derangedHorse has a good reply to this (not that these are new arguments, eg "can the foot say because I am not the eye I am not part of the body?")
I was not referring to the subconscious as autopilot. To stretch this already tenuous analogy further the subconscious would be the flight control software.
I'm saying during our waking supposedly conscious experience our conscious selves (pilot) is actually rarely in control. Most of our choices are automatic (autopilot) and the conscious mind retroactively invents rational explanations for them when we bother to notice them at all.
Free will (if it exists) is probably almost entirely contained within the ability of the pilot to repeatedly tweak the autopilot settings, which is entirely indirect and a far smaller degree of control than we like to suppose.
If you consider evolution this isn't so surprising. Intelligence is just one strategy for adaptation and evolution repurposes and builds on top of existing structures. Why wouldn't the rational conscious mind evolve as a tweak on top of an unconscious intelligence, which itself is a tweak on top of subconscious/instinctual behavior? If animal studies are proving anything it's that intelligence is a spectrum and many supposedly human behaviors (concept of self, tool use, et al) are present in other species.
I was not referring to the subconscious as autopilot. To stretch this already tenuous analogy further the subconscious would be the flight control software.
I'm saying during our waking supposedly conscious experience our conscious selves (pilot) is actually rarely in control. Most of our choices are automatic (autopilot) and the conscious mind retroactively invents rational explanations for them when we bother to notice them at all.
Free will (if it exists) is probably almost entirely contained within the ability of the pilot to repeatedly tweak the autopilot settings, which is entirely indirect and a far smaller degree of control than we like to suppose.
If you consider evolution this isn't so surprising. Intelligence is just one strategy for adaptation and evolution repurposes and builds on top of existing structures. Why wouldn't the rational conscious mind evolve as a tweak on top of an unconscious intelligence, which itself is a tweak on top of subconscious/instinctual behavior? If animal studies are proving anything it's that intelligence is a spectrum and many supposedly human behaviors (concept of self, tool use, et al) are present in other species.