1Z wrote: ... > Dennett's idea of "stored" conscious volition is quite in line with our > theory. Indeed, we would like to extend it in a way that Dennett does > not. We would like to extend it to stored indeterminism. Any decision > we make in exigent situations wher we do nto have the luxury of > conisdered thought must be more-or-less determinsistic -- must be > more-or-less determined by our state of mind at the time - -if they are > to be of any use at all to us. Otherwise we might as well toss a coin. > But our state of mind at the time can be formed by rumination, training > and so over a long period, perhaps over a lifetime. As such it can > contain elemetns of indeterminism in the positive sense -- of > imagination and creativity, not mere caprice.
Right. Even if it's determined, it's determined by who we are. > > This extension of Dennett's criticism of Libet (or rather the way > Libet's results are used by free-will sceptics) gives us a way of > answering Dennett's own criticisms of Robert Kane, a prominent defender > of naturalistic Free Will. I didn't refer to Libet and Grey Walter as refuting free will - I was well aware of Dennett's writings (and Stathis probably is to). But I think they show that the conscious feeling of making a decision and actually making the decision are different things; that most of a decision making is unconscious. Which is exactly what you would expect based on a model of a computer logging it's own decisions. I actually found Grey Walter's experiments more convincing that Libet's. It's too bad they aren't likely to be repeated. Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
