Re:Not everyone should meditate
by strken on Thursday March 03, 2022 @03:00AM
(#30538354)
I don't meditate, but thoughts do just seem to appear to me without a lot of control or conscious effort. My answer is twofold. Firstly, your executive function is still moderating those thoughts, even if they're appearing from some dingy recess of your brain that decided to think about hunger or inkjet printers. Secondly, there's not really a "self" other than your executive function and the stuff going into it. Any agency is the executive function. It deals with the stream. Maybe it drives some work upstream, like eating before hunger hits.
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Re:Not everyone should meditate
by argentinian on Thursday March 03, 2022 @06:48AM
(#30539741)
Does the executive function operate in a deterministic way? In a random way? In a mixture of determinism and randomness?
This is a bit like asking whether a fire is deterministic or random. Sure, at some level there are processes happening that are either deterministic or random. At the level we observe, though, it's just a really complicated semi-predictable process.
I'd say that agency is your executive function's ability to take control of the actions resulting from that process. Someone who binges after starving lacks agency, because their executive function has lost control, while someone who holds themselves under a cold shower is exercising agency by staying there in violation of thermoregulation, pain, cold shock, or whatever else.
I don't think agency can be defined outside the context of the process that is you. Determinism and randomness are inherent in that process, and someone operating predictably still has agency so long as they're exercising control.