So you predict that when a person gives reasons for [th]eir decisions, those
reasons should always be correct.
No way! I am not saying that the brain has NO PR department. Just that consciousness is more like the business park where the PR department has its HQ—where a whole bunch of other stuff also happens.
For example, when you focus on one thing (say reading a book) you generally filter out other things (background noise). This is to concentrate resources and avoid distraction—and does not have much to do with social signalling. There are a large number of other examples, illustrating applications of filtering sensory inputs away from consciousness for purposes which have little to do with social signalling.
I mentioned “selective forgetting”. If the ego can’t reconcile actions or events with self-image, it can tell the department of records to erase the evidence before any broadcasts are made. Such material can make its way into consciousness—but after examination it gets rejected and there then follows a cover-up operation—which can sometimes look a bit like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
One advantage of this is that more sophisticated methods can be used to determine what gets rejected. One disadvantage is that the forgetting process can be imperfect.
No way! I am not saying that the brain has NO PR department. Just that consciousness is more like the business park where the PR department has its HQ—where a whole bunch of other stuff also happens.
For example, when you focus on one thing (say reading a book) you generally filter out other things (background noise). This is to concentrate resources and avoid distraction—and does not have much to do with social signalling. There are a large number of other examples, illustrating applications of filtering sensory inputs away from consciousness for purposes which have little to do with social signalling.
I mentioned “selective forgetting”. If the ego can’t reconcile actions or events with self-image, it can tell the department of records to erase the evidence before any broadcasts are made. Such material can make its way into consciousness—but after examination it gets rejected and there then follows a cover-up operation—which can sometimes look a bit like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
One advantage of this is that more sophisticated methods can be used to determine what gets rejected. One disadvantage is that the forgetting process can be imperfect.