Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id MAA11910 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Mar 2000 12:42:11 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000327194003.007ef100@rongenet.sk.ca> X-Sender: hawkeye@rongenet.sk.ca (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 19:40:03 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk, memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Lloyd Robertson <hawkeye@rongenet.sk.ca> Subject: Re: "unconscious" choice In-Reply-To: <38C318C8.18326236@pacbell.net> References: <00030515230703.00439@faichney> <3.0.5.32.20000320120119.0080d3f0@rongenet.sk.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 06:32 PM 05/03/00 -0800, Bill Spight wrote:
>Dear Lloyd,
>
>> Note: "unconscious choice" is an oxymoron.
>>
>
>Au contraire. Most choice is unconscious. Cf. Sartre, Nietzsche.
>
>Best,
>
>Bill
Dear Bill and others,
I am not really a semanticist but it seems to me that if what you do is the
result of drives or motivations of which you are not aware then you are
really not making a choice. The appearance of choice is illusiary. We
become like a programmed robot. The choice has already been made by whoever
or whatever is responsible for the program.
Some philosophers and pure behaviorists suggest that is all we are:
programmed automatons. It takes considerable sophistry to hold to this
position and explain how I could be carrying on this conversation. Once a
robot becomes aware of the programming does he then have the potential to
change his own program?
This is where the analogy breaks down. Our program, if we can be said to
have one, contains no injunction that prevents us from changing it but to
do so we must become "self aware". I suspect that this is a necessary but
not sufficient condition.
Much of the programming to which we are subject is memetic in nature. We
are programmed by our cultures. To become self-programming we have to go
beyond the limits set by those cultures.
Galileo demonstrates this point. His culture dictated that he should see
the points of light near the planet Jupiter as rather like fire flies zig
zagging to and fro, sometimes "blinking out" in an erratic orbit around
Earth. He went beyond the conceptual limitations of his culture in
suggesting those points of light were really moons circling not us, but the
giant planet.
My problem with Joe Dees is that he seems to want a Galileo monkey doing
creative things to the rocks he throws at herdsman before he will grand
that troop a culture. I would argue that such a creature would have, in
fact, gone beyond the culture of his troop.
Cheers,
Lloyd
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