Quotes 2-20-2015
by Miles Raymer
“The evolution of the mammalian brain involves tight links between the reward (positive and negative) system and the prefrontal cortex. These links support controlled behavior, behavior that is appropriate to the life-maintaining business of the animal in its physical and social world. Developing patterns of self-control during maturation is critical to the acquisition of skills that support wise choices in the social and physical worlds. Contrary to philosophers who seek a form of free will that is miraculously independent of causation, this framework is very Aristotelian. It recognizes that the realistic aim is to get the causality right––to bias goal selection and suppress impulses in a manner that serves the person well in the long haul rather than unrealistically seeking to avoid causality altogether.
But, you ask, is all that reward system activity really part of me? We reply, how can it not be part of you? What would you be without it? Your conscious deliberations are what they are because of how they are integrated with the rest of the brain. You are a whole, integrated individual. Your conscious life is what it is because of the way it meshes with the products of your nonconscious brain. Your habits of action and habits of thought are important for precisely the reason that Aristotle understood so well. Cultivate them carefully, make them work to your advantage, for they are a big part of what makes you you.”
–– “Agency and Control: The Subcortical Role in Good Decisions,” by Patricia S. Churchland and Christopher L. Suhler, Moral Psychology, Vol. 4, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, pg. 324-5
“You know you’ve totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software.”
––Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, pg. 237
It does seem the case that as determined and biologically conditioned as we are, we are nonetheless decision makers. We cannot see the big picture of causality and probably never will, yet, life must go on. As one philosopher put it, you can’t go into a restaurant and say to the server, “Sorry, I can’t order. I have no free will.” We humans must march forward making decisions, only mildly aware of how the variables swirl and converge all around us to make us turn right rather than left. We are meat puppets who must sing and dance for the puppeteer.