> Even when people make decisions, they're generally a weighted combination of a bunch of "feelings". We attempt to explain a kind of simple, logical rationalization afterwards, but psychologists have shown that this is often a bunch of post-hoc fiction.
Isn’t the first sentence just an example of the second?
It's not. The point is that the explanation given does not correspond to the process through which the decision was truly reached. That is to say, we give incorrect explanations of our own decisions.
That's not the same question as whether there were feelings involved, or whether the process was conscious.
"The point is that the explanation given does not correspond to the process through which the decision was truly reached."
Sure, but that doesn't mean "a weighted combination of feelings" is an accurate description of the true process. That's tendentious and speculative. What I think we can be sure of is that there are parts of our decision making that we are not consciously aware of, but precisely because of that, one should be cautious of assuming how it works even if you're not doing it by reflex. Psychological explanations are the rationalizations that people make after the fact.
As long as we don't know what the weighting process is, we shouldn't make unfounded statements about how it works. You're asserting that it exists, but nobody knows anything about what it is. It's a program that you haven't read the source code for.
At this point we seem to be reasoning by analogy. We'd do better to just study the fact of the matter. Psychologists do not tend to discuss this topic in terms of weightings.
I'm not reasoning by analogy; I'm disputing that it's useful.
If you look at the physical world with objects that have relationships and characteristics, and describe a mental world that also has discrete entities that interact in designated ways, then I think you are reasoning by (unfounded) analogy.
Isn’t the first sentence just an example of the second?