Doership

[Guest guest]

Some time ago I posted an excerpt from an article by Susan Blackmore on

memes that was published in New Scientist. The most interesting part was the

start, providing the experiential evidence:

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"Hold out your arm in front of you. Whenever you feel like it, of your own

free will, flex your wrist. Repeat this a few times, making sure you do it

as consciously as you can. You'll probably experience some kind of decision

process, in which you hold back from doing anything and then decide to act.

Now ask yourself, what began the process that led to the action? Was it you?

Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet of the university of California in San

Francisco asked volunteers to do exactly that. A clock allowed the subjects

to note exactly when they decided to act, and by fitting electrodes to their

wrists, Libet could time the start of the action. More electrodes on their

scalps recorded a particular brain wave pattern called the readiness

potential, which occurs just before any complex action and is associated

with the brain planning its next move. Libet's controversial finding was

that the decision act came after the readiness potential. It looks like

there is no conscious "self" jumping into the synapses and starting things

off. This and other research has led me to believe that the idea of "self"

is an illusion." [...]

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One might ask, how long will it take to prove that will, like, dislike,

everything that uses the pronoun "I", works without the personal pronoun,

that is to say, on smelling strawberries the reaction of "like" can be

observed on a brain scanner before the person under test can actually react

to the smell. Some languages, like Portuguese and Spanish, don't use

personal pronouns, unless unavoidable or an emphasis is required. It would

be interesting to know how many of the languages on this planet do and how

many don't use personal pronouns.