[lit-ideas] Re: Conscious after the fact?

  • From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:23:25 -0230

Much of the below reminds me of Herbert Simon's notion of "satisficing
rationality." Cogent enough in itself - and applauded unreflectively by school
principals across N. America - but when wedded to Ayer's emotivist thesis on
moral judgement and Aristotle's crippled understanding of deliberation as
concerned strictly with means and not ends, it yields a woefully inadequate
account of capacities and competences of rational deliberation by autonomous
agents. 

Remember: your kids' education is at the mercy of public school teachers'
understanding of the nature and conditions of autonomous rationality. 

Walter O.
MUN



Quoting John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>:

> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 2:13 AM, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> >
> >>>
> > Drinking coffee in a relaxed situation could be managed by the
> > sub-conscious (or pre-concious?) mind.
> >
> 
> On the other hand, some of the research I mentioned  focuses specifically on
> highly time-pressured decisions made by people like firemen or tank
> commanders confronted with what are literally life-and-death situations.
> 
>  Recognition-primed decision making (Gary Klein) describes the process as
> one that begins with a pattern recognition process in which the individual
> compares incoming information with a set of possible models and acts on the
> first to pop off the stack which seems to offer a reasonable fit with what
> is going on (using satisficing heuristics instead of trying to calculate the
> best possible model). Then, while action based on the model begins, another
> part of the brain continues to monitor incoming information looking for
> discrepancies that indicate a wrong model choice. When enough contradictory
> information piles up, this triggers a new pattern recognition step; the
> process continues until the situation is resolved. The critical factor here
> is the range and richness of the models invoked by the pattern recognition
> step. The more and richer the models the more likely it is that the one on
> which action is based does, in fact, fit the situation well and yield the
> desired result.
> 
> 
> John
> 
> -- 
> John McCreery
> The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> http://www.wordworks.jp/
> 



------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: