From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sat Dec 25 1999 - 01:31:41 MST
'What is your name?' 'John Clark.' 'Do you deny having written the
following?':
> > Why do you choose to associate end of Consciousness with death?
>
> Choose? I don't understand the word, I looked it up in the dictionary
> but it became painfully obvious that the lexicographer understood
> the word even less than I did.
I'm not talking about the sort of Choices of which non-determinists claim
that we're capable, things which are somehow informed by the environment
and yet not determined by it.
When you do something, you either do it "consciously" or "unconsciously"
(though usually the conscious action requires some unconscious elements as
well). "Conscious" action is the sort of action which can usefully be
described as having motivational causes, again, causes of the form
"because I want X" or "because I ought to X."
Non-determinists take motivational causes to be unanalyzable in some
respect; I take this view to be incoherent for reasons which you've raised
in the past against other people who have claimed to have Free Will.
Rather, I argue that the "motivational" causes themselves have
"non-motivational" causes, such as "because my brain is wired that way,"
an explanation which is true on account of genetics or environmental
characteristics or what have you, rather than by Choice.
I don't think that you can magically Cause your behavior to change; all of
your behavior is determined by brain states. However, your brain states
are, at least in part, determined by other brain states, states which I
might usefully refer to as "a state of wanting food" "a state of fearing
the dark" "a state of jealousy" etc. A choice is simply the event when
you become "aware" (functionalist sense, not Aware in the Cartesian sense)
that you will commit one "conscious" action (defined above) instead of
another.
Again, when I asked why you attach "death" to Consciousness, you replied
that this was because you "wanted to." That makes sense. My next
question was whether there was some motivational reason that you wanted
to. The answer to this might be no, but it might not be; I gave the
example of "I want to go to the refrigerator" why? "because I WANT food"
why? [assume no further correct motivational answers] "because that's the
way my brain is wired."
Again, technically, you could have given that last answer first, in the
same respect as I could have answered "because the laws of physics are
true" to the question "why is the sky blue?" However, I asked for
motivational reasons.
So, once again: On account of what desire/motivation do you attach death
to Consciousness?
> >Why not get rid of Consciousness
>
> Why don't I jump to the moon? Because I am incapable of doing so.
Again, this is just like answering "because the laws of physics are true."
Of course you can't voluntarily do what you decide not to do. But on
account of what [motivational reasons] are you incapable?
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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