Interesting that this has no comments yet. I do not know why this subject is treated as 'political' or 'controversial'. This group should not be anti-science or 'head in the sand', but it seems to be.

I have a different way to look at this question. (1) introspection is bunk (2) if someone asks us or we ask ourselves why we did something - the answer is a guess, because we have no conscious access to the actual causes of our thoughts and actions (3)we vary in how good we are at guessing and in how honestly they judge themselves and so some people appear to be clearly rationalizing and other appear less so (4) most people are not actually aware that introspection is not direct knowledge but guesswork and so they do not recognize their guesses as guesses but may notice their self-deceptions as deceptions (5) we do not need to know the reasons for our actions unless we judge them as very bad and to be avoided or very good and to be encouraged (6) the appropriate thing in this case is not to ask ourselves why, but to ask ourselves how to change the likelihood of a repeat, up or down. Although we have only guesses about past actions, we can arrange to have some control over future ones (7) the more we know about ourselves, others, our situations, science and so on the better we can answer the how questions.

Good, upvoted - your hypothesis is interesting. I tend to think of type 1 as the cognition/pattern recognition/thinking operation and type 2 as a way of sequentially combining type 1 sub-results. The sequentially operation involves working memory and therefore passes through consciousness and is slowed down. As soon as a group of type 1 operations fine-tune themselves to the point of not requiring working memory, they no longer generate type 2 operations.

Downvoted for overgeneralization.

Do you react similarly to all instances in which people try to correct other people's usage? Or only some, and if so, which sorts? In other words, corrections of which of the following do you consider pedantry/elitism, and which do you think are justified:

1. Spelling
2. Grammar
3. Style
4. Cliches, awkward constructions, etc. (e.g. Orwell's complaints)
5. Incorrect usage of terminology
6. Other?

I don't mean this as a rebuttal; I'm genuinely curious about your opinion on descriptive vs. prescriptive language rules.

I read the post, and didn't have much to say about the content. I felt a little bit bad about just correcting the grammar without having anything of substance to say, but it was in Main so I did so anyway. I tried to be polite.

Human brain is a massively parallel system.

I wouldn't normally bother pointing out typos, but this is in the first sentence. You mean "The human brain is a massively parallel system."

the literature is ripe with references to "a part of me wanted", and perhaps we should all take this as much more than allegory.

It's awkward that every comment so far is about this sentence, but don't you mean "literature" not "the literature"? Are you talking about what people say, or what philosophers say? "A part of me wanted" doesn't sound like a philosophical comment to me.

Voting up and waiting for your next installment. (dtz weird text still there)

Why not adopt the convention used in many types of writing? The first time the term is used in a text, it is written in full and its abbreviation or acronym is put after it in brackets. After that the short form is used.

Thank you for the link - very illuminating.