Can we think?

[TruthSeeker]

Do you know how you think? What do you have to do to initiate a thought? What do you have to do to raise your arm in the air?

Choice.

Free will is discredited on the grounds that we aren't actually the ones doing the thinking.

Eh? I don't follow. Please explain...

Try as I will I can't think of anyway to answer the questions above (humor).

Are you choosing to try?

The answer to what do we have to do to initiate a thought is: nothing.

Well, certainly. But even if you don't think you are choosing not to think, isn't true?

Therefore it can't be us initiating the thought, can it?

Eh?

Therefore can we say we have free will? I think not. (again a little irony)

Are you choosing to not have free will?

Your thoughts? (even more irony)

[...]

 

[§outh§tar]

Southstar,

Thing has already stated that thoughts are initiated by stimuli. This is pretty much the case. However, one should keep in mind that thought itself is a stimulus and impulses pretty much cycle back and forth in the mind, sometimes growing stronger, sometimes growing weaker, being reorganized, back to front, front to back, middle to sides, ad infinitum.

You yourself (conscious and unconscious) are a product of these impulses and therefore you may not be able to entirely 'take credit' for them. But, they can 'take credit' for you. So, what's the difference?

The question is, am I the one acting on these impulses?

Don't get caught up in the foibles of the mind. All you are is a collection of tics and response patterns and so on. But, so what? You sure do a good job of pretending to be a man. Don't you?

I am just a collection of cells struggling to survive. Yes, I've heard that line before. I prefer to heed Dr. Phil's advice and remain a unique individual with a special purpose and destiny. Tis more palatable.

And, as to free will. Does it matter if you're really in charge or not? As long as you think you are, everything is fine.

With respect to the other question, I was saying if determinism and not 'free will' is the case, does that not nullify personal responsibility?

It has been shown that the human mind does not see things as they are. It sees things as it has been predicted to be from the events of a half second earlier. It takes time for stimuli to travel from our retinas to our visual cortex. Then it takes time for processing for this stimuli to actively enter our consciousness. However, we don't live in a backwards universe. We aren't living a half-second in the past. We live in the now. We (the boys in the basement) predict the outcome and pass that on to us (the conscious) in order to allow us to interact in real time. This gives rise to many optical illusions and possibilities of manipulation.
But, does it eradicate free will?
Somewhat.
But, it doesn't matter. As long as you think you're free. It's the thought that counts.

If I "think" I am free (in a free will environment), doesn't that preclude the possibility of being in a deterministic environment; How can I think I am free if I am not?

Try this example:
Think of a red flower with four petals.
- Tell me what you did to think of the flower.

 

[§outh§tar]

Choice.

How did you choose to raise your arm in the air?

Note: That is not the same as 'how did you raise your arm in the air'. The latter is entirely different.

Eh? I don't follow. Please explain...

Your response will bring the explanation.

 

[§outh§tar]

The will makes my muscles to move my body, even to levitate for a moment, by jumping. When I want something, I send a power and give it a direction. If I want to raise my arm, which hangs down because the earth draws it towards it, then this power, which moves in me by willpower, flows to my hand and makes the muscles in this body to raise it.

This way I have conquered the gravity - a great power. This happens also when I jump in the air, but only for a moment, because my willpower to move my whole body from the earth is only for a moment greater than the earth's gravity. If I could increase my willpower and store it in my body, I could overcome earth's gravity for longer periods and levitate higher in the air. But this I can't do until I am conscious on a divine state. But the initiated can, whenever he wants, pour in this eternal source of power without the need of converting it. He can be in the air as long as he directs his willpower against the gravity.
-
The chemical consistency of matter commands which vibrations the body is able to resist. If a body takes in radiation which it cannot resist, it can lead to total mental breakdown, even to death. This is why the body must first develop if we want to initiate a human consciousness to the highest grade of divine power. The willpower of man is of same vibration as the power in the Ark of the Covenant, but in the Ark of the Covenant, this power was thousands of times stronger. It gives Life or takes life, according to the dose.

That just skips the purpose of the question. I obviously understand that much.

The question is how did you will your muscles to move?

 

[§outh§tar]

I'm reading because I'm interested. I'm interested because the subject of thought interests me in general. I asked myself the question because you asked me to ask myself, and I found it interesting enough to comply.

What on earth told you to post this thread? There is always free will, because there is always a choice. One choice is bad, the other is good, but you are still free to make the "bad" choice. The existence of consequences is inevitable. But those consequences depend on choices of others, if living things are involved. The chain is infinite, in your mind and outside of it. If you want to be like the guy in The Beautiful Mind, heheh, that's an interesting view on things, but don't devote too much time to it; after all it might be totally wrong.

So many replies but they state the obvious and don't get to the point. OF COURSE I know you are reading because you are interested, et cetera.

HOW did you ask yourself why you are interested in the topic?

 

[§outh§tar]

SouthStar makes a very poignant realization. That is, Free Will can only exist where there is a thinking entity. Furthermore, where there is a thinking entity, there is necessarily free will (though, perhaps not absolutely free).

Yet, I ask SouthStar, if it is not I who is thinking, then who? To whom or what should the thought be attributed, unless you would say that there is actually no thought taking place? In which case, what then do you consider a thought? If you do consider a thought to be taking place, but not by me, or us, then what are we? Are we that physical entity in which the electrical impulses which correlate to thought take place in? If so, are we then not the thinking thing? If we are not the physical entity, then what are we? You suggest that we are observers of thoughts. Is it not necessary to have awareness to observe, and does not awareness necessitate thought?

To answer the last question, only in the Twilight Zone..

Well I am not sure exactly how it works. I know (or at least think I know) that I am thinking but I am uncertain whether the thoughts are mine. My thoughts are, we are probably vessels through whom the thoughts transpire (the thoughts created and endowed by immanent puppeteers). I am at a loss to actually explain it and thinking about it honestly makes my head hurt..

P.S. Maybe even though we are observing the thoughts 'occur', we are not doing so willingly? Thoughts don't just come out of nothingness do they? I suppose the discussion inevitably points to a Prime Mover (of thoughts) to alleviate difficulties.

 

[§outh§tar]

This

"we are simply spectators or observers of thoughts from our brains and not the actual initiators"

would mean that there is another brain in our head, required to observe what the first brain does. And then it would take yet another brain to observe what that second brain does, and so ad infinitum. There is a much simpler explanation for the above phenomenon.

Thinking that we are merely observers of our own thoughts is a concept that needs to be elaborated a bit:

Namely, we make observations of the 1st order, as well as observatios of the 2nd order.
Observations of the 1st order ar those "immediate" ones, their result is that we think of the world and ourselves the way we have observed. "This is a computer."

But we are also able to reflect on our own observation -- and these are the observations of the 2nd order, the meta-thoughts. Whenever we say things like, "I don't understand this", "I think I made a mistake in my conclusion" etc. -- this is when we make observations of the 2nd order.

Seen as a whole, we are both observers and the observed.

Well I never thought of it that way.. stupid Occam's Razor..

From the position of 1st order observations, we indeed seem predetermined and without free will. But from the position of 2nd order observations, we surely have free will. Free will is a certain meta-concept, the way, for example, criteria for what is scientific or what is normal are.

Say, a criterium for what is scientific is intersubjective provability: this is a criterium that is applied on certain data in a certain way and is satisfied if a certain outcome is achieved; but we could not speak of intersubjective provability per se, without applying it to actual examples.

Per analogy, we can say that free will is a socio-psychological concept (institute) that fulfills a certain task: People do things. In order to organize social life, the system of human society produced the concept of free will. So that when people do things, doing those things can be personally ascribed to them, and they held accountable -- this is what the concept (institute) of free will is there for, this is what it does.

This goes in good and in bad. It just so happens that when it comes to the bad, there is a tendency to say "There really is no free will, so how can anybody be guilty when they have shot someone?" Nobody likes to take credit for a bad thing he did.
But when it comes to good things, people like to take credit and say what they have done -- wrote a bestseller, saved people from a burning house etc. -- is soooooooo a product of their free will. That they were "creative".

From the point of view of free will, shooting someone or writing a book are both acts of free will.

Some questions remain unanswered:
1) What is to say our observations are really "ours" (such a conclusion seems dogmatic)?
2) Are we really the ones doing the observing?

Also observing covers one aspect but leaves the questions I posed at the beginning unanswered:

How do you initiate a thought?

(The confounding nature of the question seems to leave the conclusion that we are not the ones who do the initiating, or at least are not willfully doing it).

 

[water]

1) What is to say our observations are really "ours" (such a conclusion seems dogmatic)?

But what would it mean to own (" ") an observation?
At best, I can imagine that we "own" our observations inasmuch as they seem to be stored in our minds ... somehow.

2) Are we really the ones doing the observing?

Who else? Do you think that there is somebody else there in your head?

We are our thoughts, our thoughts are us.
There would be no us without our thoughts, just as there would be no thoughts without us.

However, since we are capable of self-reflection (we can make observations of the 2nd order), we are also able to make this separation between ourselves and our thoughts.
This separation becomes visible to us only when we do make observations of the 2nd order though.

How do you initiate a thought?

That a thought is "initiated" is how we, in return, with the means of a certain logic *describe* what is happening.

To *desrcibe* a thinking process with "a thought is initiated" testifies that we are applying a certain brand of logic, a certain kind of thinking about cause and effect -- a linear causality.
Needless to say, as we have seen many times before, it is this linear causality that gets us into many many troubles.

(The confounding nature of the question seems to leave the conclusion that we are not the ones who do the initiating, or at least are not willfully doing it).

Yes, but I think that what you have just said is a problem of the theory you have used to *describe* thinking -- and that the problem you posed is a problem of the theory of thinking, rather than a problem of thinking itself.

It could be that using linear causality to analyze thinking processes is as inappropriate as using a meter to measure weight.

***
As for the thread title:

Of course we can think!
It is just that thinking is obviously far more easy to *do* than to describe and analyze *how* we think.

It's the theories that are faulty, not the phenomena they are trying to describe and analyze.

 

[§outh§tar]

But what would it mean to own (" ") an observation?
At best, I can imagine that we "own" our observations inasmuch as they seem to be stored in our minds ... somehow.

Something like copyrights. We started the thought therefore it's ours. It does not logically follow that because we house the thoughts they must be ours.

Who else? Do you think that there is somebody else there in your head?

We are our thoughts, our thoughts are us.
There would be no us without our thoughts, just as there would be no thoughts without us.

However, since we are capable of self-reflection (we can make observations of the 2nd order), we are also able to make this separation between ourselves and our thoughts.
This separation becomes visible to us only when we do make observations of the 2nd order though.

Well here is the problem. You go on to speak as though the thoughts really are "ours" to begin with but I don't see how that is justified, especially on the grounds that there is no one else around to accredit them to. Is there any good reason to assume our thoughts (as defined above) are really "ours"?

That a thought is "initiated" is how we, in return, with the means of a certain logic *describe* what is happening.

To *desrcibe* a thinking process with "a thought is initiated" testifies that we are applying a certain brand of logic, a certain kind of thinking about cause and effect -- a linear causality.
Needless to say, as we have seen many times before, it is this linear causality that gets us into many many troubles.

It seems we come to a dead end on this question and resort to being cirular ("I started the thought by thinking it") - which leads me to question whether we are at all justified in assuming these thoughts really are "ours" to begin with.

Yes, but I think that what you have just said is a problem of the theory you have used to *describe* thinking -- and that the problem you posed is a problem of the theory of thinking, rather than a problem of thinking itself.

It could be that using linear causality to analyze thinking processes is as inappropriate as using a meter to measure weight.

Yes that is a problem but I fail to see how "I started the thought by thinking it" any more addresses it. Circular logic doesn't just doesn't satisfy the difficulties - which forces the idea of a Prime Mover of thoughts. Of course citing a Prime Mover as the responsible party is a great cop-out but I don't see how else the problem can be satisfactorily resolved.

As for the thread title:

Of course we can think!
It is just that thinking is obviously far more easy to *do* than to describe and analyze *how* we think.

It's the theories that are faulty, not the phenomena they are trying to describe and analyze.

Maybe in turn our ideas of the phenomena are faulty. Like I said earlier, we cannot assume a priori that thoughts are ours simply because we are aware of them. My only solution right now is a Prime Mover but I'll be thinking about it.

 

[Yorda]

That just skips the purpose of the question. I obviously understand that much.

The question is how did you will your muscles to move?

Ok, maybe "I" don't really 'initiate' the will for thoughts but just as sound and light waves there are mental waves which travel around everywhere, which we 'catch' with our brain

lol.. How do we catch them? I don't know, but it's probably just something that happens.

 

[TruthSeeker]

How did you choose to raise your arm in the air?

I simply chose.

 

[c20H25N3o]

Do you know how you think? What do you have to do to initiate a thought? What do you have to do to raise your arm in the air?



Free will is discredited on the grounds that we aren't actually the ones doing the thinking. Try as I will I can't think of anyway to answer the questions above (humor). The answer to what do we have to do to initiate a thought is: nothing. Therefore it can't be us initiating the thought, can it? Therefore can we say we have free will? I think not. (again a little irony)


Your thoughts? (even more irony)

We live in an environment which always stimulates our senses. Our thoughts are really reasonings about what we hear, see, touch, smell and taste. We are called homo sapien which means reasoning man. When we reason with an idea or an external reality we are really deciding if that thing is good or bad for us. It is the survival instinct I guess. It is our reasoning nature which leads us to ask the ultimate questions such as 'Why am I here?' etc.
We seem to have been given all the hardware to make decisions based upon our environment so that we can live safely using common sense however we also have to deal with / reason with the fact that one day this hardware i.e. our physical bodies, will be switched off. I guess it is knowledge of this that leads us to seek out God given that no human can solve this issue of self terminating hardware.

peace

c20

 

[§outh§tar]

I simply chose.

Thank you for being circular and begging the question.

P.S. Admitting you don't know might have been easier.

 

[firdroirich]

Free Will seems to me, beyond doubt, a dead philosophical concept

"Will" itself, by common trait, is free. You may will as you wish, - it's free.

 

[Avatar]

Most human thought is initiated by television. Free will is a joke. The power of suggestion is far more powerful than most of us imagine. We think so many of our ideas are our own when someone else has put them there for their own purposes.

If the TV commands "all young men must wear ridiculous baggy shorts that hang below the knees" most of them obey willingly, thinking that they are being independent by antagonizing an older generation. They are blindly following yet thinking they are acting independently.

I don't have a tv, nor a radio. Shocking, isn't it?

 

[water]

SouthStar,


Do you know Systems theory?
(I have only German sources here before me, and I couldn't find their translations on the net.)

Systems theory solves many problems that classical logic has. In classical logic, with linear causality, we soon hit the wall and have to infer some Prime Mover, or the linear causality collapses.
Systems theory postulated that within a system, there exists a circular causality. But to understand this, you need to get into Systems theory though.

I warmly recommend it. Not because it would be some sort of a cop-out, but because it offers a better (read: more scientific, more intersubjectively provable, simpler, more efficient) methodological tool for describing and analyzing esp. social and cognitive phenomena.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Thank you for being circular and begging the question.

P.S. Admitting you don't know might have been easier.

How is that circular!? Yours is circular!! It is obviously a choice! How would you answer than?
"How did you choose to raise your arm in the air?"

 

[invert_nexus]

SouthStar,

The question is, am I the one acting on these impulses?

Um. Yes. Or rather, you (the interpretive mechanism) is rationalizing the actions taken by you (the boys in the basement). Both are you.

I am just a collection of cells struggling to survive. Yes, I've heard that line before. I prefer to heed Dr. Phil's advice and remain a unique individual with a special purpose and destiny. Tis more palatable.

This is the purpose of the interpretive mechanism. To instill purpose. Well, purpose is actually a side effect, but it is a human side effect.

With respect to the other question, I was saying if determinism and not 'free will' is the case, does that not nullify personal responsibility?

One. Determinism is not implied by the subconscious.
Two. Only a coward would forgo personal responsibility.

How can I think I am free if I am not?

You lie to yourself. Or, in prettier terms, you tell yourself a story. Your arm moves because you willed it. You chose it. You killed that prostitute because she was a dirty slut that deserved it. You killed your enemy because he was a monster who would eat your children given half a chance.

Know something? Your take on free will and determinism shows your christian heritage. You think on lack of free will as in all your actions are pre-ordained. Determinism. You think of "the boys in the basement" as some entity apart from yourself to whom you can shift the blame. Beware, lest you find yourself a new god.

Try this example:
Think of a red flower with four petals.
- Tell me what you did to think of the flower.

This was exactly my point.

It does not logically follow that because we house the thoughts they must be ours.

Whose thoughts would they be then?
You've taken my mention of "the boys in the basement" in an irresponsible manner. Regardless of whether "you" (the interpreter of your life) enact thoughts or actions or whether it is "you" (the boys in the basement) it is still "you" (the whole).
Just because there are processes that are going on beneath conscious awareness does not mean that you are not responsible for your own actions. By seeking to shift "blame" from self to other by calling these subconscious parts of yourself other is cowardly. Perhaps we are unable to truly control these hidden parts of ourselves, but it has been shown that man is capable of coming quite close to appearing to do so. And it is the appearances that count. It is actions that count. It is the end (in this instance) that justifies the means.

It seems we come to a dead end on this question and resort to being cirular ("I started the thought by thinking it") - which leads me to question whether we are at all justified in assuming these thoughts really are "ours" to begin with.

The first part of your statement is justified. The latter is not.

Here. Let me hit with you a quote from The Symbolic Species:

One of the characters in Moliere's play "The Imaginary Invalid" is asked by his physician-examiners to explain the means by which opium induces sleep. He replies that it induces sleep because it contains a "soporific factor." This answer is applauded by the doctors. The playwright is, of course, satirizing the false expertise of these apparently learned men by showing their knowledge to be no more than sophistry. The answer is a nonexplanation. It merely takes what is in need of explanation and gives it a name, as though it were a physical object. Like phlogiston, the substance once hypothesized by pre-atomic chemistry to be the essence that determined flammability, the "soporific factor" fails to reduce the phenomenon in need of explanation to any more basic causal mechanisms.​

.
So, simply stating: "The arm moves because I will it" is a cop-out. It's a non-answer. But, this doesn't lead to the assumption that our thoughts are not our own. They are our own. And our actions are our own responsibility.

After all, even if our thoughts and actions are not consequent upon our "will", we are most certainly consequent upon our thoughts and actions. Turn it around and realize that it is not your place to think that you are in charge (or should be) of your thoughts. Your thoughts are in charge of you. And this is the way it is supposed to be.

Don't put the cart in front of the horse.

The thought started "you" by thinking "you".


Truthseeker,

I simply chose.

Ahh. I see. The sleep is induced by the soporific factor. You are so very wise.

How is that circular!? Yours is circular!! It is obviously a choice! How would you answer than?
"How did you choose to raise your arm in the air?"

And this is from a philosophy student.
Ha!


c20,

We are called homo sapien which means reasoning man.

Oh. That explains everything then. We call ourselves resoning man and therefore we are and obviously no other is or they, too, would be called resoning man.

I guess it is knowledge of this that leads us to seek out God given that no human can solve this issue of self terminating hardware.

You came close to truth here but bounced off like a billiard ball. It is fear of death that that causes man to create a god-figure to grant eternal life. So comforting, isn't it? Make you all warm and cozy inside? Coward.


Firdroirich,

"Will" itself, by common trait, is free. You may will as you wish, - it's free.

So is phlogiston. What is will?


Rosa,

would mean that there is another brain in our head, required to observe what the first brain does. And then it would take yet another brain to observe what that second brain does, and so ad infinitum. There is a much simpler explanation for the above phenomenon.

There are different 'brains' observing each other. Distinct and seperate. You can think of the different areas of the brain as a function in computer code. Functions should be transparent to each other. One function doesn't know how another function does what it does. It only knows what it needs to know. What information it needs to send and what information it can expect to receive back from it. In this way, functions can be said to be 'observing' each other.

However, there is one specific function in our mind whose specific task is compilation of the 'final' outputs of all the other functions. The interpretive mechanism. It compiles all the separate information, both sensory and cognitive, into a unified whole. It gives reasons and explanations.

(You knew that I was going to say this. I've said it before.)

From the position of 1st order observations, we indeed seem predetermined and without free will.

Do you, too, link free will and determinism? Does the mention of free will automatically bring up the idea of determinism to contrast it? Maybe the two are mutually exclusive, but can't you have no free will in a non-deterministic universe?

 

[water]

Oh. That explains everything then. We call ourselves resoning man and therefore we are and obviously no other is or they, too, would be called resoning man.

Actually, yes. From the position of Systems theory, this would be so. But it would take too much to explain everything here, so I'll leave it.
But if you ever have the chance to read upon it -- and esp. its application when it comes to cognitive systems (how they are self-referential and guided by circular causality) -- then go for it.

“ I guess it is knowledge of this that leads us to seek out God given that no human can solve this issue of self terminating hardware. ”

You came close to truth here but bounced off like a billiard ball. It is fear of death that that causes man to create a god-figure to grant eternal life. So comforting, isn't it? Make you all warm and cozy inside? Coward.

Hey!
C20's statement has an innate ethical evaluation, and you cannot call it wrong or him a coward.
If you want to be a scientist, then you also have to refrain from interpreting and judging ethical statements as if they were scientific.

There are different 'brains' observing each other. Distinct and seperate. You can think of the different areas of the brain as a function in computer code. Functions should be transparent to each other. One function doesn't know how another function does what it does. It only knows what it needs to know. What information it needs to send and what information it can expect to receive back from it. In this way, functions can be said to be 'observing' each other.

However, there is one specific function in our mind whose specific task is compilation of the 'final' outputs of all the other functions. The interpretive mechanism. It compiles all the separate information, both sensory and cognitive, into a unified whole. It gives reasons and explanations.

(You knew that I was going to say this. I've said it before.)

I knew you were going to say this, but this is totally not what I was aiming at.
What I said refers to the *whole observer* observing another *whole observer*. Not just different parts or functions of the brain observing (" ") eachother.

Namely, if we agree that when we think, the *whole* brain is doing this, as a whole (with all its parts and functions) and that a thought is a "compound product" of the brain as a whole, of all of its parts and functions -- then for the notion that we only observe what we think there would indeed have to be two complete brains in our head.

So, per Occham's razor, we say that there is only one brain, that functions as a whole (while some parts may be more active than other though, but it is still the whole brain), and reconceptualize the whole observer problem in some other way.

Do you, too, link free will and determinism? Does the mention of free will automatically bring up the idea of determinism to contrast it?

No, but I said what I said for the sake of avoiding a predictable course of argument.

Maybe the two are mutually exclusive, but can't you have no free will in a non-deterministic universe?

Whether is it possible that in a non-deterministic universe one can have no free will?
Free will is after all a psycho-sociological construct that fulfills a certain task in human societies, and the notion of determinism is, in my opinion, a concept from physics that has been introduced into the psycho-sociological discourse due to the desire to scientificalize the whole of our knowledge, but I still think that that introduction is misplaced. Possible, it has been done, but it is misplaced.

So, strictly sociologically speaking, your above question is pointless in the domain of sociology, as well as in the domain of phsyics.
It's the kind of question like, "Does Anna's love of green testify that green the is prevalent colour in our natural world?" -- the question is possible, it can be answered, but it is mixing up fields of knowledge. It is extremely common to do that.

No pun intended.

 

[invert_nexus]

Rosa,

C20's statement has an innate ethical evaluation, and you cannot call it wrong or him a coward.
If you want to be a scientist, then you also have to refrain from interpreting and judging ethical statements as if they were scientific.

Sure I can. Know why? Because my statement also has an innate ethical evaluation. I.e. that creating a god because of the fear of death is a cowardly act. And, it would be more of a philosophical evaluation than a scientific one.

Namely, if we agree that when we think, the *whole* brain is doing this, as a whole (with all its parts and functions) and that a thought is a "compound product" of the brain as a whole, of all of its parts and functions -- then for the notion that we only observe what we think there would indeed have to be two complete brains in our head.

I think that the notion of a singular brain is faulty. Rather, it is composed of various parts that each have a different consistency, form, and function. So, in this way, there are various "wholes" looking at each other.

However, I will agree that it is tricky to discern exactly how these different 'organs' relate to each other. So I suppose that it would be best to keep the brain singular for the moment. But, it would be simple to divide the brain into three organs. A la the Triune brain of Paul MacLean. Reptile brain. Old mammal brain. And neocortex. Each of these interact with each other, but their functioning are all different and awareness is restricted almost in its entirety to small areas of the neocortex. The chief observer.

But, why the need for a whole observer? After all, it comes down to perception once more. That small portion of the whole which we perceive as our selves is not the whole. And yet it lays claim to it.

We don't need to go to neuroscience to find these levels, either. They also exist in psychology. The ego, superego, and id. The conscious and the subconscious. These parts exist. And together they make a whole. But, that whole is not 'us'. We are merely a part of that whole. And possibly a small part of the whole.

But, before Southstar can use this to forgo responsibility. As I said before, even if we can't lay claim to all of our thoughts, our thoughts can lay claim to us.

So, per Occham's razor, we say that there is only one brain, that functions as a whole (while some parts may be more active than other though, but it is still the whole brain), and reconceptualize the whole observer problem in some other way.

Observer is a misnomer. My analogy of functions fits the facts a bit better.