Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!eneevax!umd5!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU!eyal From: eyal@COYOTE.STANFORD.EDU (Eyal Mozes) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Free Will and Self-Awareness Message-ID: <8805092354.AA05852@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 9 May 88 23:55:11 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 26 In article <796@hydra.riacs.edu>, nienart@turing.arc.nasa.gov (john nienart) writes: >What makes you so certain that _anything_ perceived be introspection is >fact? Introspection provides me with the "fact" that there is, in fact, a >"me" to do the introspecting, but there are a number of philosophies and >religions (mostly of the Eastern variety) which insist that this is _not_ a >fact, And that's exactly the point. Most philosophies, and all religions, make a lot of a priori assumptions about what the world should be like, some of them ridiculously contrary to fact. This approach must be rejected. >Maybe its just me, but I find rather frequently that I'm thinking about >something that I'm _sure_ I'd rather not think about (or humming a trashy >pop song I hate, etc.). It certainly feels at these times that I don't have >complete control over that upon which my consciousness is focussed. Are you saying that, at those times, you are making a deliberate, conscious effort to turn your thoughts to something else, and this effort fails? If so then, yes, it is just you; all the evidence I'm familiar with points to the fact that it's always possible for a human being to control his thoughts by a conscious effort. Eyal Mozes BITNET: eyal%coyote@stanford ARPA: eyal@coyote.stanford.edu