Making a decision -- is this an indicator of consciousness?

The whole thing is worth reading imho

making a decision and following through is "knowing" as far as we have capacity to know anything/do anything.
for example, if a CEO buys up shares of his company because he's planning to release an awesome product and he's going to follow through on that plan, I think that would be a good case for insider trading, based on insider knowledge.

Oh, I've read ND, I was just interested in how you connected your two thoughts. Still not entirely sure how you're linking it to apophatism, mind.

And yeah, so it sounds like Adorno is a compatibilist. About right, really.

xpost it's not omniscience, though, is it. Which is the problem with the God paradox that was being discussed...

if you're omniscient, that just makes the case of insider trading even stronger! the idea that free will is contingent on imperfections in knowledge isn't consistent with the way we hold entities responsible for things.

well, both boil down to examples of knowing things through negative knowledge. does that make more sense? xp

Philip, you would be culpable for the intent, yes. But the point is that with knowledge so perfect as to be foresight, then you are trapped - if you do the action, then you are following something that is predestined, if you don't, then you don't have perfect knowledge. (NB: I'm not necessarily saying that the paradox is pointing us in the right direction, I just don't think your rebuttal is sound enough.)

Mordy, yes, that makes sense in that way, but I think ultimately they're saying different things. Might have to go and re-read it, though, my argument isn't cohering in my brain enough on this front.

i wondered on watching a dog climb a wall to walk on without being prompted by its owner to what extent an animal had free will or not. Seemed to have more awareness of its surroundings than I'd have assumed at the time.
For a dog at least, might have expected it of a cat.

Could really do with one of those right now, have noticed that plastic muesli bags are getting holes in them, So am thinking there may be other types of mammal in this place.

if you're omniscient, knowledge is will is power. all three things tend to converge the more you have of any. there's no paradox, at least if you want to put God on trial for negligence/breach of contract.

so that's how God got so omniwealthy. by doing all that omninsider trading

it worked for bill murray in groundhog's day

classic philosophical example on decision-making is probably Buridan's ass - if an ass is hungry and there are two equidistant bales of hay, what reason is there for it not getting caught in decisional equilibrium and just starving instead of choosing? Counterargument is that donkeys don't tend to die while standing between two bales of hay, counterargument to that is that there would always be factors which mean that this simple empirical situation is never really a state of precisely equal choices - Spinoza is p funny on this in that he just str8 up says ya, if an ass (or a human, equally lacking in free will as we are) were put in this situation then indeed, it would just die, but maybe the better and more adequate way to think of it in human terms is where we end up going crazy or killing ourselves because of whatever impossible bind of equally valid decisions we've found ourselves in.