The power of Will

[Mercutio]

Evidence?

Yes, it is. I quite agree.

My brother thought this was particularly cool that something positive could come out of what happened to him. He liked the idea that someone learned something. So did I, for that matter.

My favorite part of class was subtituting different circularly defined intervening variables between the things that were manipulated (surgeries, blood transfusions, pep talks, etc.) and the eventual outcome (survival!). X(manipulations)-->Y(survival) became X-->increased his will to live-->Y
X-->pleased the gods-->Y
X-->allowed for better flow of chi-->Y
X-->intrigued the aliens, who decided to perform an experiment by-->Y
and several others. The fun part was that one of my students who is extremely skeptical of religious claims came up after class to say that she honestly believed the chi explanation was the real one. After all, gods are fiction, and will to live is circularly defined, and there is no evidence for aliens.

*sigh*

 

[Beerina]

Wasn't there a study that showed that will to live, or belief you would survive, was completely irrelevant to the likelihood of survival?

 

[exarch]

I just found this thread in the language nomination thread ...

Originally posted by jmercer
Alternatively, my father's desire to live got him out of bed after the liver operation amazingly fast, and drove him to become physically active quite quickly. He kept an optimistic attitude, ate well, and actually took better care of himself than he did before his diagnosis. These things all served to help maintain his immune system and kept his body healthy other than the cancer.

All of these factors certainly contributed to his survival - especially with periodic chemo and radiation therapy being the norm. His ability to sustain those activities for as long as he did was - in my opinion - directly due to his will to survive, which changed his lifestyle dramatically.

There may or may not be any more to it than this. I don't know. But I think that these items are significant enough that people with the "will to live" increase their chance of survival through sustaining these activities and actions.

I think the crucial question to ask would be: Would your father have had less will to live if he had exhibited all the same behaviours you just mentioned but still died three months after the operation like most people in his condition? Or would you have said that he stubbornly "fought the disease but lost the battle anyway" (yet another one of those stereotypical lines).
What if he'd been very relaxed and carefree about his condition and somehow managed to still live as long as he did? Would you be making up stories about how his "relaxed, stress-free approach to life somehow caused him to live longer"?

Or would it be more interesting to find out just how your father was clinically different from other people in the same situation who died much sooner? Did he have a higher concentration of certain neuro transmitters or chemicals? Perhaps a higher pain treshold that allowed his body to endure more punishment before giving up?
It could be so many things, yet people prefer to say he just wanted it more than those who died. Sadly, we can't ask those who died if they really wanted to live ...

"Will to live" is a very empty concept once you look at it more closely.

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
If there was no brain activity, then there were no sensory inputs otherwise they would have produced some brain activity....

.....so, his fathers "talk" could not have had any effect on the brain till his brain had recovered sufficiently to begin responding to the "talk". So, again, how could the "will to live" have had any effect on this critical phase of his recovery.

Or his father's talk (perhaps accompanied by physical stimuli like touching his hand) may have been what sparked brain activity.

But you're right that at no point the "will to live" could have been present during a period when not even thoughts existed, since his brain was inactive.

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by username
but I am not inferring anything. I think this is being overanalysed. If someone has reasons why they strongly wish to survive and another person doesn't have this strong desire then they differ in the degree to which they desire to live. When confronted with a situation which has the potential to kill them it stands to reason one will endure more hardship to survive than the other. It seems like a very simple and intuitive thing.

I think it reverts back to the reward for holding your hand in a flame. If the stake is a million dollars, you'll be more motivated to endure the pain that if the reward is nothing. but people will only make assumptions about the "power of your will" after they know the outcome of the contest. The one that wins is labeled the one with the biggest will to win (and probably the biggest balls ), regardless of whether he stood to win a million or not, or had more to gain than the other guy. In essence, it's not a battle of wills, it's just a display of who is more willing to endure pain. WHY they choose to do so is not even relevant - only the outcome of the contest is - in deciding who wanted it most ...

I think this is what Mercutio has been arguing all along:
"Will to [insert goal to be achieved]" is a meaningless concept no matter how exotic the story you use as context.

 

[BillyJoe]

exarch,

Or his father's talk (perhaps accompanied by physical stimuli like touching his hand) may have been what sparked brain activity.

But you're right that at no point the "will to live" could have been present during a period when not even thoughts existed, since his brain was inactive.

Yes, perhaps that might have been my next attempt but, after three attempts already, I gave up trying to explain my point. Sometimes things seem so obvious, you don't think you need to try too hard to convince but alas....

BillyJoe

 

[BillyJoe]

I think this is what Mercutio has been arguing all along:
"Will to [insert goal to be achieved]" is a meaningless concept no matter how exotic the story you use as context.

....or simply that will is an illusion.

 

[bjornart]

Wasn't there a study that showed that will to live, or belief you would survive, was completely irrelevant to the likelihood of survival?

Yes. I read a short notice about this in the paper, but unfortunately it's not an easy thing to search for on the net. The gist of it was, I think, that having something to look forward to made no difference in cancer survival time.

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by BillyJoe
....or simply that will is an illusion.

No, that's not quite the point of the discussion. Although free will might be an illusion, what this thread is really about is the idea that "will to live" is an empty meaningless concept since it is its own proof of existence.
Whoever lives through something that would normally kill a person had more "will to live", but the only indication of the presence of this "will to live" is the successful achievement of survival itself.

Basically what it comes down to is an observer making a baseless assumption about why something happened, and being convinced they're right about this because the observations prove that the observed really happened, and their assumption of why it did must therefore explain why.

Circular reasoning. People with a strong will to live will survive terrible accidents. This guy survived a terrible accident so he must have a strong will to live. Why? Because he survived a terrible accident, which only people with a strong will to live survive.
At the end, all you really know is that people survive terrible accidents because they survive terrible accidents.

 

[Kumar]

The power of Thoughts

Placebo effect is said to have effects. To understand' Power of Will', we may have to assess 'power of belief', power of thoughts, power of meditations esp. 'power of specific thoughts'....
somewhat 'power of self hypnosis'.

 

[exarch]

Re: The power of Thoughts

Originally posted by Kumar
Placebo effect is said to have effects.

[...]

Maybe it does. But that still doesn't mean we can actually say that a person who survived had more placebo effect working for them than the person who didn't.

The influence of a patient's mindset and thoughts on the healing process are an interesting topic to explore, but the "power of will" or "will to survive" this topic started out with is not relevant to that search. In fact, it's detrimental since it'll make us discard whatever happened as a tiny miracle instead of looking for the real cause of why one patient got better and the other didn't.

 

[Cleopatra]

Hi Mercutio.

You won't believe what happened. Two books and some articles after my post in ths very thread, I realized that I might be wrong about what I thought re the power of will.

It seems that you are right. Powerof will is an overestimated concept and it would be ok if it was just that. I can list at least 10 different things that I could have accomplshed in my life if I didn't believe that " it was a matter of power of will".

Mind you! My heart aches while I am typing this, because " The power of Wil" is a heroic concept that matches so well my perception of things regarding the history of my family and still deep in my heart I believe that we shouldn't throw this concept away.

A couple of years ago, after my best friend had her first kid she had gained weight so she went to Weight Watchers that they approach their programs with the eyes of the behaviorists. Once, I joined a session and I admit that I felt ashamed and embarassed of my friend's behalf. My friend is one of the smartest persons I have ever met. How could she follow such a humiliating program? I trashed her back then and I told her that this method is for idiots that they don't have " the power of will" to keep their mouth locked when it comes to food.

I haven't realized the benefit of positive reinforcers and the mentality of labelling "things" in our lives mere as behaviors and not attributing to them moral quality.

It was my dog first and then my very self that made me realize that I was wrong.

But still. You should have seen my dad's face last week when I dared to tell him that the power of will must be an overestimated concept. He nearly fainted

 

[Mercutio]

eta: it is a rare and beautiful thing when someone changes opinion because of new information. It is still rarer when someone admits to changing opinion. And to do so publicly?

My hat is off to you. I am more than impressed.






...ok, maybe it is because you changed to my world-view...