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

"Now, where did my coffee go? Who decided to drink it?"
 
Peer pressure, like smoking?  Who in their right mind would smoke?  The 
illusion of free choice...



--- On Sun, 6/29/08, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Conscious after the fact?
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, June 29, 2008, 4:05 PM





On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




Curious use of the word 'decision'.  Can I make a decision and never
know it?  


 I don't know about Phil Enns, but I do all the time. Consider, for example, my 
behavior as I check and respond to my e-mail. When I start there is a full cup 
of coffee sitting beside my laptop. Then comes a moment when I reach out for 
another swallow of coffee and realize that the cup is empty. Plainly I have 
repeatedly been reaching out, picking up the cup and taking sips of coffee 
without being aware of these actions until the absence of coffee interrupts my 
routine.


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. This is the view that finds its apotheosis in instructions on how 
to make rational decisions that assume (1) clear options, (2) processes for 
assigning value to those options, and (3) a rule that says to choose the option 
whose value is greatest, being mindful of all the lesser decisions that go into 
(1') distinguishing among the options, (2') following precisely the prescribed 
processes, and (3') calculating and comparing values. 


There now are, however, numerous lines of research that converge on the 
proposition that most of life's choices are not made in this way. A few that I 
have mentioned before include recognition-primed decision making (Gary Klein), 
behavioral economics (Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman), affective politics 
(George E. Marcus, W. Russell Neuman, Michael MacKuen), sociology (Pierre 
Bourdieu), cognitive science (Marvin Minsky, et al.). All wrestle, while 
starting from various disciplinary starting points, with a process familiar to 
mystics, coaches, language and music teachers, and martial arts instructors; to 
anyone, in fact, who seeks the state that Zen masters call no-self, in which 
correct and effective response to fluid situations occurs without conscious 
awareness.


Complicating the debate is the fact that both cognitive scientists and brain 
studies folk conceptualize the mainly unconscious processes involved in all the 
activities mentioned above in terms of "decision points" and "decision trees" 
and are, of course, intensely mindful of the details of the models they are 
constructing. It thus becomes perfectly natural for them to speak of decisions 
being made of which the deciding subject is wholly or partially unaware. 


Now, where did my coffee go? Who decided to drink it?




John



-- 
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/

Other related posts: