Hi Patrick, Erin, Bo & all. I am replying to an old post.
----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick v.d. Berg <cirandar@yahoo.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 3:15 PM
Subject: RE: MD language-derived
> 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.
GARY'S RESPONSE: The Humunculus problem: Which is the idea that there is a
little person inside the brain that does the observing of the brain
activites. The person is the mind. It is another way to ask the question:
What is the mind? Actually my essay does a good job, I think of answering
how the body/brain is structured by Quality into having the ability to give
rise to the mind. The mind is the Internal aspect of the External physical
structure of the biology of the brain/body. For me 'Consciousness' is the
term which is equivalent to 'whatever we are aware of'. Consciousness is
the focus of being aware. Consciousness is the field of our awareness.
As for the 3 broad views listed by Patrick on how to avoid the 'little
person' problem/ the humunculus , I don't agree with any of them. Check
out my essay and Erich Harth's book "The Creative Loop: How the Brain Makes
a Mind."
> Patrick's Post continues:
> 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.
>
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:20 BST