I know that I can’t currently change my temperature by willing it as I’ve tried a few times, but you may just be better at it. Certainly people can train themselves to do so with eg biofeedback. So if you in fact were able to raise your temperature .6 degrees just by willing it, I’m willing to admit that temperature change is partly voluntary (partly because I’m guessing even if you wanted to you couldn’t do 10 degrees).
But doing things like wearing a blanket or doing squat jumps are “cheating”. Sleepwalking is also “voluntary”, if you mean that if you didn’t want to do it, you could tie yourself to your bed, and humans can fly if they’re allowed to use airplanes. But that seems to be a case of blanket-wearing being voluntary, and temperature rising automatically in that condition. Even something like visualizing yourself in the Arctic so your temperature rises to compensate is “cheating” of a sort—we all agree that visualizing things is a voluntary behavior.
What’s the evolutionary purpose of thoughts if they don’t do anything? Where do thoughts like “I just thought about going to McDonalds” come from? What distinguishes this from philosophical zombies?
we all agree that visualizing things is a voluntary behavior.
Do you actually mean that? I’d thought there were plenty of situations in which visualizations were involuntary… PTSD comes to mind. If that’s wrong, I’ll be very interested to know it.
This is peripheral to your main point, though. Yes, if I voluntarily visualize being in the Arctic, and that entails my temperature rising, that is in some sense different from voluntarily raising my temperature.
That said, this is a very fuzzy line, and I’m not sure if it’s a useful one. When I was regaining motor control and speech after my stroke, there were lots of functions that I could only access at first via indirect and circumlocuitous pathways, but which I would not want to describe as “involuntary”. For example, there was a long period where I could only move my knee by moving my foot around. (Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous; it seemed ridiculous to me at the time, but there it was. As far as my experience of my body was concerned, i could not voluntarily move my leg, but I could voluntarily move my foot. It felt rather like i imagine telekinesis would.)
And in many cases it’s really not clear to me that I ever changed the pathway that accessed the function after that, it’s just that I stopped attending to the path, much as I don’t attend to the specific muscle movements associated with typing the letter I. (Well, OK, I just did, then. But I usually don’t.)
I think English is deficient in regards to words like “can”—it doesn’t distinguish between what one can usually do, what one can do under particular circumstances, and what one could do with sufficient preparation.
I don’t think that’s a separate meaning. It’s used as “may” because whether you are capable of doing something usually depends on whether you have the permission of the person you’re asking, which is why that usage is rediscovered over and over and over by speakers young and old. (Same phenomenon when you ask for food, “but” also want a container for it, and various other circumlocutions.)
“Can I have some cake?” --> “if I try to have cake, will you act in a way that prevents this?”
You coukd just as well be cheeky to the child that says, “May I have some cake?” by replying, “Yes, you are permitted to, but I will not get it off the shelf for you [and neither will anyone else and you can’t reach it].”
Where does it end? What word’s usage can you not narrowly interpret and criticize on that basis?
I know that I can’t currently change my temperature by willing it as I’ve tried a few times, but you may just be better at it. Certainly people can train themselves to do so with eg biofeedback. So if you in fact were able to raise your temperature .6 degrees just by willing it, I’m willing to admit that temperature change is partly voluntary (partly because I’m guessing even if you wanted to you couldn’t do 10 degrees).
But doing things like wearing a blanket or doing squat jumps are “cheating”. Sleepwalking is also “voluntary”, if you mean that if you didn’t want to do it, you could tie yourself to your bed, and humans can fly if they’re allowed to use airplanes. But that seems to be a case of blanket-wearing being voluntary, and temperature rising automatically in that condition. Even something like visualizing yourself in the Arctic so your temperature rises to compensate is “cheating” of a sort—we all agree that visualizing things is a voluntary behavior.
Tomorrow’s post.
Do you actually mean that? I’d thought there were plenty of situations in which visualizations were involuntary… PTSD comes to mind. If that’s wrong, I’ll be very interested to know it.
This is peripheral to your main point, though. Yes, if I voluntarily visualize being in the Arctic, and that entails my temperature rising, that is in some sense different from voluntarily raising my temperature.
That said, this is a very fuzzy line, and I’m not sure if it’s a useful one. When I was regaining motor control and speech after my stroke, there were lots of functions that I could only access at first via indirect and circumlocuitous pathways, but which I would not want to describe as “involuntary”. For example, there was a long period where I could only move my knee by moving my foot around. (Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous; it seemed ridiculous to me at the time, but there it was. As far as my experience of my body was concerned, i could not voluntarily move my leg, but I could voluntarily move my foot. It felt rather like i imagine telekinesis would.)
And in many cases it’s really not clear to me that I ever changed the pathway that accessed the function after that, it’s just that I stopped attending to the path, much as I don’t attend to the specific muscle movements associated with typing the letter I. (Well, OK, I just did, then. But I usually don’t.)
I think English is deficient in regards to words like “can”—it doesn’t distinguish between what one can usually do, what one can do under particular circumstances, and what one could do with sufficient preparation.
All that, and then it gets used to mean “may”, too.
I don’t think that’s a separate meaning. It’s used as “may” because whether you are capable of doing something usually depends on whether you have the permission of the person you’re asking, which is why that usage is rediscovered over and over and over by speakers young and old. (Same phenomenon when you ask for food, “but” also want a container for it, and various other circumlocutions.)
“Can I have some cake?” --> “if I try to have cake, will you act in a way that prevents this?”
You coukd just as well be cheeky to the child that says, “May I have some cake?” by replying, “Yes, you are permitted to, but I will not get it off the shelf for you [and neither will anyone else and you can’t reach it].”
Where does it end? What word’s usage can you not narrowly interpret and criticize on that basis?