Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum WILLpower. The Birth of a New Science? Yes, or no?

THE BIRTH OF A NEW SCIENCE?

The thread is based on professor Roy Baumeister’s book: WILLPOWER—Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (2011).

The book was given to me for Christmas, 2011 by my three very perceptive grandchildren—then 16, 20, & 23. I read it--and I underlined it as I did so, as soon as I could; and I have been studying it ever since. Here is a review from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/...?pagewanted=all

In addition to facts listed in the following link—
http://www.ideafit.com/library/how-to-strengthen-willpower-part-1 — those which I found with the help of my personal experiences and those which I found in a search for other links on the topic--I also add that I am having lots of fun using my personal supply of WILLpower.

BTW, in addition to the above, I found that this information continues to help me to further the rediscovery of “the Greatest Human Strength” which the ancient Greeks called agape—the highest and moral good for all of us, without any negative-emotions and other such limiting conditions.

There have been 57 hits. Is no one interested in answering the question? Or making a comment?

It generally leads to you wanting to bring the attention to yourself...., your beliefs, your biography etc. etc.
Your quote regarding Agape is not a word one would normally use to describe willpower but rather a condition of mind or state of being that is without conditions or conditioning. Willpower applied to the conditioned mind is inclusive of attachments, beliefs, opinions and conditioning.

Baumeister is a psychologist...

The word "psychology" is the combination of two terms - study (ology) and soul (psyche), or mind. The derivation of the word from Latin gives it this clear and obvious meaning:

The study of the soul or mind.

This meaning has been altered over the years until today, this is not what the word means at all. The subject of psychology, as studied in colleges and universities, currently has very little to do with the mind, and absolutely nothing to do with the soul or spirit.

It is important to understand that words and ideas are supposed to refer to something. "The large tree in the front yard" refers to an actual thing that can be seen, touched and experienced. "The man walking his little dog last night at sunset" refers to an actual event that can be seen, observed and experienced. The realm of mind is an actual realm that can be experienced, and at one time there were words that accurately referred to this realm.

Let's see what a few dictionaries have to say and how a word could alter and lose its true and actual meaning.

"Psyche" is defined as:

1. The spirit or soul.
2. The human mind.
3. In psychoanalysis, the mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior.

And defining "soul", we have:

1. the spiritual or immortal elements in a person.
2. a person's mental or moral or emotional nature.

Most of us would agree we have a "psyche" per the above definitions in the sense of mind, thought, and emotions. Most would also agree they have a "soul" per the second definition above relating to man's mental, moral or emotional nature. We might all have different notions about what these ultimately are, but few could sanely disagree they exist.

The derivation of "psyche" comes from Latin and the Greek psukhe - breath, life, soul. To get a better "feel" for this term try to think of it as the invisible animating principle or entity that occupies, interacts with and directs the physical body.

The following is from Wiki:

The word psychology literally means, "study of the soul" psukhe;, meaning "breath", "spirit", or "soul"; and -logos, translated as "study of" or "research"[10]).[11] The Latin word psychologia was first used by the Croatian humanist and Latinist Marko Marulic; in his book, Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae in the late 15th century or early 16th century.[12] The earliest known reference to the word psychology in English was by Steven Blankaart in 1694 in The Physical Dictionary which refers to "Anatomy, which treats of the Body, and Psychology, which treats of the Soul
10. ^ Psychology
11. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. (2001). "Psychology".
^ "Classics in the History of Psychology – Marko Marulic – 12. The Author of the Term "Psychology"". Psychclassics.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
13. ^ (Steven Blankaart, p. 13) as quoted in "psychology n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Edited by Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. oxfordreference.com

Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not an objective science. Other concepts that psychologists are interested in, such as personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured[70] and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic.
70. ^ Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 9.
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Getting back to your quote, and the claim that willpower furthers your rediscovery of Agape.

1. One cannot will away conditioning. Self hypnosis (positive affirmations) does not remove stress or belief, it can only add an idea conjured from the existing foundation of belief.
Nothing changes until the subjective and objective mind can experience something superior to the stress or beliefs within the psychological profile of personal opinion and belief (which is constantly changing).

2. The conditioned mind steps outward from belief and experience. If one believes love looks a certain way, then his will is powered by that belief, not necessarily a universal and objective platform encompassing a unity of all beliefs. Personal opinions about ones self and reality are going to be the foundation of outward projections in thought and action.

3. The soul cannot be measured. It cannot be contained. And there is no general blueprint or standard for what is called humanity. These words are descriptive to a point and because humanity is continually redefining itself, to say the study of the human soul can be scientifically quantified is going to be subjective.
The soul is beyond all boundaries of subjectivity and the power of will as a subject cannot be standardized, predicted, or qualified other than thru the subjective mind of one who is bound by beliefs and conditioning. To diagnose the soul and prescribe a cure to a condition is outside of the rationale of science. It is more akin to witchcraft, illusion and dementia.
It would be more likely that a relationship to the ineffable soul could be experienced, rather than the soul itself.
All experiences are but reflections of conditioning and identification with reality thru psychological reference points gathered from the personal value systems which are attached to the past. To say one can experience the soul in the present moment without having any conditioning based on personal beliefs would be a stretch of the mind. How would one decide for themselves that they do not in fact carry any influences of past experiences and beliefs regarding who and what they are in relationship to the soul?
You can say to yourself, " I choose to be without influence of my past" but that does not make it so.

Since every individual has a relationship with destiny (due to personal preconceptions of future idealism), it is only the religious who continually attempt to define the principles of God and to define what the relationship to God is from the platform of the human soul.
The religious do this strictly to protect their beliefs and to justify their lives due to the fear of having an end to their lives without some standard to measure that one's life has being successful or not, or that it can qualified as good or bad. Which is why so much focus is given to the rewards of good behavior in some kind of afterlife.
In that respect the preacher attempts to corral as many as he can that will corroborate the terms of reality to help substantiate his own beliefs, so as to give meaning to the personal choices one makes. The numbers give one satisfaction that ones thinking is sound.
However that didn't necessarily work when the numbers insisted that the world was flat, did it.

The idea of creating the perfect life is subjective and generally spurred by fear of failure, and ones own self judgments. The need to be able to substantiate ones will and its power comes from the idea that one is without some symbiotic resonance to the inner force that leads one thru life to their destiny, because of the belief in being victim to a power greater than their own choice and outside of themselves.

Once one realizes that there is nothing other than that which is the result of ones choices, focusing on improving the power of choice is going to be a moot point if nothing within the psychological profile of belief has changed.
It becomes tantamount to straining while taking a crap, rather than simply relaxing and letting what happens naturally just happen.

If one does not become more conscious, then subjecting the unconscious (ignorant) mind with all of its habits to be more forceful when making unconscious (ignorant) choices, only results in similar action and results.

Hitler is a great example of willpower. His mind was saturated with his own projections of reality, and he was capable of influencing others to a point. That point led to war and genocide. Teaching just anyone to forcefully project their ideals is going to be subject to ones state of mind and their relationship with self and humanity.
It's like the parent telling the son to man up! The child does not live the parents beliefs, and if they are lucky, they won't adopt them and live their life for their parents.

You Reverend, have a relationship with yourself and the ideal you wish everyone to see. So did the Church and it had its definitions of good and God, same as you.

That is what you bring to this form and to every other thread I have read.

Probably why few respond after reading your posts, and why those who do respond fall away and discontinue their dialogue with you. You don't bring anything other than your belief of reality to your threads, and tho you say you want to dialogue, what you really mean is you want to talk about yourself.

You should really get honest and just start a thread that is titled, "ME" with the following subtitle..
"Lets talk about me!"

It's all Greek to me!

"all Greek"? Bill S? Surely with our commonly-held British-cultural backbround, we both readily agree that we owe a lot to what the Latin, and many other cultures, past and present, have done to enrich our modern British one.
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But staying on this science-based topic, may I ask: Do scientists, and others interested in science who are a part of this science forum, agree that the extensive research on "willpower ... ", by Roy Baumeister and his colleagues, has brought to humanity a valid and important new science?

Is it, as he calls it, "the greatest human strength"?
Note that he does not use the term "animal" or, "psychological strength".

A friend sent me this example of what human willpower can do, when it is focussed. Amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RqAdoin8z28

What kind of strength if not psychological or physical. How does one focus something that is not part of either the psychological function of the mind and its connection with the physical?

How is it that playing with the diablo is non psychological or connected to animal strength. What is animal strength? Is it something to be reckoned with and is it part or not part of being human? What is being human?


You precede the question of whether it is science by stating that it is science based. Nice touch. Just how did you determine that?

But to answer your question: NO! Not as you present it.
What kind of science do you suppose it is? What is the focus on if it is not either psychological or animal strength?

What is will and how do you identify it as other than a thought?

Bill, as I understand your questions they have more to do with philosophy than science or art. As I said I would, here are my answers:
As a child, like our pre-scientific ancestors, I thought of the earth as flat and steady. What I saw was, for me and our ancestors, all there is. And, from our point of view it was the sun, moon and stars that moved. Later, science and education changed all that, and a whole lot more. Is the universe rotating? If so, in what is it rotating? What I call G~O~D? Is that a rhetorical question--one to which you know the answer? What do the physicists--the micro and macro cosmologists who operate the LHCollider--tell us at the point?

Then you comment: Is this your answer? Do you, and should we? What is the "everything else"?

LHC experiments bring new insight into matter of the primordial universe

Geneva, 13 August 2012. Experiments using heavy ions at CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are advancing understanding of the primordial universe. The ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collaborations have made new measurements of the kind of matter that probably existed in the first instants of the universe. They will present their latest results at the Quark Matter 2012 conference, which starts today in Washington DC. The new findings are based mainly on the four-week LHC run with lead ions in 2011, during which the experiments collected 20 times more data than in 2010.

Just after the big bang, quarks and gluons – basic building blocks of matter – were not confined inside composite particles such as protons and neutrons, as they are today. Instead, they moved freely in a state of matter known as "quark–gluon plasma". Collisions of lead ions in the LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, recreate for a fleeting moment conditions similar to those of the early universe. By examining a billion or so of these collisions, the experiments have been able to make more precise measurements of the properties of matter under these extreme conditions.

“The field of heavy-ion physics is crucial for probing the properties of matter in the primordial universe, one of the key questions of fundamental physics that the LHC and its experiments are designed to address...."

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR21.12E.html

Oh lackaday!
How sad to say,
My little quip profound
Did lose its way
And go astray,
And fall on stony ground.

Once again.. the Reverend takes a detour from the topic of discussion. Shocker!

Talk about the AMAZING power of the WILL, my Uke friend taught me this one. I think I know the solution. Anyone already know? https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/13963deabf18b0e0

Someone will probably point out that will power and mind power are not necessarily the same thing, but I thought this was interesting, anyway.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beat...prosthetic-leg/

BTW Rev, did you realise that the link in your post above takes each person to her/his own email account. I guess that was not your original intention.

Are you aware that the link you provided goes to a subscription selling page? I'm sure that's not what you intended.

Absolutely! That was not what I intended. I don't know how that happened - age, technical ignorance or something.

I'll try again:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beat...prosthetic-leg/

I tried it, and although the link looks the same, this time it took me to the right place. I hope it does the same for others.

Great story Bill S. That would have required so much dedication from everyone, but the motivation would have been strong I think.

Is motivation the same as will power? I don't think so. Motivation has a clear goal, will-power is less focus oriented. A two year od has will-power. Lots and lots of it. Sometimes focussed-- mostly not!

I do not think that will power is a new science. Will power is a personality trait--- we may as well state that Kindness is a new science. Exactly the same type of argument could be made. After all maybe those neutrons and protons are budging over out of kindness towards each other and giving them a fair go!

What a great story! When I first read it I thought they meant he had climbed up the outside of the building. Now I see that they meant climbing the stairs, of course. That is a great accomplishment. Maybe we will see more of these "Mind controlled" artificial limbs in the near future. Thanks for sharing.

That would be what spiritual teachings say about consciousness. The level of the ego, or state of consciousness limits or expands the power of will, according to the foundations of belief, experience and self identification.

What one imagines within the box of reality one prescribes to may not be what exists outside of the box. Which is why an entire planet of people could not will the earth to be flat when it is round.

So when it comes to imagining ones self into experiencing realities that are unable to be supported by natural laws, there will be a tension of sorts, where the greater reality will win out over the imagined one.

As long as one understands the nature of reality, what can be created within the laws of nature will be supported, as long as one has some familiarity with nature and its laws.

TT- How about those realities that are induced by chemical states? Are they not real? Does not reality rely on perception for validation, no matter where it comes from.

Chemicals are a time honoured way of inducing alternate realities. The Delphic Oracle was high as a kite when she gave hr predictions and sayings, which were acted on by powerful people prepared to give them reality.

Modern examples can easily be found. The numbers of people who share the realities of various gurus are everywhere. There are plenty of people living in fear of the world's ending next month. For them the prediction is a reality and they have their well-stocked cellars to prove it.

For them it may be reality-- but is it science?

I feel the same way about the 'reality' of the science of will power. Can it be a science? I think not.