Conscious Automatism: Part One

Tonight, I speak to you as a robot -- a conglomeration of molecular machines.  In fact, I have always done so, since my birth.  And, matter of fact, all of you are robots, too.

A song titled conscious automata:  http://vimeo.com/3051734.  I thought it was pretty interesting.  Sounds like the Hindu or Buddhist concept of "OM."

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I had such a problem in class thinking about "conscious automatism" -- where our consciousness is just a result of physical, bodily events (an epiphenomenon) and every action we make is a direct result of our conditioning or some physical event that actually 'exists' in the physical world.  Conscious automatism makes me really angry and for some reason it doesn't make any sense to me.  My mind, my being, my body wants to resist it with such force that I almost wanted to cry in class the other day. Maybe there's some missing link here, and in it's absence, 'conscious automatism' is all we come up with.

I can choose to be sad or happy -- if I choose to be optimistic, I can see the direct effect of this on my mood (a physical quality).  This leads me to ask, what is the physical nature of a choice?  What exactly happens here?  Does the physical world really act out a choice without any sort of intervention from an outside agent, a consciousness?

When I make a choice, several thoughts appear in my mind. I consider each thought, and have several different scenarios or images running through my head.  I make comparisons, I 'weigh' the possibilities.    While I am inclined to be a realist, take conscious automatism at face value, and stick solely to what is believable in the physical world, I have such a hard time subscribing to these views.  Really... some molecules -- or electrical impulses-- are dancing in my brain until an epiphenomenal cloud of thoughts passes, and reveals the correct choice based on some sort of paths, logic statements, and neural gateways?  I just don't get it at all.  Why would such epiphenomena exist?  For what reason would the epiphenomena of free will and thought exist?!  Ugh, I get so angry and I don't entirely know why.  (My anger is just an epiphenomenon anyways... bahahahahaha!)

Personally, I'm inclined to think, as weird as it might sound, that the body is a database and a tool for an intangible soul.  The physical system stores memories and facilitates comparisons between areas of the brain, but there is something beyond the body that drives the machine.  I believe it's the same for animals, too, but the amount that the soul can effect the world through them is different.  I think reflexes are  like autopilot on a plane.  I think that our body is taught reflex mechanisms too from pain and pleasure and that memories associated with these are stored in the brain.  But... still, why do the epiphenomena of pain and pleasure even exist?  Why do we feel anything at all?  Why doesn't our brain just learn from pain silently?  Wouldn't this be the same?  If we're conscious automata, if our brain had learned to not do something, we just wouldn't do it again because our bodies would refuse to act. There wouldn't have to be the epiphenomena of pain.

Maybe the epiphenomena are what help our bodies communicate with other people.  Who knows.  Maybe Huxley (the original author of the idea of 'conscious automatism') is right, and our thoughts are just like the whistling sound coming from a hot teapot... the thoughts themselves a superfluous result from a physical process.  I just can't accept this, though, because it seems like thoughts ought to have some purpose. Ugh.  I'm probably not understanding this entirely.

I once watched a documentary titled Quantum Activist (which I can't find a link to anymore) which discussed the several different ways in which quantum theory aims to justify the existence of God, the mind, etc.  I would like to watch this again, and once I do, I think I will comment on it.  I also plan to read a bit more on this subject, just to make sure I actually understand what I'm saying here.