualitative characteristics of all of our conscious experiences are constituted by unconscious neural processes. Each conscious quale is a culmination of neural activity that, prior to the critical point of culmination, could be considered to be unconscious. Is this unconscious activity "not me" just because I was not consciously in control of each neural firing? From the perspective of the "I" - the "feeling of being an agent" (or, in some cases, the "feeling of being the one who did not choose to do that"), these unconscious processes can be seen as "not me" but just because they are perceived as "not me" it does not follow that they are actually "not me". Like it or not, I am more than I am consciously aware of myself as being. I am more than my current conscious moment. I am a process by which conscious moments arise; I am the whole process - not just the tiny conscious tip of the process. I am the agent of my actions, even if I do not recognize the micro-details of the processes constituting my agency as "being me."

The whole of a process is not the cause of the temporal beginning of the process, and thus Koch rightly says that the feeling of agency is no more responsible for the actual decision than thunder for the lightning stroke. But this does not mean that I am just a puppet on a string. Thunder is different than the lightening strike, but this is a misleading analogy because a quale is not different than the neural process that constitutes it. The quale is an aspect of the whole of the neural process, not a "product of" the process. Qualia are not "produced" by neural activity in the way that thunder is produced by lightening. The unconscious aspects of a neural process are just must as much "me" as the conscious qualia that I experience.

I did not choose to be born, and I did not choose my nature, so in some sense my "free will" clearly limited. But given my nature, and given that this nature is not purely determined by prior events going all the way back to the Big Bang, there is a fairly strong sense in which I can, in principle, create my own narrative. To quote Koch again: Your unfolding life is an unwritten book. [Consciousness, p. 111]

A great deal of my nature is unconscious, but this doesn't mean it's not my nature. If my neurons are doing what they do because of my nature, and part of what my neurons do amounts to filling in the blank pages of my life as I go along, then I can, in principle, have a great deal of control over my life.

[augiedogie]

The Bible teaches that our control over our lives is limited. Some of this is a no brainer. We can't control the date of our birth, who are parents will be, when we are born, or what talents or handicaps we will have. But the Bible indicates our control is even less than this. It says that God makes some people rich and some poor, some die young and some live a long life. And God determines how many days we have on the earth. But there's no proof for this. Its religion.