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jpena's picture

I think it's very

I think it's very interesting to question the meaning of autonomy in the context of this course. I feel like everything we've learned this semester has challenged my previous understanding of autonomy. It seems like our brain is in control of every action we take and every emotion we have. I wanted to believe that we have complete control over our actions but both of my web papers indicated the opposite. My first one on addiction demonstrated how emotions and actions are heavily dependent on chemicals in the brain. My second one discussed the inhibition of certain behaviors by parts of the brain. When, if ever, are we autonomous. The idea of creativity contributing to our autonomy is very encouraging but I can't help but question it. When we talk about dreams I think of them as being primarily composed of memories of real life experience and thoughts created by the brain. I would like to believe that these thoughts are created by us autonomously but I still think of them as analagous to the blind spot demonstration. Our brain fills in the hole in our vision that is created by the blind spot. Similarly in our dreams, it seems that if our brain strings together memories to create a story, our brain fills in the holes of the story with its own thoughts. So maybe it comes down to whether we feel autonomous or not as opposed to whether we are autonomous or not.

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