FJG:
Firstly, why do you assume that the 'experiencing' of these thoughts require an 'active' thinker (a conscious causer) of these thoughts?
Because I see no reason to assume that I do not think, that my come to me or are imposed on me from somewhere other than myself. I am not simply a receiver of thoughts.
An active thinker and a conscious causer are two different things.
Does 'experiencing' something automatically mean 'causing' this something?
That depends on what one means by ‘cause’. The ability to experience requires neurological activity. Without that activity I would not experience anything.
Secondly, do you agree that we can only experience the 'finished product'; the composed (already scripted) thoughts, and never the actual "composing" (or manufacturing) of these thoughts themselves. …agreed?
We have been through this before. As I think about how to answer you I am composing and editing. I am connecting and combining ideas and illustrations. I am accepting and rejecting various possibilities. I make use of a language I did not invent, and so, there is a shared or public aspect to my thoughts. I make use of ideas I have learned. Sometimes things occur to me when I look at the problem this way rather than that way.
ktz suggested that you lifted your Descartes critique and premise on agency, or lack thereof, from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. I do not know if this is true or not but it may be helpful to consider what Nietzsche had to say on this. For anyone who does not want to go through the whole thing see my closing paragraph.
I’ll start with the section he cited. I posted this in the other thread:
With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this "one thinks"—even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the usual grammatical formula—"To think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... It was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates—the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has refined itself).(BGE 17)
He is not denying that we think: “ONE thinks”. What he rejects is an “interpretation of the process” by which “the ‘one’” “does not belong to the process itself”.
This is easier to understand if we look an earlier section:
Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle- atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. One must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL- ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! (BGE, 12)
But if we stop there we will not understand him. He continues:
Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. But the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. In that the NEW psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned to INVENT--and, who knows? perhaps to DISCOVER the new. (BGE 12)
He is not critical of Descartes' “I think” but of the notion of a thinking substance, which Descartes identifies with his immortal soul. The soul is not something we have. In his refinement of the soul-hypothesis Nietzsche posits a “soul of subjective multiplicity”. This solves the problem of the seeming mystery of a thought that comes when it wishes rather than when I wish. It is not that the thought has some kind of independent existence and comes to me from elsewhere, but simply that there is not something within me, an “I” or “ego” or “little ‘one’” that is the agent of my thoughts. This is not a denial of agency, it is a denial of something within me, some substance or soul-atom that is the agent.