Sunday, June 29, 2008

fishing in the stream of consciousness

i just read an interesting article on new scientific evidence surrounding how our brains make decisions. apparently our brains actually decide things at least ten seconds before they let us know on a conscious level. now that's interesting and something that i have suspected all along. but is it just another way of expressing intuition? and what does it mean for free will?

i am interested in issues of intuition and decision-making because at our house, we have a few decisions on our horizon and on our plate. they are big ones, ones which affect what we will do and where we will live and where sabin will go to school. it's a luxurious "problem" to have--to have so many choices that you don't really know which one to take. on top of it, it's actually choices between doing one thing i love and another thing i love, between working with people i'd love to work with and working with people i already love working with. as i said, luxury choices.

but in fishing in my stream of consciousness, i wonder exactly how i will come to a decision about this. at the moment, i'm keeping my mind (and my possibilities) as open as possible. but has my mind already decided and it just hasn't let me know as of yet? i guess time will tell.

3 comments:

hele said...

Amazing, I was just wishing I could know what the right desicion is to take when I read your post. Now I am also wondering whether my brain already knows the answer..

julochka said...

hele--i'm certain your brain does already know the answer and that it's the right one, whatever it is. especially because your name means "whole," (in Danish--i think i told you that before, but i can't help but think of it whenever i see your name) i'm sure you can't go wrong! :-)

polona said...

i often wonder about similar things... is what we call intuition the same as described here? we know so little about our own minds and how they work...