Sam Harris on claiming authorship over, and subjectively identifying with unconscious brain processes.
Important disclaimer before reading/watching. Possibility for misinterpretation alert!!!!:
Of course, neither Harris nor I, would deny that we are biological organisms. and in fact, the behaviour that we as organisms produce, is causally determined and dependent on influences outside us and also within our physical body. Influences from both inside and outside our skin move us.
Harris does not make any metaphysical or third-person scientific claims at all in this part of his talk.
The point is less controversial than this speech made for non-philosophers might appear: We don't contra-causally control any of it. and we can't claim authorship over things of which we are not aware are happening.
Of course, a naturalist definition of what we are, is that we are our brains (Or nervous system more accurately) within in our alive bodies (which are dependent on the environment to be able to function I suppose... a brain in a body without any input being received probably couldn't do much...?)
So, Harris is not saying that scientifically speaking we are not our brains... he is talking about the strangeness of claiming more authorship of unconscious brain and body processes that people are not even aware that are happening than one would claim authorship of say... the orbit of Mars. There is in each moment Experientially, as much awareness of the exact orbit of Mars (Outside your skin) as there is of your production of red blood cells (Within your skin).
He is addressing the people who claim conscious ownership or conscious control or subjective identification with the processes they don't even know are going on.
In my view this is an entirely uncontroversial statement, as I think that I can obviously not claim identification with something I am not aware of is happening by definition. let alone that I could possibly justify authorship of it.
The claim to be conscious of the unconscious (Yes this is a claim that people make) seems to me to be the definition of an oxymoron.
So, I can't see any objection to this.
Harris says:
"Some say that you are the totality of what goes on inside your brain and body, so your unconscious mental life and physiology is just as much you as your conscious inner life is. But this seems like a bait and switch. It trades a psychological fact, this experience we have (Roy: He is talking about SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE) of consciously authoring our thoughts and actions for a general conception of ourselves as persons.
It’s a little like saying "you’re made of stardust", which you are, but you don’t feel like stardust. And the knowledge that you’re stardust is not driving your moral intuitions and influencing our system of criminal justice.
Most people identify with a certain channel of information in their conscious minds. They feel that they are in control, that they are the source. (Roy: Talking about contra-causal control, i.e. the conscious source of the control, but speaking to non-philosophers) And this is an illusion. The you that you take yourself to be at this present moment isn’t in control of anything.
Compatibilist try to save free will by saying you are more than this, that you are the totality of what goes on in your brain and body. But you don’t feel responsible for this. Are you making red blood cells right now? If your body were to stop making them you wouldn’t be responsible for this, you’d be the victim of this change.
So, to say that you are responsible or identical to everything that goes on inside your brain and body is to make a claim about you that bears absolutely no relationship to the experience of conscious authorship and subjectivity that has made free will a problem for philosophy in the first place."