Hi Erin, Bo,
> ERIN: I am not sure if the conscious is outside of the unconscious.
> I know psychology has been trying to get away from a
> humunculus (help me out Patrick or any other psych major).
> To get way from this humunculus idea has been the view that the
> conscious is
> part of the unconscious in an active state.
> Consciousness is limited because attention is limited. Unconsciousness
> is not
> limited. I always wondered about this in relation to the span and
> depth idea.
First of all Erin, thanks for the reply. As I said, I was unsatisfied
with my post (as I am more often, always in hindsight!) but the
consciousness-unconsciouss distinction maybe is an interesting one after
all.
Bo, to say we can experience the unconsciousness from the outside is
interesting. I take it as the unconsciousness having an ontological
status, not just an epistemological one: Although we can't experience
the unconscious directly (in my terminology), it nevertheless is REAL.
I'm not sure if I get "the conscious is part of the unconscious in an
active state". Do you mean simply that consciousness is a kind of active
state of the brain? If so, I disagree with it. I associate (maybe
wrongly) it with the view that matter was somehow out there, until
reproducing chemicals had found a sufficient complex enough organization
to magically have a consciousness emerge out of it. I think experience
(consciousness) was (and is) there first (to avoid a common
misinterpretation, consciousness I don't merely mean SELF-consciousness.
Matter of terminology).
But to come back to your problem about the homunculus (now I'm not sure
about the right spelling!), Erin, I'm aware of three broad views to
avoid it: 1) In any neural network there is a certain kind of active
represention. Different nodes or neurons have a firing-rate. Give this
rate a number and a dimension. The representation of something now is a
multi-dimensional vector. This IS the current content of consciousness,
no homunculus needed.
2) Chaos theory: An active representation (a conscious moment as it is,
without moving further into the infinite regress of homunculy in
homunculy) is a chaotic attractor. What I understand of it, it is a
point, again in multidimensional space, but the chaotic part of it says
a representation is to be found in different places at different
moments.
3) I'm reluctant to mention the remaining view, as it seems that people
always take a pro-side or a con-side in considering it. And neither can
be convinced by the other side of their being right. It goes under the
heading of 'quantum mind'. Again, an active representation is a
multi-dimensional vector, but not just inferred or epistemological as I
think it is in the first two views. Each dimension is complex-number
valued, and really real, according to my view. Eh... to be honest, I'm
not sure about what I'm saying here... But before collapse particles can
be in multiple states in superposition. After collapse you have a
particle in some state, and others in other states, but they're then
seperated. The conscious moment is then somewhere between superposition
and collapse... at times at this I'd wish I had more than just a very
basic knowledge of QM! Come back at this in a year, and I hope I can
give you a better account of this view.
There's also, I should mention, the fractality-idea. You know this
sitting buddhist type Mandelbrot-pictures, which repeat themselves in
always different varieties when you zoom in, which you can do to the
infinite. According to this view, the infinite-regress thing is not a
problem at all. A fractal is an example of a 'thing' in which there's
infinite regress in some way, but nevertheless is real.
Okay, hope this was a bit of a help...
With friendly greetings, Patrick.
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