[ExI] effect/affect again

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/4/2010 10:49 AM, John Clark wrote:

> So consciousness effects behavior

I know you get some weird pleasure out of butchering the language with 
this word, John, but I don't think *anyone* would make the universal 
claim that consciousness effects behavior. The majority of behavior is 
effected--caused to occur--by reflex, habit, and other non-conscious 
control systems (driving automatically while thinking of something else, 
hitting a ball when playing tennis, etc etc). Presumably you meant to 
write "affects behavior" which is obviously true--consciousness has 
*some* influence on behavior, but not all.

The problem with playing games with accepted usage is that you can end 
up saying something stupid that you don't mean. 
<http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/affect.html>

Damien Broderick