Re: The ghost in the machine (was 'quick question')

Posted by Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/quick-question-tp3037681p3075878.html

Jochen and Nick-

I don't have any answers on this one, but I do have a couple of observations.

1) I don't understand what Nick means when he says :

I doubt that I am conscious and that my consciousness affects my acts.

I sympathize with the feeling, but I don't understand.  In particular who the "I" is who is doing the doubting and whether "doubting" is a conscious act or not.

2) I appreciate Jochen's attempts to reduce the mystery of conscious action into it's (perhaps) more tractable components, but somehow I feel like you are cutting the head off of a Hydra in the process.


As a young child (<10 yrs) I would lie in the grass staring at the clouds on lazy summer days until I felt compelled to get up and do something else.   At that point, the habit of laying and contemplating would be deep enough that I would find myself in an interesting "loop" of "deciding to get up, but not doing it.   I would (deliberately) think very hard about getting up yet would never quite find the connection between the decision and the action.  I would deliberately search for the connection between the conscious thought "I shall get up now"with the action "getting up" and the very introspection would prevent the connection best I could tell. It would get so "bad" that eventually I would have to play a mental trick on myself and quit thinking about getting up.  At that point, I would simply "get up" and the loop would be broken.

This anecdote might explain why I am sympathetic with both Nick and Jochen, yet am significantly unsatisfied with either discussion. 

Carry on!
 - Steve



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