Philosophy of Mind

Executive Function, Wisdom, Maturation

• https://www.reddit.com/r/psychology/comments/1nnuy7r/the_psychology_of_free_will_as_based_on_executive/
• https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-15750-000
• https://www.amazon.com/Executive-Functions-What-They-Evolved/dp/1462545939
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions

With the onset of executive functioning in child development, there is a shift in the sources that control human actions. These shifts take three decades needed for the executive system of modern humans to reach its full neurological maturation.

These shifts are:

• From control by external stimuli to internal (mentally represented) events
• From the temporal now to the hypothetical future
• From immediate gratification to increasing valuation of longer-term goals

Self control is our mean of using self-directed actions so as to choose a possible future state from several and to select and enact the actions across time for us to actualise that possibility. It is initiated whenever immediate desires or provocations conflict with one's more important longer term goals.

Inhibition (conscious self restraint) is one such executive function (EF), arisen to decouple our response from an external stimulus and also to interrupt the automatic flow of stimulus-response behaving. It buys the time needed for other EFs, including the contemplation of alternative courses of action. In our working memory, we contrast visual images of the chosen future state (goal)with the current state which elicits emotions that motivate us to actualise that possibility. This likely occurs because humans transfer the value of the goal to the means needed to attain it.

Self motivation thus arises out of emotional self-control. We can elicit emotions in ourselves to generate motivation rather than relying on the environment and its immediate consequences to provoke them for us. As such ,we can sustain our actions even upon removal of external sources of motivation for a goal.

Dr Barkley (author of the citation) notes that self-control is the seat of free will, defining it as "our freedom to choose among various goals over various time periods and the means to attain those goals". A more colloquial definition would be "when someone is free to decide for themselves what they will do".

The EFs clearly facilitate this by transferring control of our behaviour from the external environment and the temporal now to the self and the chosen future. When we decide what we will do by envisioning and choosing a possible future to bring about, our actions become deliberate (meaning with intention, based on a decision) rather than impulsive and perseverative.