Does communication require volition?
A criticism of epiphenomenalism is that to assert it is to simultaneously claim that one's assertion was done unconsciously, which conflicts with the concept of assertion.
Is there an account of non-volitional communication?
Is there an account of non-volitional communication?
Comments (19)
Consciousness is epiphenomenal if it tags along like a shadow of events. No action is consciously caused.
The fact of neuroplasticity provides sufficient reason to reject epiphenomenalism.
I'd say that making a claim requires volition. Expressing pain does not.
The epiphenomenalist claims that we don't make claims.
We can start by replacing the dualist conscious~unconscious distinction with the neurobiological distinction of attention~habit. Volition then speaks to attentional processing, where the prefrontal in particular is engaged in a half second’s worth of evolving a state. This is then opposed to the automatic which is the emitting of a habitual response via the mid-brain basal ganglia in about a fifth of a second.
In other words, there is a clear and well mapped pair of brain paths - one that is volitional in having the time and plasticity to form a novel response, the other that is automatic in being the fast and unthinking release of actions we are already prepared to perform with practised skill.
That is the general neurobiological model - one in which epiphenomenalism can’t even be a thing.
And then speech acts are just acts like any other. They are a blend of the attentional and the habitual.
For the sake of efficiency, we will want to act as much as possible out of skilled habit. But volition is always there as whatever level of attention we must still devote to connecting some specific speech act to its more general communicative intent.
So yes, epiphenomenalism is self-contradictory if you hold it as true that it feels like we are in some kind of control of our ability to assert meanings.
But bring in the neurobiology and what is revealed is our faulty notion of this homuncular “we” that is suppose to author (or not) every individual speech act. That is a false binary. The truth is that “we” are both our in the moment conceptions and our generic bedrock of well learnt habits.
You could say we are both our conscious and unconscious selves, but working in functional unison and not at dysfunctional odds - which is the Freudian romantic version of the neurobiological story.
Bear with me:
Imagine for a moment that my motor cortex is a piano. I have no conscious control over the melody it's playing. The player is my environment.
In this scenario, your question about what I understand can be directed toward me, but the conscious part of me can't answer the question.
If you genuinely expect an answer from my conscious self, then you expect that we are able to communicate (and therein is what I mean by "communicate")
There are such things as Freudian slips. Feud thought the unconscious is dynamic, but I doubt it and I don't think it is volitional, perhaps it is more dispositional in the sense that it provides a basis upon which we act. I think it is repressed for the most part, but occasionally things bubble up whether we like it or not. Freud thought our psyche is determined by causal forces, and one of those forces is our self.
If communication is the process of transmitting, conveying, receiving, decoding, creating, and encoding data/information, does it necessarily have anything to do with volition?
I think that types of communication correspond to types of data/information, including: physical (natural, either organic or inorganic, or artificial), mental, and semantic.
Physical communication requires energy propagation (i.e., signals). Mental communication requires a mind. Semantic communication requires physical communication, mental communication, an intelligent author, a message, and an intelligent recipient.
If communication consists solely of physical data/information, then volition plays no part. For example:
1) Endocommunication provides physiological (e.g., metabolic, hormonal, neuronal, and immunological) regulation.
2) My general appearance may be the result of careful planning (providing evidence of volition), or it may not. With or without volition, it is a form of communication.
3) I utter spontaneous vocalisations without volition (e.g., when I hit my thumb with a hammer), and when I am heard, my pain has been communicated.
I agree. I also agree that there are types of communication that do not require volition.
The meaning I assign to this statement is that the best tacos are made in California. I will now proceed to see how that works.
I am glad to have been able to communicate with you.