Choice

What is choice?

What mental ability is required to make a choice?

Choice could be considered to be; the awareful option to take an alternate action.

It seems fundamental that the individual should be aware of the option, because without that awareness, they would be simply taking an action because either they believe it is their only option, or they don't comprehend the concepts involved in their own action resulting in a different outcome.

So the minimal mental ability to be able to make a choice, seems to be the mental comprehension that the individual themselves, are able to cause an alternate result, by their action. In order to comprehend that an alternate action can cause an alternate result, they should be able to comprehend the concept of cause and effect. They must be able to understand that alternate effects are possible as a result of an alternate cause. They also must be able to comprehend that they are able to alter that cause of that effect.

It should be possible that the individual does not comprehend the concept of cause and effect, in general, as long as they can have the awareness of cause and effect within the specific circumstances. But by my understanding, in most circumstances, most animals do not even have this minimal comprehension. This is if animals mostly act on subconscious feedback, by simply taking the action which has the most significant feedback, connected to the memory most resembling the current scenario. Also, similarly, animals don’t seem to use comprehension if they act on instinctual feedback, as then they are taking an action based on feedback to basic situations, which is triggered by genetics (rather than memory).

But for an individual to actually comprehend their ability to take an alternate action, and therefore cause an alternate effect, they should be able to access the information of both potential actions, and both potential results caused by each action. If the individual can simultaneously access memory of that information, they should then effectively comprehend, in that moment, that they have the capability to cause an alternate result.

The key for the ability to make a choice, seems to be conscious comprehension. An individual needs to have the capability to be aware that they have a choice, and that their action can cause a different outcome. In order to be aware of alternate potential outcomes, they need to comprehend the cause and effect of the options. If they are conscious of the cause and effect of their actions, relative to the results, they can then cause that which is most preferable to them, by making their choice.

Conscious Control

How is conscious control applied?

And, what are the potential maximum effects of its implementation?

For this explanation, Conscious Control can be understood as; the concept of using comprehension and awareness, to override emotion, subconscious mindsets, and instinctual drive to effectively control your mind.

By my hypothesis, conscious control can be applied simply by actively accessing memories of relevant and relative information. This seems common and easy enough, but applying this to a certain extent can be uncommon and difficult.

In normal circumstances subconscious mindsets and instinctual drive take over a lot of the steering wheel of the mind. Typically, in any simple situation, someone will just react quickly, based on mindsets which they are unaware of, at the time. A mindset builds from circumstances which are imprecisely resembling, occurring repetitively. If the similar circumstances occur enough with a similar result of positive or negative reinforcement, then a mindset is built to pursue or avoid those circumstances. To apply conscious control, and override the mindset, the individual needs to actively access memories of more precise information. Accessing more memories of accurate causes and effect of present factors, should no doubt result in a more accurate prediction of outcome of the situation. The more accurately that information in memories are accessed, the more probable the person (or AI, or alien, or intellectually advanced animal ;) is to be able to make a decision which is beneficial to them.

Just like mindsets, emotion or instinct will often drive an individual to take an action based on loose and inaccurate presets. Instinct is more like a genetic preset reaction to pursue or avoid basic scenarios, if no mindset has been built from recurring experiences which would outrank the instinct. Emotions are virtually preset reinforcement triggers. Emotions can be triggered by reacting to basic sensory input of instinctual drive or subconscious mindsets. Once the emotion is in effect, it is often an overreigning influence on actions and decisions. The emotion can then cause avoidance or pursuance of new circumstances, even though the new situation was not that which triggered the original emotion. But just as it can over mindsets, conscious control can override it all, by actively accessing information of relevant cause and effect concepts, involving the specific factors at hand.

The maximum extents of conscious control are an interesting prospect. Hypothetically, conscious comprehension should be capable of completely controlling the mind and body. The biology of current humans might not allow such function of the brain, at this time, but this is hypothetical! Active awareness of concepts regarding the most beneficial outcome, could allow someone to endure any amount of pain. Pain is basically an instinctual reaction to harm of the body. But in certain circumstances, if someone actively comprehends that the physical harm is beneficial for a certain result, they could override the urge to avoid the pain.

A more practical and realistic application of conscious control could be resisting pursuance of a factor, which instinct or subconscious desire. For example, resisting addiction to a drug or unhealthy food. Active memory use should allow access to more accurate predictions of that which is beneficial to the individual. They can access memories of the concepts that the drug or unhealthy food will cause long term harm, then use that comprehension to force an alternate decision. Instinct or mindsets would urge them to pursue the drug or food, as they cause the effect of positive reinforcement in the brain. There is a lack of memory access of the relevant accurate information of the complex, long-term chain of effects of harm, which drugs or unhealthy food cause.

In the new age of complex scenarios, with a multitude of variables and information, the mind can be a complex mess of emotion, mindsets and instinct triggering each other. But there exists the potential to override the basic inaccurate information triggering, of an often less beneficial action. The active memory access of Conscious Control.