[lit-ideas] Re: Conscious after the fact?
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:52:16 +0700
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
------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
