[Avodah] Nequdas haBechirah and Consciousness

[Micha Berger]

One of REED's more famous points in MmE is that of the nequdas habechirah.
    When two armies are locked in battle, the place where the struggle
    takes place is called the front line. This line is drawn at the
    place where the two forces meet. On either side, there is territory
    that belongs to that side and is thus not the location of battle. The
    front line moves and changes, but battle, generally speaking, occurs
    only where the two sides meet. Our moral choices can be thought of
    in a similar way. There are decisions that we have made in our lives
    so many times that they are no longer decisions. It is obvious to us
    that we will respond in particular ways to particular events. Those
    choices are within our territory. There are also choices we have never
    had to make and likely will never have to make. They are beyond the
    realm of our experience. They are firmly out of our territory. The
    place where these territories meet is the place of bechirah. On
    the spectrum of what we know to be ethical and what we know to be
    unethical, we make choices only at the nequdas habechirah. This is
    the point where our values come into conflict and thus the choices
    are not obvious. Each individual's nequdas habechirah is unique, and
    it moves as we grow and change. By recognizing the nequdas habechirah
    in our lives, we are able to set our sights on expanding our moral
    territory and thus becoming better people.

Notice that in it R' Dessler is identifying bechirah with *conscious*
choice. I therefore found this blog entry interesting. (The Conscious
Entities blog is a roughly-monthly essay on philosophy and the various
sciences -- neurology, psychology, etc... -- of consciousness.)

See http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=546 "Unconscious Free Will".
The author presumes Free Will is a real thing, not an illusion we
live under. The foil he tends to use is the research of Benjamin Libet
<http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm>, which appears to prove
that decisions are made -- the electrons are already moving up the nerves
that will eventually control your arm before we are conscious of them.

Peter (last name unknown), CE's author, offers a different interpretation
of that experiment's results at
<http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm>.
He suggests that the delay could be that between conscious decisionmaking,
and regitering the fact that one was aware of making a decision -- awareness
of awareness of the decision might well be 350 - 500 milliseconds after
the an awarely made decision.

Then there is subsequent research in
http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=64 and
http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=233 . The latter is 2009 data that
indicates that the original results might not be all that conclusive
anyway.

In this most recent entry, Peter wonders whether identifying Free Will
with a consciously made decision is correct to begin with.

My own take on it was that bechirah must be identified with self-awareness,
both of which are functions of the ruach memalela. See
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/12/ruach-memalela.shtml> for my development
of that idea.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
micha at aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.