That is my impression of many of the incompatibilists here. Sometimes I think that determinists aren’t fully aware of the radical consequences of their position. In other words I feel that in *some* situations and *some* moods I could choose to order the chicken for dinner, and in other situation and other moods I could choose to order the steak. What I feel is that, if the situation were somewhat different, though still within the usual range of variation, or if my mood (= brain state) were slightly different, *then* I could decide differently (= my brain machinery could compute a different output state). What do you mean by “could do otherwise”? Are you asserting that we feel that, if absolutely everything about ourselves and our state were utterly identical, then we could do otherwise? Because I don’t feel that. The question is, Why do we feel that we could decide otherwise? What’s the point of that? So the only “true” decisions are the type that doesn’t exist, and the types of decisions that do exist are not “true” ones? Weird use of the word “true’! You want to grant these the status true decisions. Yes, the brain makes decisions, like computers and thermostats make decisions. Have I mentioned? These are the sorts of things you can observe directly for yourself through the exact type of non-woo mindfulness meditation that Sam Harris keeps banging on about…. You might, for example, feel the expansion of your chest as you draw in a breath…but then the narrator very quickly comes in and says, “That’s the chest expanding as I breathe in.” Focus your attention just on the sound of the breath past the nostrils…and, again, the narrator supplies the commentary almost (but not quite) as quickly as you can experience it. It’s possible to have a non-verbal awareness of phenomena, but it’s often only fleeting before the narrative forms and verbally overwhelms the more-raw sensory experience. Kinda hard to have all that in place and not also understand your own self, at least as you’re trying to let others know about it. And you understand the expressions of others. With language you express that to others. For what it’s worth, my own personal suspicion is that what we consider the self, the non-stop voice-over narrator, is a spandrel of the ability to speak and to use symbolic language.Įspecially consider that so much of the most basic forms of communication are a matter of expressing your own condition: you feel angry, hungry, amorous, whatever.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |