On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 10:35 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > [Steve] >> As your thoughts come unbidden >> anyway, then ask yourself where these thoughts come from. >
Craig: > From me, of course. Neuroscience can even pin down the parts of the brain > involved. > The important point is to avoid the following non-sequitors: > That sometimes thoughts come to us "unbidden" does not entail > that we never bid them. > That we sometimes act without deliberation does not entail we > never act with deliberation. > That we sometimes act without control does not entail we never > act with control... > etc. Steve: What is interesting to me is that though we tend to feel like our conscious self is the author of our thoughts, when we mediate--when we make our best effort to be conscious and pay attention to our own thoughts--we notice that that feeling of willing our thoughts is nowhere to be found. This is what Harris means when he says that the illusion of free will is itself an illusion. When we really pay attention, even the feeling of free will just isn't there. Now you say that just because it isn't there sometimes doesn't mean it is never there. However, in this case your claim to feel like you have free will is like the person who claims that he can make himself invisible with the stipulation that it only works when no one is looking. When we don't pay attention to our consciousnesses, we feel like we are conscious of free will, but when we make our best efforts to be conscious of our thoughts, we don't feel like we have an experience of feeling like we have free will. So this feeling of free will upon reflection does not seem to be part of our conscious self. It is a feeling associated with our unconscious selves asserting themselves into our consciousnesses. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
