[lit-ideas] Re: When you're hot you're hot, when you're not ...

  • From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:07:37 -0400

Phil: Again, if rational activity is the evaluation of desires and the means for satisfying one's preferred desires, then it isn't clear to me what has been refuted. Eric's brain-injured subjects are not engaged in rational activity since there is no or little evaluation of what is to 

be preferred.
On the contrary, the brain-injured subjects with limited or no affect will *over-evaluate* their "desires and the means for satisfying one's preferred desires." What results is an interminable rumination of pros and cons.
Think of it in terms of chess. Big Blue, in defeating Kasparov, acted exactly like the brain-injured subjects. It evaluated its programmed desire by rationally parsing millions of positions (the "evaluation of what is to be preferred") per second. A human cannot do that. Hence a human acting without emotional capacity is left with the interminable (for a human) rumination. 
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