February 2, 2010
- The Illusion of Conscious Will -
Just finished reading an amazing article on Virgina Woolf, where it mentioned a book called “The Illusion of Conscious Will” by Daniel M. Wegner. It intrigued my enough that I ordered a used copy right away, but while doing a little research, I found this short summary (PDF) of the book that includes this:
Wegner sometimes describes this as the thesis that the will is epiphenomenal; but that it misleading since on his account acts of will can have causal consequences. The central point is rather that they never directly cause actions, but can do so only indirectly, via other effects on the agent. He compares them to a compass. The compass doesn’t directly steer the ship. Instead it indicates the direction that the ship is taking, and may thus indirectly affect its direction via its effects on the pilot.
This excites me. Plus the idea that it’s not so easy to consciously choose to do something fits in with my Gurdjieff studies as well.
And, to tie this back into the Virginia Woolf article, this same “compass” function could be mapped onto our storytelling, leftbrain, ordered, logical, system…
Brings to mind this old post:
“That which we are made to seek is really just a direction in which to move, a current.”
We are given stories to move us (by ourselves, to ourselves) but the story is merely the vehicle for the movement, not the movement itself. First the movement changes, then the story does. Guard your thoughts (and hence your stories) well…
Comment by Ian — February 2, 2010 @ 1:36 pm
*LOVE* the compass analogy. There’s a universe of profundity in that “simple” illustration.
Comment by Jaimin — February 2, 2010 @ 2:04 pm
Heh. It still makes me happy to this day that I chose “compass” as the unofficial name for this blog (reclusland.com/compass). I’d originally wanted to go with “leaves” (as in “leaves of grass”) but it didn’t quite feel right. My girlfriend suggested “compass” and it’s proved to be a beautiful fit thus far.
Comment by Ian — February 2, 2010 @ 2:27 pm
Man, this guy I’m reading is good:
“I know the right thing to do, it is rarely ignorance that is my problem. The real problem is a will problem not a know problem. We know what the right thing to do is, but there is something perverse and destructive that leads us, often against our best joy, to oppose it. There is both a compulsive wilfulness about it and a helplessness. There is something about human nature that is not complete: we are on the way, we are still developing. … You can almost predict that any blueprint for a perfect society that you conceive and manage to institute would shipwreck on this insane characteristic.”
- Richard Holloway, Bishop of Edinburgh, on ‘sin’.
Comment by speedbird — February 2, 2010 @ 4:51 pm
This I like:
But this:
and this:
have too much catholic guilt for me. that second quote’s a bit elitist as well.
But I can’t say he’s a bad guy because of it, just that the whole “sin” as a flaw doesn’t sit well with me (too much of my own Catholic guilt, I’m sure). I’m much more into “sin” as a mistake or failure, rather than as some sort of evil force, more a misuse of the good.
Comment by Ian — February 2, 2010 @ 5:44 pm
Fair enough. I didn’t get that vibe… but then I don’t really have any Catholic guilt. :) In fact I just picked up ‘sin’ as ‘the tendency to make mistakes’. And something about perfect design being devilish tricky, which made sense. But hey. More tomorrow.
Comment by speedbird — February 2, 2010 @ 6:10 pm
I mean, I was brought up with ‘sin’ as ‘a big list of things for which you will be punished’. Having it as ‘stupid things we do because we’re not quite finished yet’ feels strangely liberating.
Comment by speedbird — February 3, 2010 @ 3:11 am
Yes yes yes!
And, again yes, I am sure my nitpicking here comes more from my Catholic guilt then from anything the good Bishop intended. For me, sin was something horrible, something that you always had to watch out for, because it was:
1) part of your nature
2) could sneak up on you without your noticing
3) caused you to be damned for hell to all eternity
I think it was the cognitive dissonance between the unforgiving nature of god and the fact that he made us the way we are (let alone the fact that god was all loving as well…). Seemed like not really a fair deal to me at the time. Now I can better understand what is meant by all these things, but when I was a kid it was pretty neuroses inducing…
Comment by Ian — February 3, 2010 @ 10:07 am
Thinking further, I’d contest the point that we always ‘know the right thing to do’. Especially in any matter of Design. Perhaps we recognize it if we see it, but that is a different thing.
As for the Will, this remains interesting:
http://www.reclusland.com/compass/2009/12/15/francesco-petrarca-on-the-emotions-of-morality/
Comment by speedbird — February 3, 2010 @ 10:11 am
Cool, our comments crossed in the ether.
>> made us the way we are
Something that’s bugged me about Genesis for a while now: everything is good UNTIL God sees that the Man is lonely. Is this supposed to be telling us something?
Comment by speedbird — February 3, 2010 @ 10:20 am
Yeah. It tells us there’s something wrong with the story arc. ;)
Seriously though, maybe the loneliness really is at the heart of it. I heard one time, completely out of context, an old saying that I believe is a Sufi saying: “Is there no hope for the widow’s son?”
I don;t know what was meant by this originally, but it brought to mind for me the fact that the human situation could be compared to that of a single-parent child. We have this planet we live on, that created and nurtures us, but no one to show us the way of doing things, of how to function in/as a society (something that, generically, the father’s role usually fulfills on an individual level) so we just have to make it us as we go along.
ie: we’re lonely and we want guidance.
I’m sure there’s arguments to be made against this, but the point is that there is an inherent longing in our depths for something and there’s plenty of ways to describe. Loneliness is as good as anything else, and more appropriate because we alone have been given dominion over the earth…
Comment by Ian — February 3, 2010 @ 10:52 am
From my friend Jaimin’s blog:
Hence the Ukei was the central mystery of the Divine Ritual. Its practice, however, had fallen into abeyance for centuries, and thus it was that Oen had striven for its revival so that, in this confused world, men might once more attain the guidance of the gods and have the divine will manifested to them.
Comment by Ian — February 3, 2010 @ 11:18 am
“Is there no help for the widow’s son?” is the Masons’ distress call. The widow’s son is also another name for the knight Perceval, who achieved the Grail.
Comment by speedbird — February 3, 2010 @ 12:06 pm
Ha! Well, shows what I know. I should look more into the Mason’s I guess. But they’re too surrounded by conspiracy static to get anything worthwhile without alot of digging.
But in the end, we’re talking about the same thing, or at least very similar. What we choose to do about that fact is what’s different.
Comment by Ian — February 3, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
This is interesting as well.
Comment by Ian — February 3, 2010 @ 2:06 pm
>> a lot of digging
Oh yeah. Phase I went through :)
But still, the Son of the Widow Lady is a fascinating rabbithole.
Comment by speedbird — February 3, 2010 @ 2:08 pm