RT Article
T1 Agency, Freedom, and the Blessings of Opacity
JF Zygon
VO 46
IS 1
SP 111
OP 120
A1 Laurenson, Edwin C.
LA English
PB Wiley-Blackwell
YR 2011
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1827962313
AB Abstract: How can the decisions of “autonomous” individuals provide a rationale for freedom and self-governance if a mechanical and causal sense of the self leads us to question the foundational nature of the individual? If most of our decisions originate in brain function below the level of consciousness, we live in a virtual world produced by mechanisms outside our control, arising from transparent self-models of which we are not aware. “Opacity,” the gift of not perceiving directly, of not automatically believing what we are experiencing, is precisely what makes it possible for us to question our first-person perspectives. While we do not have direct access to the mechanisms that give rise to our sense of ourselves, our investigation can make it possible for us to analyze and understand those very mechanisms consciously. The deployment of that knowledge in the act of decision making and the infinite regress of interacting conscious individuals underlies our existential freedom.
K1 self-model
K1 self-governance
K1 Self
K1 Postmodernism
K1 Phenomenology
K1 narrative self
K1 Thomas Metzinger
K1 Mechanism
K1 Individuality
K1 Freedom
K1 Consciousness
K1 Causality
K1 Agency
DO 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2010.01161.x