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Originally Posted by Open Mind  Take your pick .....
(1) Consciousness is an illusion, with the illusion of having freewill, a complex process that evolved through evolution for no purpose whatsoever since exactly the same can supposedly be achieved by unconscious processes.. Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Who supposes this? There are obvious reasons why a feeling of will is evolutionarily beneficial. It supports making future decisions based on past actions. | |
To clarify, I certainly don't believe it ... but Susan Blackmore seems to ....
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'...... all human actions, whether conscious or not, come from complex interactions between genes, memes and all their products in complicated environments. The self is not the initiator of actions, it does not 'have' consciousness and does not 'do' the deliberating. There is no truth in the idea of an inner self inside my body that controls my body and is conscious. Since this is false, so is the idea of my conscious self having free-will.
Dennet (1984) has described many versions of the idea of free will and argues that some of them are worth wanting. Unlike Dennet I neither think the 'user illusion' is benign , nor do I want any version of free will that ascribes it to a self who does not exist.
Sue Blackmore – The Meme Machine, Page 237
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I cannot agree with Blackmore's comment .... what I believe is (2) ....
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Originally Posted by Open Mind (2) Consciousness allows freewill but often utilizes subconscious habits that were the result of prior freewill choices, offering the evolutionary advantage of trusting a prior pattern with the consciousness only intervening when required. Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos If we have libertarian free will, this is a perfectly good additional mechanism. In particular, the habit is formed by previous decisions made freely.
~~ Paul | |
Paul I'm pleased we found something at long last we agree on, that being freewill almost certainly exists.
