Re: Epistemology 102

From: JPL Verhey (matterDELminds_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 01/05/05 

Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 12:01:50 +0100

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:UimCd.10978$P%3.897530@news20.bellglobal.com...

> attempting to find the temporal relationship between neural
> potentiation and human reports of having decided to do something, or
> of human actions that are supposedly evidence of having decided, show
> that potentiation occurs before the deciding or the action that is
> purportedly evidence of deciding. If these studies are valid, ie, if
> they are replicated in other contexts and with variations, then it
> would seem that the mental events of which we are aware occur after
> the ones that cause our behaviour.

It is undoubtedly true that there are many behaviors of which be become
aware after they happened. They are usually called reflexes. Another
matter is whether the bulk of those behaviors can happen without the
'after effect' of the mental events aqa awareness. Since most of those
behaviors are performed by a healthy and awake persons that are aware of
what they are doing (did, in this case), it begs the question why mental
behaviors such as awareness occur at all.. but since they do, it does
suggest that they are causally necessary for behavior such as pressing
buttons in an experiment.

Also, as I understand those experiments (Libet), what is compared are
the moment of potentiation and the *report* of the subject when s/he
thinks she decided to press the button. Obviously there can be a
difference between the factual conscious decision to press and the
report (guess) "I press(ed) the button at (t)".

And.. when I decide today that tomorrow at 09.00 I will sing the
national anthem twice under the shower, the behavior of singing the
anthem clearly happens after the mental decision to do so.