The Neuro-Significance of the Human Faculty of the Will: Emphasizing and Understanding the Operations of the Will in Medical Science

Abstract

Human life is a conglomeration of many operations working synchronistically in chaotic manner. What we refer to as conscious living has underneath it a series of unconscious activity that are well timed and effectively orchestrated to deliver. A good example is in the activity of white blood cells (WBCs), whose activity and action are triggered when there is a foreigner in the body. Their effectiveness has dubbed them the soldiers of the human body, responding to threats and seeking out ways to nullify any that has arisen, even when the human person is unconscious of the threat. We can cite many other examples to make concrete the assertion that the human life is a conglomeration of much operation working synchronistically in chaotic manner. However, what is important to this research at present is to ascertain the function of the human will in all that pertains to the human life. This is on the conscious plane (for the other cited example on WBCs, are on the unconscious plane). The human will (volition) is an operational faculty that is not attached to any specific organ in the body (albeit in the brain, since its expression is cognitively mediated); the human will is not a physically concrete, but its effect is however felt. Its domain is the conscious plane, and it is there that its effect is felt. The human person is a conscious determiner of his acts and even when medical (biological) science, consider this to be tied to the functioning of the brain; it is to be stated that the human person is not his brain. In consciously determining his acts, many cranial areas are employed; however, it is not these cranial areas that determine the eventual choice that is made. Thus there must be something else. The hypothesis in this research favors the will. This is what we seek to elaborate upon.