For a very long time, philosophy has presented us with two straw men in combat with one another and we are expected to take sides. Both straw men appear to have been proved true and also proved false. The straw men are Determinism and Free Will. I believe that both,...
Edit: First paragraph removed and small changes made to the rest. I am putting forth a hypothesis is about the nature of consciousness. First I will have to tell you how I am using certain words because they are generally used in a number of ways. 'Brain' is an biological...
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)... (read more)
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.
SaidAchmiz asked for an opinion and I gave an honest one. I may be wrong in the view of some other people but that is still my honest opinion. It is not an overgeneralization as I believe that in all cases, in all situations, at all times the descriptive approach is preferable to the prescriptive one.
In all cases 1-6 - descriptive is scientific, productive, interesting while prescriptive is without evidence, harmful and boring.
OK, I over reacted. Several others have said that it is acceptable in Main - so be it. I guess it does not bother others as much as it bothers me and I won't comment on corrections in future.
Doesn't anyone think that it is very rude to comment in someone else's language unless it is not understandable - just plain RUDE? If someone wants help with language they can ask. Language is a tool not a weapon.
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.
For a very long time, philosophy has presented us with two straw men in combat with one another and we are expected to take sides. Both straw men appear to have been proved true and also proved false. The straw men are Determinism and Free Will. I believe that both, in any useful sense, are false. Let me tell a little story.
Mary's story
Mary is walking down the street, just for a walk, without a firm destination. She comes to a T where she must go left or right and she looks down each street finding them about the same. She decides to go left. She feels she has, like a free little... (read 1559 more words →)
Edit: First paragraph removed and small changes made to the rest.
I am putting forth a hypothesis is about the nature of consciousness. First I will have to tell you how I am using certain words because they are generally used in a number of ways. 'Brain' is an biological organ and it has a function, 'mind'. Mind is not an object; it is what brains do. It is not a property of the brain, let alone an emergent property, whatever that is. It is a function - so mind-is-to-brain as circulation-is-to-heart or digestion-is-to- intestine. There is one brain in any head and there is one mind being produced by that brain –... (read 1226 more words →)
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.