Conscious Will

Ken Armstrong armstron at ohiou.edu
Mon Apr 29 15:34:45 EDT 2002


    Jim,

   Just a note, really. Your post below really grabbed me with the first 
sentence. But by the time I got to the first sentence of the second 
paragraph, my head was spinning.


>Seems to me that the drive to be conscious is the strongest drive of all. 
>Consciousness is like going to the movies only better  --it's our own life 
>that is being shown.  Being conscious of our motives and actions does not 
>in my view necessarily mean we are freely choosing them.  Nor do I 
>understand how consciousness would be necessary for free choice to occur.
>
>I'm not even sure what consciousness is. How does consciousness differ 
>from mere responding?

   Quite a feat, Jim, to declare consciousness the strongest drive of all 
(I'm not sure, though, where the drives are kept) and then declaring 
yourself ignorant of what consciousness is. And THEN of all the *$(@#$*%$ 
things, devolving to consciousness being no  different from 
stimulus/response! Well, heck, man, no wonder you don't understand how 
consciousness would be necessary for free choice to occur!

  All I can say, with some expectation of being understood, is that Percy 
would indeed have been willing to deflate (much better than I, obviously) 
the idea that will is illusion. I notice no one took me up on my question 
of how that book came into being. Stimulus/response d'yer suppoze?

  Cheers,
  Ken Armstrong
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