I’m surprised that this got 32 upvotes in a community whose members in general believe that you are your brain. Do all 32 of you believe in some sort of dualism?
Steven and most of the people here (including me) do indeed believe that “you
are your brain” in the sense that the mind is something that the brain does.
But Steven’s epigram is using “you” in a narrower sense, referring to just the
conscious, internal-monologue part of the mind.
In the fable of the fox and the
grapes, it’s the fox’s
brain that is the proximate cause of him giving up the attempt to get the
grapes, but it’s the “creepy vizier” part of his mind that makes up the “I
didn’t want them anyway” story.
(Edit: I should have said “most of the other people
here” in my first sentence. In case you didn’t know it,
Steven Kaas is an
LWer. He is kind
enough to let me and others earn tons of karma by quoting
his Twitter bons mots.)
I don’t see how this implies dualism, nor why materialism implies some sort of ultra-strong unified mind with no divisible components such that it makes no sense to analogize to a king and vizier.
It’s illustrating the thing from psychology where your conscious self (the “you” in “you are” here) often seems to be more about making up narratives about why you do things you somewhat unconsciously decide to do, rather than fully consciously deciding to do what you do.
It’s not terribly obvious normally, but scary stuff happens when you get a suitable type of brain damage. Instead of necessarily going “hm, my introspective faculties seem to be damaged and I’m doing weird stuff for no reason I can ascertain”, people often start happily explaining why it is an excellent idea for the king of the brain who has been replaced with a zombie robot during the brain damage to start lumbering around moaning loudly and smashing things at random.
Yvain’s post The Apologist and the Revolutionary from a couple of years ago had some fascinating and mind-boggling discussion of other bizarre things that result from particular brain damage.
-- Steven Kaas
I’m surprised that this got 32 upvotes in a community whose members in general believe that you are your brain. Do all 32 of you believe in some sort of dualism?
Steven and most of the people here (including me) do indeed believe that “you are your brain” in the sense that the mind is something that the brain does. But Steven’s epigram is using “you” in a narrower sense, referring to just the conscious, internal-monologue part of the mind.
In the fable of the fox and the grapes, it’s the fox’s brain that is the proximate cause of him giving up the attempt to get the grapes, but it’s the “creepy vizier” part of his mind that makes up the “I didn’t want them anyway” story.
(Edit: I should have said “most of the other people here” in my first sentence. In case you didn’t know it, Steven Kaas is an LWer. He is kind enough to let me and others earn tons of karma by quoting his Twitter bons mots.)
I don’t see how this implies dualism, nor why materialism implies some sort of ultra-strong unified mind with no divisible components such that it makes no sense to analogize to a king and vizier.
FWIW I find the quote kind of weird, as well. I don’t think it’s referring to dualism, but I can’t figure out what it does mean.
It’s illustrating the thing from psychology where your conscious self (the “you” in “you are” here) often seems to be more about making up narratives about why you do things you somewhat unconsciously decide to do, rather than fully consciously deciding to do what you do.
It’s not terribly obvious normally, but scary stuff happens when you get a suitable type of brain damage. Instead of necessarily going “hm, my introspective faculties seem to be damaged and I’m doing weird stuff for no reason I can ascertain”, people often start happily explaining why it is an excellent idea for the king of the brain who has been replaced with a zombie robot during the brain damage to start lumbering around moaning loudly and smashing things at random.
Yvain’s post The Apologist and the Revolutionary from a couple of years ago had some fascinating and mind-boggling discussion of other bizarre things that result from particular brain damage.
Where’s the dualism?