free will and persuasion

[RichD]

http://tinyurl.com/wsj-persuasion


"Altruism"
Supposedly reasonable atheists are more easily swayed by
emotional appeals:


=========================
Your mind doesn't know what your brain is doing:
"Neuroscience"

MRI scans are more reliable than a person's conscious
awareness.

--
Rich

[Charles Bell]

On May 8, 8:47 pm, RichD <r_delaney2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/wsj-persuasion
>
> "Altruism"
> Supposedly reasonable atheists are more easily swayed by
> emotional appeals:
>

> ========================> Your mind doesn't know what your brain is doing:

> "Neuroscience"
>
> MRI scans are more reliable than a person's conscious
> awareness.
>

Sure, there is no "person's consciousness" involved in any manner via
MRI scans. Science and the tools of science are just there, like
rocks, for any person to stumble upon and react to.

"Supposedly reasonable atheists" -- Objectivists excluded -- are most
often such scientific stumblers of the political left or utilitarian
anarchists who live moment to moment unmindful of the value of
morality for making rational decisions.

Altruism: the traditional American Protestant: "God helps those who
help themselves" are not of those reasonable atheists, you betcha!

[Tomm Carr]

On 05/08/2012 05:47 PM, RichD wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/wsj-persuasion
>
> "Altruism"
> Supposedly reasonable atheists are more easily swayed by
> emotional appeals:

The comparison was between "less-religious people" and "the devout."
Even less religious is a whole lot more religious than atheists.

> Your mind doesn't know what your brain is doing:
> "Neuroscience"
>
> MRI scans are more reliable than a person's conscious
> awareness.

An MRI can tell you in which part(s) of the brain specific mental
functions take place. Exactly what does that tell us of the mind or of
consciousness?

It doesn't matter if I know exactly where in that big box on the floor
the CPU chip is located. I built it so I happen to know exactly where it
is. But that doesn't help one bit in my use of the computer. Knowing or
not knowing has no effect on my abilities as a programmer.

So what, exactly, is the point?

--
TommCatt
Quisquis est orator in Latine videor profundus -- Anything said in Latin
sounds profound.

[Charles Bell]

On May 29, 12:28 am, Tomm Carr <tommc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/08/2012 05:47 PM, RichD wrote:
>
> >http://tinyurl.com/wsj-persuasion

> > Your mind doesn't know what your brain is doing:
> > "Neuroscience"
>
> > MRI scans are more reliable than a person's conscious
> > awareness.
>
> An MRI can tell you in which part(s) of the brain specific mental
> functions take place.

An MRI canNOT tell you in which part(s) of the the brain specific
mental functions take place. The Interpreter (that is: the MRI
technician, the neurologist, the dozen physio-biologic theories) tell
you that, and it is up to your belief system and knowledge to
apprehend their telling, or not.

The author engages in magical thinking that scientists do not really
need human consciousness to arrive at knowledge, or that knowledge
arrived at through human consciousness is not good enough and
incomplete. It is also a trivial point to be made that "human
consciousness" is not specifically aware of autonomic functions as
what the brain does distinctly from conscious awareness thereof any
more than one would know the whereabouts and activities of every blood
cell.