![]() They looked younger as assessed by outside judges. At the end of the five days, the group improved on seven out of eight measures, including better vision, a startling finding. In other words, the mind was being motivated to affect the body.īefore entering the time-capsule environment, the men were tested on various markers of aging such as grip strength, dexterity, and how well they could hear and see. The men were told to act as if they were their younger selves, because Langer had already done experiments in which memory loss in the elderly could sometimes be reversed by giving subjects an incentive to remember. In 1981 Langer took eight men in their seventies, all in good health but exhibiting signs of age, and immersed them for five days in an environment that was like time travel going back to 1959, including the music and television of the period, along with the movies and events in the news. ![]() The medieval Indian philosopher and sage Adi Shankara declared that people grow old and die because they see other people grow old and die.) (The notion is actually ancient in origin. The focus of the article was the pioneering work of Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, who as far back as 1981 was testing the possibility that aging has a major mental component. Quite recently, for example, an article in the New York Times posed the startling question, " What if Age Is Nothing but a Mind-Set?" A flood of research findings is emerging around this. So the real issue, which overturns the old dichotomy between free will and determinism, is how to find the switches that control genes and neurons. In turn, the brain that makes this choice can be conditioned by habit (there are people who only eat meat and potatoes, and that's that) or it can be influenced by new thinking (after reading an article about the benefits of eating fish, for example). ![]() In the same way, if you eat a charbroiled steak for dinner, your digestive tract will follow fixed physiological processes, but you can choose to eat salmon instead. But you can alter these instructions by turning the thermostat up and down. Once the thermostat is set, the house's heating system must follow its fixed instructions. Consider how you control the temperature in your house. The two extremes are complementary opposites coexist and cooperate. determinism debate is no longer theoretical. Its processes follow strict laws of physics and chemistry, yet neurons, synapses, and brain circuitry are open to change simply by the way we lead our lives. Genes determine the color of your hair and eyes, but thanks to the emerging science of epigenetics, we now know that genes are also fluid, malleable, and in fact responsive to everything we experience in the world. Here is where a new view of free will is needed. How can genes both control us and allow for free choice? How can the brain produce thought but also be affected by thinking? Instead of working out the problem of free will largely by logical reasoning (which rarely succeeds, since your opponent calls upon the opposite logic), supporters of free will can point to genetics and neuroscience, the very areas that strongly suggest that determinism is at work. The free will camp has been short of data and facts for a long time, but no more. This has created a serious mismatch between experience and theory, because science, after all, is supposed to settle difficult questions with data, experiments, and facts. determinism debate totally academic–in everyday life we all proceed as if our choices and decisions are our own. The average person finds the free will vs. A generation ago human behavior was largely attributed to genes, although the fashion today is to claim that the brain is the major controller of what we think, say, and do. There is ample proof, on the other hand, that deterministic forces are at work inside us. There is no proof you have a soul, if you are a materialist. On many grounds this anthem to free will can be refuted. The other leg was saved only after many surgeries, and while he was recovering, Henley was inspired to write his poem, which ended on a triumphant note: "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." Henley had grown up in poverty, and when he was 29 one of his legs had to be amputated as a consequence of tuberculosis. The sentiment being expressed is more than empty piousness. Back when schoolchildren regularly read uplifting poetry, there was a famous Victorian poem that affirmed the human birthright of free will.
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