Post by humphreyclarke on Mar 3, 2009 9:32:39 GMT
Great article from Susan Blackmore, no pussyfooting around here:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/02/religion-atheism
Among the last defences, as Blakemore realises, are those central human capacities of consciousness and free will. Surely God gave them to humans (and to humans alone?) so that they could freely choose between good and evil, didn't he?
Well no. As Blakemore implies, the latest scientific theories suggest that both are more akin to visual illusions than powerful forces.
How can this be? It certainly feels as though I am conscious; as though I am some kind of inner self who looks out through my eyes at the world around me, and inhabits my body like a driver inside a magnificent machine that does my bidding by the power of thought. But this feeling is completely misleading. When neuroscientists look inside brains they do not find what Dan Dennett calls the Cartesian Theatre – that magical place where decisions are made and consciousness happens. There is no such place. The brain is simply not organised that way. Instead there are multiple parallel processes going on, no central headquarters, and no place where a self could lurk even if there were one
So why do we feel as though we are having a single stream of conscious experiences? Perhaps it was useful for our past survival to have a false model of ourselves, to attribute our body's actions to an inner self, and to see the world in terms of spiritual forces and non-physical agents, when there are no such things. Perhaps it is possible to give up these illusions by practising watching the mind.
It strikes me that the final triumph of reductionist science is to try to convince everyone that they don't exist. A fool's errand?
The other day I stupidly put my wife's bra in the wrong wash and managed to ruin it. When she scolded me for it I told her that conciousness and free will are ultimately an illusion. As my sense of self has no objective existence it cannot be held accountable for my mixing up 'whites' and 'colours' in the same wash and she should instead ask what actions she can take to make the washing machine module of my brain behave better in the future.
As a result I have a black eye and have been forced to become a dualist.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/mar/02/religion-atheism
Among the last defences, as Blakemore realises, are those central human capacities of consciousness and free will. Surely God gave them to humans (and to humans alone?) so that they could freely choose between good and evil, didn't he?
Well no. As Blakemore implies, the latest scientific theories suggest that both are more akin to visual illusions than powerful forces.
How can this be? It certainly feels as though I am conscious; as though I am some kind of inner self who looks out through my eyes at the world around me, and inhabits my body like a driver inside a magnificent machine that does my bidding by the power of thought. But this feeling is completely misleading. When neuroscientists look inside brains they do not find what Dan Dennett calls the Cartesian Theatre – that magical place where decisions are made and consciousness happens. There is no such place. The brain is simply not organised that way. Instead there are multiple parallel processes going on, no central headquarters, and no place where a self could lurk even if there were one
So why do we feel as though we are having a single stream of conscious experiences? Perhaps it was useful for our past survival to have a false model of ourselves, to attribute our body's actions to an inner self, and to see the world in terms of spiritual forces and non-physical agents, when there are no such things. Perhaps it is possible to give up these illusions by practising watching the mind.
It strikes me that the final triumph of reductionist science is to try to convince everyone that they don't exist. A fool's errand?
The other day I stupidly put my wife's bra in the wrong wash and managed to ruin it. When she scolded me for it I told her that conciousness and free will are ultimately an illusion. As my sense of self has no objective existence it cannot be held accountable for my mixing up 'whites' and 'colours' in the same wash and she should instead ask what actions she can take to make the washing machine module of my brain behave better in the future.
As a result I have a black eye and have been forced to become a dualist.
