Hello Wim,
Thanks for your feedback. I am not completely understanding
your comments though.
The mental activity which we
>are aware of cannot possibly manage all our bodily processes and behavior
>that need mental guidance. It is much to slow for that. (Imagine consciously
>deciding how to move a tennis racket and meanwhile the rest of your body in
>order to get the tennis ball approximately where you want it to go...) Most
>of it must be guided by subconscious mental activity.
GROSSBERG"Procedural memories are proposed to be unconscious because the
inhibitory matching process that supports these spatial and motor processes
cannot lead to resonance."
Grossberg does not think procedural memories ever resonate. So I don't
understand this tennis example. Are you saying you don't think we have
procedural memories (how to ride a bike, play an instrument?
Using conscious mental
>activity as a model of subconscious mental activity (as the ART seems to do)
>is a mistake: subconscious mental activity would be too slow for its task
>also. Not 'learning' and 'intentionality' should be core concepts in a model
>of subconscious mental activity, but 'habitual repetition' and 'imitiation'.
I get really lost here. Intentionality is essential to
consciousness. Let's apply this to some
of Pirsig.
GROSSBERG:Intentionality has two senses; anticipation of events and attention
and consciousness (focus on data worthy of learning).
Implicit in the concept of intentionality is the idea that we can get ready to
experience an expected event so that when it finally occurs we can react to it
more quickly and vigorously and until it occurs ignore less desired events.
With Grossberg's theory we have expectations and focus our attention
according to these expectations and if it is sufficiently matched it resonates
if not there is a "surprise" and inhibitory processes.
PIRSIG's Cleveland Harbor Effect.
Pirsig has an expectation about the world and focuses his attention
according to this expectation.
Grossberg and Cleveland Harbor Effect describe experience as
a mixture of our expectations about the world and the events of the world.
>22/6 12:41 -0400 you wrote to Jim:
>'There is an unconscious when we are alert too. I think for me the
>distinction between subconscious and
>unconscious is that some things can be brought into consciousness with
>effort and some things can not.
>Things that are able to become conscious but are not at the present moment
>are subconscious.'
>
>You seem to be dividing 'mental activity' in three categories:
>consciousness/awareness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness. You claim
>that all three are present when we are awake and that we can move 'things'
>back and forth between consciousness/awareness and subconsciousness but not
>between either of these and unconsciousness. Is that right?
>This is a SOM-based model of a supposed objective reality. Why do you need
>three categories instead of two? What are these 'things' that can be moved
>between consciousness/awareness and subconsciousness?
You can't think about everything all at once.
So I am not sure what example you want.
Consciousness is very limited to me-- it is just focusing on
part of the subconscious.
So consciousness is what I am aware of right now, and everything
that I can bring into awareness is in the subconscious.
The unconscious is kind of tricky to me but there are memories
that I believe exist but can't be brought to awareness.
(2nd yr birthday, procedural memories, my total at the grocery store
yesterday)
What reality
>has for instance an 'idea' which we have stored in memory, but do not need
>at present? Is it really the same 'idea' as the 'idea' we 'restore from
>memory' when we do need it again? Or have we re-created that idea from habit
>and need and imitation?
I am confused by these questions.
I think memories are constructed and reconstructed.
There is false memory syndrome where the source of the memory is being
confused.
I collected some data on this so I will briefly explain the pardigm.
Students watched a movie.
Asked questions of events/aspects that occured in the movie mixed
in with the false questions.
Ex. What kind of hat was he wearing (when he wasn't wearing a hat_,
Even if the people insist there was no hat but just give a guess
like baseball hat then when they come back a week
they "remember" the guy wearing a baseball hat.
The sources (movie, questions) were confused so they just
remembered a event that never happened.
So when you ask is it the same idea I am not sure what you are
asking but I would say no, the memory is reconstructed each time
it is brought into consciousness.
Erin
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