There is no decision-making process anyway, every decision is made, it's right there in the frontal/temporal/occipital/parietal lobe, right?
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can't be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
That decision involved more than just one spot in my brain. All the parts of my brain involved do more than one thing.
So, no, the real world isn't like the lesion example.
The red light blinking doesn't feel as a decision. According to the lesion scenario, the lesion-influenced decisions feel exactly like other decisions. It is an important difference.
Okay, let's change it slightly: Instead of the happy feeling, you get a feeling of "I decided to do this" when the light blinks red.
Is that a better analogy for you? Whether you think about it or not, you end up feeling like you made the decision. Just like in the lesion case.
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can't be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
I can't, however it doesn't imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised? What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is neverthele...
This is part of a sequence titled "An introduction to decision theory". The previous post was Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories
For various reasons I've decided to finish this sequence on a seperate blog. This is principally because there were a large number of people who seemed to feel that this sequence either wasn't up to the Less Wrong standard or felt that it was simply covering ground that had already been covered on Less Wrong.
The decision to post it on another blog rather than simply discontinuing it came down to the fact that other people seemed to feel that the sequence had value. Those people can continue reading it at "The Smoking Lesion: A problem for evidential decision theory".
Alternatively, there is a sequence index available: Less Wrong and decision theory: sequence index