Q: It feels like there is a me who decides
/The Sierra Nevada Mountains west of Lone Pine, CA
It feels like there is a “me” in here that decides to do things. For instance, I am going to decide to do something right now: “Ok… what should I decide to do? I will decide to do some housework before my friends show up. Ok… I am going to get up and wash these cups and glasses…. Uh, but I don’t want to get up, I just want to stay seated. Well… I’m going to get up anyway and wash them, even though I don’t really want to. So here I go…”
It feels like I am in control of that deciding. There is some kind of decider in here that can do top down control and over-ride my laziness and decide to do things. I seem to have agency. So how is it possible that I am not this decider?
Our minds are wonderfully inconsistent. At first glance, your argument appears precise and flawless. Yet like all arguments, it is balanced upon the needle tip of assumption. Let’s look at it more closely and see if a decider (a presumed “you”) really made any decisions.
“Ok… what should I decide to do?” Who decided to decide to do something? Who decided to write your sentence instead of “What time is it?” or “I think I should take a shower”?
“I will decide to do some housework before my friends show up.” Again, the same question applies here. Why be concerned about your friends in this moment? Did you decide to be concerned or did the thought/feeling just show up, un-authored by “you”? Why did you not decide to paint a picture or go ride your bike instead?
“I don’t want to get up, I just want to stay seated… I’m going to get up anyway” Did you really decide to get up? Did a decider really decide to get up… or was it perhaps just a thought that showed up, an urge to mobilize? And even the thoughts that may now give reason to why you decided to get up, where did they come from? Why are they more valid than any other thought or action (including the ones that you didn’t think of)?
Even if we parse each of the sentences into multiple sub-sentences, creating a “pre-decision” analysis, who decides those sentences, who authors them? Or the pre-pre-pre-sentences/urges? And of all of that analysis, is there not a number of other possible parallel considerations that would be equally plausible?
It certainly is convenient to narrow the consideration down to one, two, or three possible forks in the road, those points where an “I” decided to do this, or that… but isn’t it also just as conceivable that those decision points were themselves a bit arbitrary and that they could have been entirely different? Did you decide which ones “showed up” and which ones didn’t?
Interestingly enough, when we take your question a bit farther, we start to bump into a different consideration. Let’s take the premise “I am the decider” and push it. I am the decider… I decided to get up. I decided to decide to get up. I decided to decide to decide to get up. Quickly it gets ridiculous and we either give up… or we stumble into another question: Who is this "I" that is deciding (or that is aware of the deciding)? Clearly if there is a decider and I am it, and I appear to come before the before of the decision process, what is it that I claim to be? What exactly am I?
I am the decider. I am the decider for the decider. I am before that decider. I am before even that. And I am before even that. Wow. And then we stumble into the realization that I don’t know what I am. I really don’t know!
Now we are getting somewhere.