(May 8, 2016 at 7:47 am)robvalue Wrote: I can't make any sense of that, sorry. I shall have to abandon the discussion. What I believe is irrelevant, I'm examining just the argument itself.
If I ever make an argument phrased this way, then I am being fallacious. I don't believe I ever have, though. What I believe is likely to be true is not the same as stating what is true for the sake of argument.
It is a bit complex... and I can't be 100% sure of this, so...take it with a pinch of salt.
There are various levels at which we think.
At some level, the deterministic biology/chemistry/physics become entangled into an idea, a thought... be it to eat, to breathe, to scratch, to open one's eyes, to calculate a sum, to think about the origin of the Universe, how we should behave, etc...etc...etc...
This is the illusion, that our thoughts are generated by us, and not by deterministic biochemistry. What sort of evolutionary advantage would we have from being aware that our thoughts are brought forth by myriad biochemical reactions? I think that would be a distraction... a waste of mental energy... and evolution, as much as it tweaks, it tries to keep waste away.
The great trick is that all previous thoughts, even those that have been communicated to us from other people's minds, get incorporated into our own minds and are then a part of the subconscious/deterministic thought pattern. And this pattern is ever changing, for it is ever thinking and (for most of us) ever receiving new input from the outside world.
And, if previous thoughts enter our minds.... the "shoulds", mostly brought to us by society, are also in there. They are a part of our thought process... our deterministic thought process... our decisions.
(does any of that make sense?)
