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

Thanks to Phil E. for a very illuminating discussion of the social nature of
decisionmaking. I share most of his views, including all of his views in the
last 2 sentences of the post below. Phil's positions are very similar to the
ones I have in critically responding to Marc D. Hauser, the author of *Moral
minds: the nature of right and wrong* - a book I must read as penance for
losing a bet on the outcome of Euro 2008. I commend it to you all for the sole
reason that it demonstrates the physical possibility of a Harvard professor
running with a category mistake for 444 pages. 

Bookjacket reads: "In his groundbreaking book, Marc Hauser puts forth a
revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct,
unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent
of gender, education and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the
latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience,
evolutionary biology, economics and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling
implications of his provoicative theory vis-a-vis contemporary bioethics,
religion, the law and our everyday lives."

The movie version should be out in a theatre near you before Christmas. 

Walter O
MUN




Quoting Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> John McCreery wrote:
> 
> "Phil could say, of course, 'Those aren't decisions; they are only
> habitual behaviors.'  In making this statement he will appeal to the
> prototype of rational decision making in which, ideally, the decider
> is conscious throughout the process."
> 
> I would, of course, say what John has me saying but I wouldn't make
> any such appeal.  We don't ordinarily point to blips on a machine as
> evidence of decisions, making me wonder whether some form of
> reductionism is going on in this argument.  The reductionism would
> suggest that _really_ a decision is this neural activity.  On the
> other hand, it seems to me that whatever else a decision is, it is a
> social phenomenon.  It is one manner by which we distinguish various
> kinds of behaviour.
> 
> For example, while we were living in Nigeria, we attended a tea party
> that one imagines happened frequently in Africa during colonial times.
>  There were the Oxbridge types somehow connected with the British
> foreign service, there were the businessmen from N. America and
> various European countries, and then there were the missionaries.  My
> wife was sitting beside an elderly missionary lady who was unable to
> reintegrate into British life and so had come back to Africa to die.
> At some point, this lady started drinking my wife's tea and then
> complained about how she kept getting tea that was too sweet.  My
> wife, not wanting to embarrass the lady, agreed that it was hard to
> get a good cup of tea these days.
> 
> The lady's body did all the things involved in taking hold of a cup of
> tea and drinking it, and it would make sense to say that she may have
> decided to drink a cup of tea, but it would be a mistake to say that
> she made a decision to drink my wife's cup of tea.
> 
> It seems to me that here we have three different kinds of activity.
> There is the inadvertent drinking of the wrong cup of tea.  There is
> what appears to be an obvious mistake so that we would rule out the
> possibility of a decision.  My wife was not offended because it seemed
> obvious that the woman did not decide to drink my wife's cup of tea.
> 
> Then there is the behaviour of reaching out for a cup of tea.  We
> might say that one explanation for why the missionary took the wrong
> cup of tea was that she wasn't paying attention to what she was doing.
>  If the missionary had been more aware/attentive/conscious of what she
> was doing, she would probably have noticed which cup was hers.  Most
> likely she wanted a sip of tea, but the question of whether she made a
> decision to drink tea seems to me to be an open question.  If she
> wasn't aware or attentive to what she was doing, did she make a
> decision?  Wouldn't a decision imply a greater degree of attention and
> awareness?  Here we would distinguish between the desire, which most
> likely is evidenced by her reaching for the tea, and her making a
> decision, the evidence for which seems to be lacking.  My wife was a
> bit annoyed that the missionary was not paying more attention and
> drank the cup of tea my wife wanted to drink.
> 
> Then there is the physiological account of what transpired, an account
> that could include reference to events accessible only to specialized
> medical machinery.  There is no question that the missionary reached
> out, grabbed the cup of tea, and drank it.  There is no question that
> the body went about its business of taking a drink.  It would make no
> sense at all for my wife to have been upset at the missionary woman's
> body, nor would it make sense to blame her brain cells.  Of course
> those brain cells were involved in the woman's inattentiveness, but we
> don't normally hold them responsible for decisions or lack of
> attention.
> 
> It seems to me that talk of decision-making necessarily requires
> reference to social circumstances.  To suggest, and John may not
> necessarily be doing this, that decision-making can be sufficiently
> explained with reference to neural activity strikes me as being both
> reductionist and wrong.  I don't want to claim that decisions are
> necessarily rational and transparent to consciousness, but I don't
> know what to make of a reference to a decision that is completely
> opaque to consciousness.  Decision-making has social qualities and I
> am not sure how to get to these qualities from a reductionist account.
> 
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Phil Enns
> Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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