A Sliver of Consciousness

On Friday I attended the George Lakoff lecture at the University of Oregon.

The basic theme--cognitive schemata, frames, and metaphor theory applied to the current landscape of American politics--is the one he's devoted himself to largely supplanting his work in linguistics for the last decade. Given that, I got more from the talk than I expected.

One claim he made is not so surprising yet still provocative: that 98% of our behavior is unconscious.

If this be true (and, give or take quibbles about the exact percent, the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness, etc., it is likely to be) then what is the use? Why try to figure out the meaning of life, or the meaning of anything, if even a good answer applies to only two percent of our behavior?

The key is the role of consciousness in the formation and modification of habit. Though most of our behavior, the relatively or completely unconscious part, is habitual--William James noted the important role of consciousness in modifying our habits.

As such, that 2% comes with an important modifier effect. It can, successively over the course of time, shape a much larger amount of unconscious habit. That is the scope of our freedom, and our responsibility.

Plant minds?

I am drawn to panpsychism, the idea that some form of mind pervades everything in the universe. Inanimate matter as well as everything we consider living. (There is the related idea from Whitehead: panexperientialism.) Drawn to it, though not convinced by it.

Staying focused on the living: if plants are considered to have minds or experience, this complicates the already complicated conversation around the ethical status of the non-human. Folks like Tom Regan have done as good a job as can be done extending Kantian deontology to animals. Pushed further, it breaks down. Infinite, absolute individual rights get us nowhere in a world where life has to consume life, and compete with life, in order to survive and propagate.

I've always felt there is a wisdom in trees. But I've been willing to consider that a mystical, imaginative fancy.  Maybe there's more to it?