Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics.
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
No, but you have the ability to sense your heartbeat, so you can tell that it's there.
You don't have the ability to sense electromagnetic emissions in the X-ray frequency range, so you can't tell that they're there. You wouldn't know if X-rays of a given intensity were present at a given moment. It's like asking "why is there the illusion that there are no X-rays" when you wouldn't expect to feel differently regardless of their presence or non-presence.
But my body also takes actions which I don't control and of which I'm not conscious. E.g., normal cell death and replacement (granted, I would eventually notice if this stopped, but not in the short term). I don't have the illusion of control over those actions, but I do have a sense (real or not) of control over others. My question is, why do I have that sense if it's not real?
The premiss involves the idea that it would feel different, that my deliberate acts would feel (like cell replacement) like a thing that happens, rather than a thing I'm doing. Granted, if I were unconscious of all my acts, it wouldn't feel like anything (like my experience of x-rays, which is a non-experience), but then I would be unconscious. So, if I'm interpreting you correctly, are you suggesting that the sense of will is a property of consciousness, and that consciousness is itself an emergent property of sensory experience?