Unconscious "Desires"
I have a question for you guys:
Is it meaningful to talk about intentions, beliefs and desires - which I find generally to be constitutive of having a consciousness - w.r.t to the unconsciousness? For it at least seems that part of what it means to have these intentions, beliefs and desires is that one directly realizes them.
We might say there are hidden activities (unconscious states) that in some way guide our beliefs, desires, and intentions, but how are we meant to meaningfully disentangle these and brain activities - in which we would ordinarily say that we do not see thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires in these activities given our general conceptualization of the ontology of material things? For it is only in virtue of having these experiences in our awareness is when they become meaningful. And the unconsciousness is never experienced, and therefore doesn't seem to have the properties of "immateriality".
If this follows it seems like beliefs, intentions, and desires are conscious processes only. But then when I consider things like the Libet Experiments - in which attempted to disprove free-will by postulating that brain-states fire before our actions in so far as we're aware of them - then how I generally approach this problem is by postulating that unconscious activities predominantly make most of our actions in the sense that they're the ones to motivate "our" desires, and that in accordance with that fact, that we are our unconscious motives and desires. So thus, the terminus of freedom does not end with consciousness, but unconsciousness. And as being my unconscious desires, I'm free.
But if our desires can only be meaningful in virtue of conscious experience, then how does it follow we can only meaningfully talk about the desires of our unconscious states as being ours?
I'm sure I'm just not seeing something intuitive here.
Is it meaningful to talk about intentions, beliefs and desires - which I find generally to be constitutive of having a consciousness - w.r.t to the unconsciousness? For it at least seems that part of what it means to have these intentions, beliefs and desires is that one directly realizes them.
We might say there are hidden activities (unconscious states) that in some way guide our beliefs, desires, and intentions, but how are we meant to meaningfully disentangle these and brain activities - in which we would ordinarily say that we do not see thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires in these activities given our general conceptualization of the ontology of material things? For it is only in virtue of having these experiences in our awareness is when they become meaningful. And the unconsciousness is never experienced, and therefore doesn't seem to have the properties of "immateriality".
If this follows it seems like beliefs, intentions, and desires are conscious processes only. But then when I consider things like the Libet Experiments - in which attempted to disprove free-will by postulating that brain-states fire before our actions in so far as we're aware of them - then how I generally approach this problem is by postulating that unconscious activities predominantly make most of our actions in the sense that they're the ones to motivate "our" desires, and that in accordance with that fact, that we are our unconscious motives and desires. So thus, the terminus of freedom does not end with consciousness, but unconsciousness. And as being my unconscious desires, I'm free.
But if our desires can only be meaningful in virtue of conscious experience, then how does it follow we can only meaningfully talk about the desires of our unconscious states as being ours?
I'm sure I'm just not seeing something intuitive here.
Comments (80)
When you study adult learning, you learn that gaining expertise in some skill progresses through stages, until the learner has 'unconscious competence' at the skill in question - be it driving a car or playing the piano. Part of the meaning of 'unconscious competence' is not having to consciously think about putting on your indicator, or how to form a chord, and so on. Those higher-level skills haven been absorbed into one's unconscious - become 'second nature', as it is sometimes said. But they're still part of your overall behavioral repertoire, even so. And then ask, to what extent does artistry of any kind, rely on the ability of an artist to utilise and express, and thereby invoke, recognition of qualities and attributes which are usually unconscious? Isn't that part of what art does?
Consciousness is one aspect of the brain's operation, but the brain does many things that we can not observe. There are many functions that are invisible to us. For instance, I ask you "Is Kraków a town in Spain?" What process did your brain follow to come up with whatever answer you arrived at? I'm pretty sure you have no idea. I don't either. We can't observe how the memory or cognition works.
"What did you have for lunch today?" How did you remember (or fail to remember) what you ate for lunch? Of course, we don't know how we did or did not remember; memory either delivers up responses to queries, or it doesn't. Further, we can't tell for sure that what it delivers up is right or wrong. If you can't remember, that doesn't mean you had nothing for lunch. If "Ham and cheese on rye", we can't be sure that is actually what we ate today. Maybe we ate it 3 days ago.
Wishes, resentments, desires, fears, and so forth are not always conscious. Sometimes they are, but often they recede into invisibility from the conscious mind (which is, remember, just one aspect of mind).
The notion was that these only make sense w.r.t consciousness. What does it mean for normative states - intentions, beliefs, and desires - to be unconscious? How do we know that the unconscious has desires? I've never experienced them (for that would mean for it to be conscious) to know how they are like. It's not like they're perceivable either.
Now, that blind spot is always there, but of course you don't normally notice it because the brain automatically compensates for it.
That is a trivial example, but it's also quite a good allegory for some aspects of the unconscious.
The processes by which we see and make judgements are generally unconscious. They occur to us as what is obviously the case. Of course, sometimes such judgements will be perfectly sound. But other times, they might be the outcome of a pre-conceived notion, an emotional reaction, a disposition, and so on. And we can't see those things directly - hence, they're unconscious. But we can become self-aware by seeing ourselves as others see us, although there will always be many aspects of the totality of consciousness which can't be made subject to discursive analysis.
The point of the theory is that an individual cannot see into their own bag, but can access the universal unconscious. That's why it is called unconsciousness, rather than subconsciousness, because scientifically, there is no way for any one person to know what in the unconscious is their own, and what is someone else's. And the reason for the theory is that the bag is the source of tension in the persona, which manifests as anger and frustration, or even psychosis.
Jungian therapy can enable the person to discover what is in their own bag by recognizing the anger and frustration attributed to others, usually via dream states, and thus pull knowledge of the universal unconscious into their own persona by deepening its reach into the shadow. That eliminates the cognitive conflict, reducing anger, frustration, and psychosis. .
I think that such things as visual illusions and unconscious desires exist along a continuum. Desires, intentions and beliefs are intertwined with perceptions and judgments. Humans make judgments all the time, from the trivial to the highly consequential. Reflexes can be emotional (jealousy, lust) as much as physical.
I suppose what I'm driving at in all this is some kind of theoretical basis for the unconscious - what it actually is. Ernest mentions Freud and Jung above, but arguably the idea is much older than that. I think Kant and Schopenhauer anticipated Freud's 'discovery' of the unconscious.
The person who has a neurotic issues such as undesirable compulsions, may not understand why they are compelled to act the way they act. Anorexia, bulimia, agoraphobia,.. are behaviours which are not under the complete conscious control of their victims. Freud and others thought that such compulsions express lacks; desires caused by some mistake in the structure of a persons fundamental development. The neurotic tends to repress the experiences which give rise to their compulsions, a defensive maneuver, an attempt to offset an imbalance. What they lack they make up for by fasting, purging them self, avoiding crowds and so on, a kind of transference.
I think Libet's experiment measured muscle memories ability react instinctively prior to thought, like the way muscles react instinctively for a person skiing moguls.
Well that's a good start. When you speak of 'issues' you are really more speaking of the medical definition, and medically speaking, people with psychoses are also compelled to act 'undesirably,' From the medical perspective, 'undersitable' refers to actions which hurt the individual or others. If they don't hurt the individual or others, then the compulsions are considered harmless, and therefore not 'undesirable.' That applies to both neuroses and psychoses, with the simple distinction that neurotics don't have an 'undesirable' metaphysical belief, whereas psychotics cannot 'oerceive reality as it is.' So for example, one might have the belief that one was abducted by aliens, but if it causes no harm to the individual or others, then it is not considered psychotic. But if the belief does cause harm, then it IS considered psychotic. The point of the medical definition is that avoids issues with philosophical reality of beliefs, and whether consequential actions should be considered rational, or not. .
Jung was gnostic. So you don't study Jungian psychology, you're initiated into it.
Quoting Cavacava
Agree - that's why I referred to the idea of 'unconscious competence'. But it also shows that ego/discursive thought is not as in charge as we like to nowadays think it is, which, I'm sure, is an important aspect of Western liberalism.
http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-jungian-archetypal-studies
It was a much better course than I expected.
In virute of what do you make this claim, though? It seems prima-facie binary: one is conscious -- we experience it -- and the other is unconscious -- we don't experience it.
Do you deny that you're experiencing illusions?
I agree with this, but I'm not sure how one can ascribe the terms "intentions, beliefs, and desires" meaningfully to the unconscious. Just that there seems to be a casual relationships between it and experiences. But there's also one between the mind and the brain, and we generally reject the idea that the brain has beliefs, desires, and intentions. That's why we say the mind is irreducible to the brain in virute of x, y, z.
No, I mean unconscious. Subconscious, as far as I know, was not used in psychoanalytical writings, and both Freud and Jung postulated that the unconscious does have a will, purpose, desires, ideas, etc. But what I'm asking is how is it meaningful to say that they have these, and why is the unconscious and conscious a "continuum" anymore than a body and mind is a "continuum?"
But it's a very difficult subject - on the borderline between cognitive science, philosophy and psychology. All of this is. I don't think it is at all well understood by current science.
Very interesting! Found a good blog post on there, also, about mythic heros and the unconscious.
Ah, well according to Jung it is meaningful, but not to the individual. As well as the 'universal' there is the 'collective,' which can refer to groups. So for example, many have commented that when a plane slammed into the WTC, there was a collective desire to invade Iraq for no rational reason whatsoever.
But it isnt meaningful to the individual, because the individual cannot know what is in their own unconscious, rather than someone else's, even after discovering a shadow. A good example is nervous habits such as scratching the head or whatever. If a person is unaware of it entirely, sometimes these are mimics of other people they admire, and sometimes it is an unconscious behavior resulting from an individual's own internal state, but there is no way of knowing which.
Jung believes these kinds of things are a continuum, because we are continually acquiring them from the universal, and continually modifying our own persona, either by shoving new things into the shadow, or by pulling them out. But once we individualize any particular behavior into the persona, it doesn't go back into the shadow again, so the persona is continually growing. the things we shove into the shadow are new things that the persona rejects.
But any way, even if there is a relationship between the unconscious, this doesn't mean it has desires, intentions, and beliefs. These would just be mere causal dispositions?
Interesting language here; id is 'it' as distinct/opposed from/to ego 'I'. That is to say that the unconscious is other than myself - the self I am conscious of.
I want to lose weight, but it wants to eat. I want to be calm and reasonable, but it wants to bite babies... Have you ever found yourself in an internal conflict? (This is no form of argument, but an appeal to relate talk to experience.)
I think there has been some confusion in this thread between non-conscious and unconscious. Stuff you don't have to think about, and stuff you have no access to is not 'the' unconscious of Freud. He is talking about a division of awareness. 'It' is a foreigner disrupting your life and frustrating your ambitions. 'It' is the inner arsehole.
I would be interested where you got that idea. The Freudian trichotomy is usually considered divisions of the 'self,' with the ego being the only part of which that the self can be aware, and superego and id being unconscious.
The ego is the self that is aware of itself, sure. The self that the self that is aware of itself is not aware of is the unconscious, but the unconscious is not unaware; it responds to the environment - and part of its environment is the conscious self.
Not sure what you are claiming I'm saying that is so funny. But never mind. Freud claims that the 'unconscious' speaks and acts. It speaks in 'Freudian slips', for example. So yes, the unconscious is aware, but the conscious is unaware of it and unaware of its (the unconconscious') awareness. It has desires, it wills. This is the fundament of Freudian theory, that human awareness is divided.
I was just laughing because it sounded funny to me. Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to make a song about it )
The confusion has mainly been due to me, and I think that yours is good distinction to make. But the reason I have pursued this line of argument, is because I believe it has some basis in fact.
In the Freudian approach, 'the unconscious' is generally seen in terms of the source of psychopathologies and neuroses from repressed memories and the like. So in that context 'the unconscious' has a kind of clinical definition and scope. I think that is what Marty's original question was about.
I muddied the waters, perhaps, by trying to broaden the notion of the unconscious to include what you have referred to as the 'non-conscious' elements of perception. The reason for that is that I think they're closely related - that Freud's definition is simply one aspect of a much larger subject, which is the influence or presence of unconscious or non-conscious factors in day to day awareness.
I understand, it's an interesting topic. Quite a good example of the non-conscious is the automatic visual processing that an artist has to learn laboriously not to do in order to render what is presented to the eye rather than what is 'understood ' by the eye. This sort of learning as well as the reverse, of competences becoming unconscious that you mentioned, indicates that there is no fixed line between conscious and non-conscious, and I think the same applies to the unconscious.
But the op is very much about unconscious desires, and that is where it becomes seemingly impossible to make sense of things without positing a division of awareness. Here I have to openly acknowledge the inevitable circularity of explanation which must run along the lines of - ego resists the idea that it is incomplete, that it is influenced by desires of which it is unaware because it is dangerous to its own stability to be aware of them. And this too, ego is unaware of. But the claim is that this is not a psycho-pathological condition confined to the minority of lunatics of one sort or another, but rather the universal human condition, the enlightened excepted, possibly.
It is this circularity that later made Freud so discredited in academia, but to me it is a necessary feature of any sophisticated psychology that it applies itself to both its adherents and its opponents; that division mirroring the internal psychic division.
It may be useful for you to distinguish between feelings like desires, and the will itself. It is most likely the case that most desires originate from some place other than the conscious mind, and they creep up on us, as the various appetites, but it is through the will that the conscious mind suppresses and controls these appetites.
With will, we suppress desires, allowing the conscious mind to deliberate, and make intelligent decisions. Then the will allows action according to these decisions. So for example, a feeling of hunger (desire) may creep up on you, and instead of eating the first thing in front of you which looks edible, you suppress the desire to eat, while you decide on what to have for dinner.
Following such decisions, we have "intentions" which are usually understood to be proper to the conscious mind. This refers to decisions made in advance, as to what is wanted, decisions made with a minimal amount of influence by desires and appetites. This is how we normally use "intention", to refer to these thought out goals, and that is why intention is associated with consciousness. But this way of comprehending "intention" requires that we separate intention from desire, or appetite, because the desires and appetites affect us prior to the will, and the will must act to suppress them, while intentions are formed through this action of the will. Intention then refers to what has been chosen by the conscious mind, as a goal, after the desires have been suppressed by the will.
This sounds like evidence that you have a modular mind - one that has evolved separate parts to solve different problems. It sounds like you have these "animalistic" desires and these other desires to maintain your social standing in the complex social environment you find yourself in.
I don't see any distinction between "unconscious" and "non-conscious". They both mean the same thing. What I do see is a distinction in the level of attention I apply to certain aspects of my mental life. It seems as though I can attend several things at once, especially if I have experience doing those things, like driving to work everyday, but I can assure you that I don't drive to work unconsciously, or non-consciously. I can attend other things while driving to work, like thinking about my upcoming vacation, or remembering what happened last week, but I'm still attending driving to work. I'm just devoting less attention to driving because I have done it many times to where it doesn't require my full attention. My full attention is required when conditions change quickly, as in someone cuts in front of me.
Let me see if I can show it to you, because it is significant. When you look at the screen, various processes occur that interpret the scene, most of which happen automatically. There is, for example, an 'edge detection' process that identifies shapes that form letters; these are combined into words, and sentences and the significance is grasped. Most of this, most of the time is non-conscious automatic processing, rather like one's fingernails growing, such that one is aware of the screen 'speaking' and not much else - Unenlightened replies to Harry Hindu.
And like one's fingernails, or your average brick, these processes are not unconscious but non-conscious. One would only say that a brick was unconscious if there was some sense in which it might be conscious - if it might wake up.
By contrast, the unconscious is an awareness that is shut off from consciousness, almost as if there were another person in one's head (this is a crude and perhaps inaccurate characterisation). "It" is also living one's life, interfering in one's actions often antagonistic to one's conscious desires and intents.
When this separation is well sealed, one does not notice anything at all; it is when there is the beginnings of an invasion of consciousness by the unconscious that one starts to 'hear voices', 'act out of character' and the like.
One thing I'm on the trail of at the moment is 'familiarity', which I think is related to all this. Sometimes in a strange part of the world one has a feeling - ah! - which clarifies itself as familiarity. I've been here before. There is, it seems, a psychology of such moments: there appear to be different processes at work. One, familiarity, is shared with many other animals who find their way about, make nests, recognise food and so on. The second one - self-reflection - is the human one. Familiarity turns into recollection. (There's a claim different neural networks are at work) Yes, it all makes sense. This is sameness: that's the same corner I turned at last time I was here.
I hope this is an interesting tributary and not a diversion!
Quoting unenlightened
I used to like Freud's id, ego, and superego model, along with the conscious and unconscious mind. There is something to say for it as a kind of drama which is acted out on the stage of our life. Lately I have come to doubt the division of sub- vs. un- vs. non- conscious.
The model I have been thinking about lately is that "consciousness is one function among many equals". Most of what goes on in our brains is invisible to us. Not only is 'edge detection' invisible, but so are the detections of horizontal and vertical lines, shape, color and texture recognition, face recognition, phoneme identification, and so on. Proprioception is another of many always on, always background operations. I have zero knowledge of how my brain assembled the sequence of words in this paragraph, or coordinated finger movements with the flow of thought.
Clearly our brains are aware of a great deal more than our conscious function is aware of. If not, we would have crashed our cars, bicycles, or bodies long ago.
What is called "the subconscious" is just more of the many invisible, background operations that make up a person. We are not aware of these background operations because there is no need for us to try to coordinate, manage, control, or suppress them.
Perhaps in dreaming our conscious minds obtain a glimpse into these background operations. It isn't that "horrible things are revealed which can otherwise not be faced" (Freud) but rather we (possibly) get a glimpse of the way reality is perceived, or stored, or processed in the usually invisible background systems.
Well, if it's always background, how do we know it exists? Research of course. Investigating simpler brains, and investigating human minds that have malfunctioned. A woman I know had a stroke in the visual cortex of her brain. Her visual experience was extremely distorted. She couldn't see the window in her hospital room; instead she reported a horizontal bar of light. She could identify the color of the walls (a variety of beige-yellow), but not that the walls were plain (no decorations, calendars, etc.) or that they composed of rectangles.
People who have stroke-caused aphasia (inability to produce language) can often swear articulately. Apparently cursing is handled in a different background system than ordinary language.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I think you both are confusing consciousness with intent. None of these things happen when we are unconscious. Edge detection never happens when we are asleep, or otherwise unconscious. It seems to happen without any prior intent, but we are still conscious. Making distinctions seems to be what consciousness itself is. Intent is something else.
We should also think about whether or not these other processes you mentioned were always exhibited without any prior intention. We all know how we learn new things and over time, we don't need to focus on doing them when we become proficient with them. Newborns can't make these kinds of distinctions because their sense of vision is poor. It takes practice to learn how to focus your eyes and coordinate them in order to acquire a sensible image. Now, as adults, such things are "child's play".
Another aspect we should all take into account is the possibility that there are other "consciousnesses" in our brain. How do we know that these other processes happen without a central executive making sense out of what is happening in the brain in it's specific module of the brain?
I'm not sure where you are getting your certainty about what happens when we are unconscious. But never mind that. But you are continuing to disagree with me about a distinction I have made without understanding it. Edge detection is non-conscious, I am saying, like a brick is non-conscious. 'We' may or may not be conscious of a brick from time to time, in the background or the foreground. Part of the process of seeing a brick is detecting its edges, but 'detecting the edges' does not itself see anything, nor does the brick;I see the brick by amongst other things, detecting its edges. All of which, I don't think we disagree much about.
But then I want to talk about the Freudian unconscious, which is not so-called because it is like the brick or the automatic process of edge-detection. On the contrary, it is active, wilful, aware. But it is called the unconscious because the 'I' or 'we' that pontificates is unaware of its existence and active influence. This is the controversial bit.
So this is why Freud was interested in dreams, because when 'we' are unconscious, the unconscious is still awake and active.
We are not. Intentions exist, of course. That's how it came to pass that some part of my brain is writing this sentence. It disagreed with you. (It's the pangyrus located under the anterior sulcus of the superior lobe.)
Judging by EEGs and other scans, the brain seems to be always on. We know from these scans that various functions are scattered throughout the brain, and are coordinated. We can see this happening (sort of--it's not like an annotated animation) on fMRI views of the brain at work. The brain is always on, doing all kinds of stuff that are critical to our existence, like breathing, way finding, not falling over, thinking, memory, and a batch of other stuff that we may or may not be aware of.
As I said, the ego - the conscious mind - the 'I' that speaks, the 'I' we address in other people (unless we are trying to manipulate them by going around the 'I' altogether) is just one of those functions. We tend to think of it as the SUPREME function, but it isn't. It's just the Front Office. It's the Public Relations Department. The 'conscious mind' does not manage the brain, the mostly invisible brain manages the conscious mind. The conscious mind is often the last one to find out what it is going to do next, paradoxically. It's a paradox because we think the conscious mind is 'in charge'. It's not.
I'm using the term 'invisible' to get away from the loaded term, 'unconscious'. The 'invisible' or 'non-conscious mind is represented, sort of, by the 9/10ths of the iceberg that is below the water line.
I think we experience both: awareness and attention. I attend a dog barking at me, I'm aware of my surrounding around me. Everything has this foreground/background distinction, it's the essence of a gestalt shift too.
So, I think without being attuned to something explicitly, we can still make a decision implicitly. You just have to at least at some point have been aware of forgoing the decision. Of course one isn't aware of all nuance details they do implicitly in any actions.
I don't agree. I think you interpret the feeling of hunger as the desire to eat. But you can still have the desire to eat yet intend not to eat, that's will power.
Well, I think your interlocutor here can just say something to the effect of the desire is equivalent to the will insofar as one has to choose to desire, instead of being casually disposed to hunger. Then it just seems like you're in an impasse. How do you convince them? How do you figure this to not be a semantic dispute?
Obviously a ascetic can tell you he does not desire a loaf of bread even though he's hungry. But you would just say that he desires in virute of being hungry.
This is what I am saying is wrong. I am saying that one does not choose to desire. Desire is type of feeling we get whether we want it or not. We can choose things which will make the desire go away, such as when we choose to eat in the cases where the desire is hunger, but we do not choose to desire. Even though we often use "desire" in a way such as we choose to desire specific things, this would be a misrepresentation of what I am referring to with "desire". So we should not create ambiguity, and equivocate with the meaning of "desire".
Quoting Marty
It is a semantic dispute, but it only takes on that character because you insist on using "desire" in a different way from me. But my way is well supported, by the dictionary. So if you would respect it, instead of simply denying it for the sake of creating an argument, then we could proceed.
I think its a little more complicated than that. For example, as I am almost 60, I have no desire to marry again or reproduce. However, I still occasionally find myself attracted to a girl and desiring to court her, than feeling conflicted about it. For this the Freudian model makes sense, as in my superego I have no desire, but in my id, I do. Or maybe it is habit. I don't know, all I know is that the desire makes no rational sense but I still experience it.
I don't buy into an "ID" as being the "base-level" of our self, as if there's some sort of primordial urge (ID) that implicitly supervenes over our conscience (Super-Ego), and then the conscience supervenes explicitly through sheer act of will-power. The triadic theory seems to put ethics as something over and above the passions, and seems to put practical engagement (Ego) over and above the passions/"bodily needs" (ID). They just seem to me to be equiprimordial.
Yes, I know there is ambiguity in the common usage of the word, that's the case in any word which has more than one definition, which is most all words. I suggested that we adhere to one particular definition, and referred to the dictionary to claim that this particular definition is in fact a definition which is acceptable by the majority of the population.
You've refused my proposition, so I can only conclude that your demand to maintain ambiguity is the manifestation of an intent to argue by equivocation.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information about what happens when we are unconscious either. The only place you could be getting it is from your consciousness! How is it that you know anything if you are never conscious? When have you learned anything while being non-conscious, or unconscious?
Quoting unenlightenedIt seems the other way around to me - that you aren't understanding me and it's obvious because you didn't reply to my whole post (cherry-picking). You keep talking about what appears in consciousness (edge-detection) and saying that it is an non-conscious process. When I'm conscious - and only when I'm conscious, do I detect edges. You can try to detect edges when you are asleep. Good Luck.
What you are saying that is missing is your will to detect edges. It seems automatic - that edges just appear - without any power of the will preceding it - unlike the process of lifting your arm when you decide to do so. This took willpower when you were an infant. It took a coordinated effort of you focusing your eyes together and your brain creating new neural paths as you learn. Detecting edges took effort until finally you had enough practice at doing it that it now seems automatic.
Quoting unenlightenedAgain, how do you know that the unconscious is willful and aware? In what way? It can't be aware in the way that we are when we are conscious because that would defeat the purpose of consciousness. If the unconscious is active, willful, and aware, then what use is consciousness? Consciousness must solve problems that the unconsciousness can't or else it would have never evolved in the first place.
Your description of the unconsciousness seems to correlate with my last paragraph in my previous post, where I said that other parts of the brain could have symbolism and representation going on in order to perform it's tasks as it needs information about the environment and the body all at once in order to make any "decision" about what to do.
But then why do I experience having control of certain aspects of my body. My legs don't start walking unless I will it. There is top-down processing happening, and it seems that there is also bottom-up processing going on as there are things that happen in consciousness that will did not precede in making it happen - like breathing. But consciousness is where I'm aware of this stuff happening. Could it be said that I could be aware of these things without being conscious? If so, how?
When I am conscious I detect edges. We agree about that much.
When I am conscious I can touch my nose with my thumb. I bet you can too. I do not, however think that my nose or my thumb is conscious, merely sensitive. Likewise, Ido not suppose that the visual process by which I detect edges in the visual field is itself conscious, merely sensitive to edge like variations in the visual field. That is all I am saying about edge detection.
Quoting Harry Hindu
In the first instance, I am talking about what Freud meant by the unconscious, and that is why I have been at some pains to point out that the unconscious of Freudian is not the same thing as all the stuff that happens automatically, learned or innate. But many people think Freud was talking crap, so to them I would say the following.
Well I know that when I am asleep I am unconscious. And I also know that when I am asleep I have experiences, which I call dreams, in which I experience being active, having feelings and so on. It seems to follow that there is some form of awareness in me while I am unconscious. There are other indications too, but leave it at that for now.
Because "you" are in control of your arms and your legs. It's just that "you" extend beyond the function of your conscious mind. Besides, your conscious mind doesn't actually do much in the way of controlling motor functions. Do you know how to send a series of coordinated nerve impulses to the various muscles of your body so that you can walk? No, you don't. I don't either. Walking is controlled by your motor cortex (it's on the top side of your brain) and the motor cortex is not conscious.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Breathing, blinking, heart beat, etc. are controlled in the brain stem--one of the most 'ancient' structures of the brain. There are small clusters of cells that keep your heart ticking away, that make sure you keep breathing--until one fine day they don't, and then you're dead. There is also a small cluster of cells in the brain stem that send you into the oblivion of sleep and another cluster of cells that wake you up. When people have strokes that wreck this wakefulness center, they don't wake up.
The deep breathing of yoga is effective because it is a practice of your conscious mind over-riding something that is normally automatic and unconscious. You have to consciously decide to "breathe deeply" and selectively relax muscle groups.
Quoting Harry Hindu
When you are conscious you are aware that you are walking around, and you will that you walk to some particular destination (like to the mailbox). But your conscious mind is not in control of the physical details of walking.
Let me clarify: The motor cortex, which operates the motion of the body, is fully aware of what your body is doing--otherwise it couldn't successfully move you around. The cortex is 'conscious' of proprioception, for instance. It has to be aware of that in order to keep you upright while you are walking.
The visual cortex in the rear of your brain is aware of the impulses coming from the retina. It processes those signals, and puts together a cohesive picture of the world--for your conscious mind, among other parts, to enjoy and make use of.
There are various parts of the brain that are aware of what they are doing, but your conscious mind isn't aware of them, most of the time. The enteric nervous system operates the digestive track--a very complicated batch of processes that your central nervous system is mostly (and happily) unaware of. You don't want regular dispatches from the bowels about what is going on there. When you do hear from the gut, it's usually bad news--like something is going to be expelled in the very near future whether it is convenient for you, or not.
So, various parts of your brain are aware and interacting in ways that your conscious mind is not a part of. That's a very good thing, because if your conscious mind were aware of all that stuff, you would have no time left to think.
Consciousness is actually pretty much entirely confined to an autobiographical narrative. Things were significant to the extent that they fit into the narrative, and aren't even like how we remember them, even when we do. Like, people with the best memories in the world, and can memorize lots of information quickly (photographic memories aren't a thing) do so by narrativizing the information, by taking all of the things to be remembered, and turning them into a story.
Almost everything we forgot about, or at least wasn't significant enough to be featured in the narrative, so we forget about it, or didn't even consciously notice it at all, nor properly recognize it in the first place. Doesn't mean that it had no affect on you, nor that you don't remember it on any level at all.
I don't see how your example applies. In consciousness you are aware of the will to touch the nose, and the movement of your arm and hand towards your nose and the sensation of the two touching. In edge-detection I am conscious of the will to focus my attention on a certain area of my visual field, bringing it into focus, thereby clarifying the edges of the things before me. I've done these things countless times before and I can do them with very little effort. This was not the case when I was an infant. I had to learn how to focus my eyes and coordinate my arms and legs by observing them and how I focused my attention on them. So how did these abilities go from consciously learning how to do these things, to now having the ability to do them essentially without thinking about it?
Quoting unenlightened
But is it accurate to say that you are "aware" in your sleep. You aren't aware of anything going on outside of your body and you aren't even aware that you are dreaming. Dreams could just be hallucinations as we know that sensory deprivation for an extended period can cause hallucinations. Or, it could be similar to day-dreaming (or letting our imagination run away), but without the being aware of the rest of the world, which can make the dream more convincing and explains why we don't know that we are dreaming - like we do when we are awake.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But that's the thing. I obviously do know how to send a series of coordinated nerve impulses to various muscles in my body so that I can walk. This is especially true if the "I" extends beyond my conscious mind. Consciousness, after all, is a model of my body's interactions with the world. What I experience is a representation of me sending a series of coordinated nerve impulses to various muscles in my body so that I can walk, which is my will to do so and the conscious knowledge that I am walking.
It also stands that at one point in my early life, I couldn't walk. Are you saying that "I" learned how to walk, or my motor cortex did? Is it possible for something unconscious to learn? If so, how? How are prior experiences stored and recalled for applying them to current situations? What form do they take?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, but I can focus on each breath I take and and change the rate of my breathing. The same for my blinking and heart-rate. I could do the same with walking to my mailbox. I could focus my attention on each step and the movements I am making. But I don't do this normally because it is boring. I'd rather think about what might be in the mailbox or the reason I'm changing my rate of the other processes that are normally involuntary. How is it that these changes wouldn't normally happen if I weren't conscious? Consciousness must have some kind of control over other functions that we don't normally think of.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Is it accurate to say that these things are aware though? Doesn't that require a priori knowledge that some bit of information represents something else - that the electrical signal means something other than just being an electrical signal of a certain strength and duration? After all, awareness is always of something. It doesn't make sense to say that something is just aware.
Quoting Harry Hindu
One must be aware of a hallucination or a day or night dream in order to have it, no?
When you are hallucinating or dreaming you can't say that you are actually aware of anything because the aboutness of the experience doesn't refer to anything other than the firing of some neurons. But we aren't even aware of that most of the time either. ;)
How can you be aware after the fact without having been aware of the fact? Stop making shit up. If I hallucinate pink elephants in the garden, then I am aware of pink elephants in the garden even if they are not there. How the hell can I hallucinate pink elephants without being aware of anything? I hallucinate pink elephants, therefore I am.
Learning how to walk when you were transitioning from crawling around on the floor to standing up to taking steps was DIFFICULT. If you had to learn how to walk as an adult (as happens to people who have had brain injuries) it would be VERY DIFFICULT.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's a major hunk of yoga, right there. The reason why consciously controlled breathing is psychologically significant is that the conscious part of your brain normally doesn't deal with breathing. When you are thinking about controlling your breathing you have to stop thinking about your 401K, or whatever...
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, your consciousness constructs that representation. But that representation and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee. The part of your brain that actually coordinates movement isn't accessible to the conscious mind, but (apparently) the motor cortex has access to the conscious mind--else it wouldn't know where you wanted to go.
OK, like I said, I'm "playing with this idea". I'm about at the end of what little I know to play with. I now need the assistance of a research neurologist. Do you happen to have one handy?
It's not really about 'buying into' anything. As with all scientific models, it is only a model, and its value is in how well it helps explain states and events.
It seems that it is you that is "making shit up". If not, then please explain how the sentence, "If I hallucinate pink elephants in the garden, then I am aware of pink elephants in the garden even if they are not there." makes any sense. How is it that you can be aware of something that isn't there? That, by definition, is what is called, "making shit up".
Quoting Bitter CrankI don't see how this answers my question.Quoting Bitter CrankThis also doesn't answer my question. 0 for two?
Quoting Bitter CrankIf my consciousness constructs that representation, then the construction of consciousness would be in consciousness. Does that make any sense to you? It makes more sense to say that that the part of your brain that coordinates movements is the conscious mind, as I wouldn't be walking if I wasn't conscious. The sensation you feel and the experiences of control that you have actually are you controlling your body and it's movements. To say that you don't know how, but your motor cortex does, doesn't make any sense, especially if your definition of "I" or "me" includes what extends beyond my conscious mind - an inconsistency that I pointed out and that you failed to address in your last post
Yes, a hallucination is making shit up, and if one is unconscious of any shit, made up or real, one is not hallucinating. I cannot hallucinate X without being aware of X, because not to be aware of X is not to experience X, whether X is made up or real. To have an hallucination, or a dream, or a veridical experience is to be aware of something.
(Y)
In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, aware is defined as having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge. From my viewpoint, when you go running towards nothing at all jabbering about how thirsty you are, or you point to empty space and and say, "awww look at the cute pink elephants!", you aren't exhibiting any truthful realization, perception, or knowledge. Actually, from my viewpoint, you are ignorant or having a hallucination. If I have the true vantage point, then isn't more accurate to say that I am aware, while you are simply ignorant?
"You" learned how to walk; the learning was largely accomplished in the motor cortex (which is part of "you"). "You" were never 'conscious' of the details of walking (proprioception, balance, adjustment of back, abdominal, and extremity muscle groups, etc.) but the conscious "you" was aware that you were moving about, and shared in the excitement, the pride, the thrill of moving about.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Indeed, "you" can. Controlled breathing overrides the automatic brainstem control of breathing. Controlled breathing requires the focus of the conscious mind. When "you", the conscious mind, is focused on breathing it can't focus on very much else.
What I am groping for is a way of saying that "you" are composed of many functions; one of which is the function of consciousness. There are other, equally important functions that are not conscious. The not-conscious functions are no less "you" than the conscious function is "you". To borrow a phrase from Walt Whitman, "you" contain multitudes.
If I have not answered your question, then I admit defeat in supplying you with what you want. I just don't have any more theory about how the brain works. I intuit that somehow the brain coordinates the many essential functions of our brain, including our experience of consciousness. I have not the vaguest idea of where or how that is done.
I didn't base my belief on feelings, Ernestm.
That's why I prefer "desire" over "causal disposition", because there is no "cause" here. "Causal disposition" is a misnomer, because what is being referred to by this term is not causal at all. The inclination to act, which is being referred to here, doesn't cause the act because the will prevents any such inclinations from causing actions, allowing for deliberation.
That's simple. I'd be dreaming, just as if I were hallucinating, I'd be hallucinating. I wouldn't be aware, though. That term is reserved for actual knowledge and realization being acquired. I honestly don't see what's so difficult here. I guess some people just can't bring themselves to admit that another might have a better explanation. That's a shame.
But I was conscious of the details of walking when I was learning how to walk. I don't know how many times I have said this and you continue to overlook it.
Are you saying that the purpose of consciousness, the problems that it was designed to solve by natural selection, is to be aware that I'm moving about and to share in the excitement, pride and thrill of moving about? What am I sharing the excitement with - my motor cortex?
It seems a better explanation for the reason of consciousness is for finer control over my body. Once finer control is attained and the movements for a certain task are remembered, then consciousness can relegate the instructionst for that task to the sub-conscious while it attends to "more important" tasks that require fine control and a degree of fault tolerance.
Something, though, must make the dream or the hallucination 'yours'. I'm certainly not aware of your dreams, but I am aware of mine, otherwise I could not recount them or call them 'mine', could I? If I'm not aware of the mirage, I won't be walking towards it.
This is quite common, which is the reason why fiction or aesthetics in general is so important. Sometimes the presence of anxiety or depression, insomnia and nightmares, loss of concentration and other unexpected emotions are physical indicators of the brain - such as the hippocampus - interrupting the correct consolidation of experiences. Your attempt to interpret pieces of literature, or art, or music or film - or even creating fiction and characters - is essentially subjective communication that attempts to articulate personal experiences that the clarity is otherwise clouded by self-defence mechanisms and pleasurable escapes (drugs, alcohol, sex, food or overeating, even conformism) that form as barriers that justify or delude the imbedded childhood, environmental and social influences through emotional escape.
The way that I see it, our experiences are really our interpretation of our experiences and since our brains are instinctually made to avoid anxiety, our experiences can conflict with our environment, our minds, and our instincts and that leads to all sorts of issues. What we call our "desires" could quite simply be a defence-mechanism or escape and it takes quite a lot to know the difference between what is real or true, to what is you deluding yourself.
An unconscious desire would be some motivation you're not aware of that influences your behavior. The psychological explanation is that what we are conscious of is only the tip of the iceberg as to what actually causes our behavior.
There is no doubt that there are subconscious things that influence our behavior. However, I can't make any sense out of subconscious desires or beliefs. I either have a desire or I don't, and if I'm not aware of a desire how can it be a desire? If I have a desire for apple pie and I act on it, it's because I'm aware of the desire. If I'm not aware of it, then how can I act on it? Do I just start eating apple pie without knowing of the desire? Why am I eating apple pie? I don't know, it must be some desire in my subconscious. Moreover, if I'm not aware of the desire, how can I call it a desire? Maybe it's some other subconscious thing that's motivating me.
Suppose you like apple pie and someone hypnotized you to desire apple pie every time you hear the word 'Wittgenstein' ? If you are susceptible to the suggestion then you will desire apple pie and you will rationalize that desire whenever you hear the trigger word used.
Something like this was done with in a Stroop test in which color words like 'red', 'blue', 'green' are colored in the wrong colors. The subjects are then asked to identify the colors they see. Normally, there is a hesitation due to the conflict between the word's meaning and the color the subjects see. In a test Amir Raz, a cognitive neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal (2013) he gave half the test subjects a hypnotic suggestion to disregard any meanings attached to colored words, to treat them as if they were written in a foreign language. When the subjects took the test the one who had been given the post hypnotic suggestion did not display the same hesitancy as the non-hypnotized group.
Much of our language, or psychologist's language, isn't accurate or as precise as it should be, and it's confusing.
That's the unconscious cause of your current desire for that slice of warm apple pie topped some finely aged melted cheddar >:) , my point of view.
In my view some people who desire to dominate other people are not aware of this desire, as an example. Indeed they often believe or at least state that they believe that they are being reasonable and egalitarian. But observation of them reveals, for instance, that they interrupt other people often, use certain forms of body language that others interpret as aggressive (e.g. waggling pokers :) ), and brush off criticism. The desire to exert - or indeed to accede to - power often feels to me like it's bubbling along under the surface of talk that's about something else, and actions that seem to be about just those actions.