A student in my first year phil class wrote the following in response to the brain scan story...
-----------------------------------I love the metaphysical implications of this sort of thing! If fMRI's are really able to show that action preceeds thought (Matti has brought this up in Systems and Theories in Psychology this year)then the logical result is that thought, as we perceive it, is really a byproduct of behavior. Put another way, thought (the (meta) conscious variety)is merely a reflex that we are able to perceive after the fact. Yikes! Could the hard determinists and the behaviorists be right!
My groundless theorizing has led me to wonder if in fact we have 2 simultaneously functioning levels of thought. The one we're aware of and to borrow fREUD'S TERM, AN UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL THAT IS IN FACT IN CHARGE. (damn caps lock button...) This whole meta cognitive delusion we experience may be no more real than any of our other perceptions.
AAAAAKKKK my worldview! It hurts!!! Matt John McCreery wrote:
The notion that conscious thought is preceded by and only partially captures pre-conscious processes is, of course, implicit in Freud. The earliest instance that I can cite ,however, is Leibniz's _New Essays on Human Understanding_, where Leibniz observes that anyone awakened by the ringing of a bell must have heard the bell before becoming consciously aware of it. Cheers, John
------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
