Damasio’s concluding chapter in Self in Mind,
Living with Consciousness, addresses many of the issues explored of
late in the blog. Right off he goes into nonconscious control and the
work of Libet and Wegner, and how this work has been interpreted.
Damasio does not deny that the majority of our behavior is nonconscious,
but some of it is conscious. And at least some of our nonconscious
behavior has been trained as a skill by our consciousness, like
morality. The following quote is illuminating:
“What
is meant by conscious deliberation has little to do with the ability to
control actions in the moment and everything to do with the ability to
plan ahead and decide which actions we want or do not want to carry out.
Conscious deliberation is largely about decisions over extended
periods of time…and rarely less than minutes or seconds. It is not
about split-second decisions….[which are] thoughtless and automatic”
(271).
Regarding
a previous post on mirror neurons, he discusses how conscious
deliberation simulates and rehearses a behavior long before it is
enacted. Hence it has already begun to program the unconscious for that
enaction when the time comes. Then it leaves it up to the unconscious
processes to figure out the details of those actions in the moment
(272). It is a partnership between our conscious and unconscious
processes. Even though both are derived from our bodies, and one
predates and provides the foundation for the other, they are not
entirely the same thing, one emerging from the other with properties not
in the former.
Also recall that Libet "also concedes that "In those voluntary actions that are not ‘spontaneous’ and quickly performed, that is, in those in which conscious deliberation (of whether to act or of what alternative choice of action to take) precedes the act, the possibilities for conscious initiation and control would not be excluded by the present evidence” (Libet et al., 1983 , p. 641).
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