Re: consciousness

< If you ask why someone performed a particular action, they will give an
answer in terms of their understanding of their own motives and their
mental model of the world. If you repeat the question and follow the
causal chain, they will reach a point where the reason is 'intuition', the
result of some other subconscious calculation or unknown. >

In a chess game a couple of years ago, I played R-E3. The reason I would
give is that the move pinned a black knight and so would win a piece. Black
resigned immediately, as I expected. There was no instinct or intuition
involved at all, purely calculation. After making the move I pressed the
clock button quickly in order to stop my clock and start the opponent's.
The reason for that is that a chess clock times each player's thinking time
and a player must complete a certain number of moves in a certain time or
that player loses the game. The reason black resigned was not that he was
in a fit of pique, he judged that it was a certain loss. When he (or
myself) was a beginner, he sometimes played on in a hopeless position,
hoping that the opponent made a mistake, but that never happened and so we
learned when to resign and when to play on.

So you are correct, but only about certain types of action. Some actions
are taken for no calculated reason, some are instinctual, and so on. Some
are just completely as the result of calculation. Some actions are just
plain wrong and some are a result of complete miscalculation, and some are
the result of being fooled such as buying an endowment mortgage 10 years
ago.


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