Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
He wouldn't say it openly (I agree he'd be very against accepting that as his position), but he's building it in order to deconstruct it and assigning the 'free will' label to his construct. But that's the thing, his 'construct' is just playing on people's false perception of themselves, the 'soul' perception, that we are somehow separate from the system, that there is 'us' and 'our body'. What is the 'darkness of your mind'? You're a biological organism, that 'darkness' is part of you. "You" are notjust your consciousness. It's obviously a lot more complex than that.The argument was never for any sort of dualism (Harris of all people would never come close to that side of the fence). The argument is whether or not you have conscious free will; are you consciously making these decisions for yourself or are they coming from the darkness of your mind and you have no real conscious authorship of them.
Take just justice argument for example. Lets say there is no 'free will', and biologically one organism among us is killing others for reasons which go against a social abstraction which reasonably harms the entirety of our social system. We eliminate this threat. Hasany of the causality behind our actions changed? Is there adistinctionhere? Even if your consciousness is justifying the action after the fact, the information which you acted on is the same. You still made a choice.
Once you go deep enough, the distinction is one without difference. Your brain is part of you, they are not fundamentally separable (As far as we know). Even if your conscious acts more like a monitor for a computer (IE displaying your actions in a way other parts of your mind can cycle into their information networks to continue to make new choices based on that relay of knowledge) then those new choices, even if your conscious is an after-the-fact display of them? Are still 'your' choice. You and the 'you' which Harris needs to create for the argument? Is a distinction without difference.
In short, your consciousness yes may just be a construct so you can break down actions and offer another source of information to the 'darkness' in you that actually makes choices...but that darkness is not separate, your consciousness is PART of a system. It's more a reflection of the whole system--the example that a brain tumor can fundamentally change consciousness shows they are interconnected. Both are part of 'you', so 'you' do make the choices. (Even in cases like, say, Charles Whiteman where he said he was having 'dark thoughts' and couldn't control himself--his consciousness had clearly been altered because the whole system was, his consciousness is part of it.)