What is "The Unconscious"?

Mercutio said:
Except that "autonomic" is typically used in "autonomic nervous system", a part of the peripheral nervous system.
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Yes, I was making an allusion to that, but now I see that "autonomous" would be better than "autonomic", yet still has problems of its own, as you point out.

Perhaps it is enough to describe "The Unconscious" as those mental processes running parallel to the basic "hard wired" ones and the "main thread" of awareness upon which a person is focused at any given moment.
 
leonAzul said:
Yes, I was making an allusion to that, but now I see that "autonomous" would be better than "autonomic", yet still has problems of its own, as you point out.

Perhaps it is enough to describe "The Unconscious" as those mental processes running parallel to the basic "hard wired" ones and the "main thread" of awareness upon which a person is focused at any given moment.
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But they're not necessarily parallel, as Marvin's case shows.
 
Ron_Tomkins said:
(snip...) When you're dreaming (wether it's actual dreaming or daydreaming) you have reached a state in which your thoughts are no longer being deliberately controlled by yourself. (snip)
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(bold added by me)

Well, now you need to define "yourself" and "self" - are deliberate actions the only ones that are considered to be part of the self? I am inclined to think not. Perhaps your self is even more in control when it is less inhibited and able to think more freely?

I think that all brain activity contributes to your conscious experience - even if sometimes indirectly - and therefore all brain activity contributes to your "self".
 
leonAzul said:
Quite true, concurrent would be more accurate :)

(Although, if we are both thinking of the same Marvin, then massively parallel isn't out of the question :duck: )
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At a high-level view, I think we can see a lot of conscious processes as "downstream" from non-conscious processes, parallel to others, then feeding data back into the system.
 
Someone mentioned dreaming earlier are proof, and I don't think it is. The same parts of the brain can be accessed while fully awake. The difference is that the reason center of the brain shuts down. You aren't accessing more, 'hidden' parts of the mind, you are 'accessing' less. Without the reason center, the rest of the mind is able to run wild and free. But to call this the 'unconscious' when you can consciously access it would be a mistake. That is like saying because breathing is normally automatic that you need some special method to access that part of the mind in order to hold your breath.
 
It's good to keep in mind, too, that the boundary between conscious and unconscious processes is fuzzy or porous.

For example....

You wake up out of a dead sleep and "remember" hearing the sound of something heavy hitting the floor (or some other sound).

You're reading a book, and suddenly become aware of an error you "missed" in the previous paragraph. You look up, and there it is.

You're having a conversation, and suddenly you're aware that you just "heard" someone nearby say something that's important to you.

In these cases, the unconscious processes in your brain are evaluating input "below the surface", so to speak, and when something matches up the right way and is deemed important enough, it's "pushed" over into conscious awareness. So you "remember" it, even though you weren't consciously aware of it when it happened.
 
Piggy said:
I think the current research shows pretty clearly that the "unconscious mind" is the greater -- and more necessary -- part of the mind.
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It would be a little surprising if this weren't the case, I think, since consciousness appears to be a late, evolutionary add on to our minds that virtually no other species has bothered much with.
 
I can think about Horseradish if i want to, I can wonder where it is grown, what it looks like, if it similar to other radishes. But I cannot make my brain like it very much. What part of me does not particularly care for horseradish? The unconscious.
 
Smackety said:
I can think about Horseradish if i want to, I can wonder where it is grown, what it looks like, if it similar to other radishes. But I cannot make my brain like it very much. What part of me does not particularly care for horseradish? The unconscious.
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So you attribute anything you can't explain with the mind to the unconscious? It isn't me that doesn't like horseradish, it's my unconscious? I bet if you think about it you can figure out why you don't like them, and even if you can't, that doesn't mean it is the unconscious.

That is unless you were using that example as a way to define the unconscious. In which case, I'm an idiot.
 
It's got this far without mentioning Dennett; I think his theory (competing responses, multiple drafts of reality) makes as much sense as anything I've come across. It was also nice to see him last night on (UK) Channel 4's program, "Dawkins on Darwin" (http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/F/famelab/), proclaiming that he HAS a soul- but that his soul is a process of the mind.

His theory puts the "unconscious" squarely in the processing of the multiple stimuli, where not-yet-perceived inputs meet not-consciously-realised memory, and as such gives us an easy take on dreaming.
 
tyr_13 said:
So you attribute anything you can't explain with the mind to the unconscious? It isn't me that doesn't like horseradish, it's my unconscious? I bet if you think about it you can figure out why you don't like them, and even if you can't, that doesn't mean it is the unconscious.

That is unless you were using that example as a way to define the unconscious. In which case, I'm an idiot.
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I was using food preference as one example of the vast amount of personal characteristics that make up a person, that we have no control over.

Here is another example:
Suppose you are hungry. You are conscious of your hunger, but you are not conscious of the decision to become hungry. The conscious mind can theorize about why you are hungry - maybe you have not eaten in awhile, maybe you just smelled something cooking, or maybe it is 7 a.m. and you always eat at 7 a.m., but those are just guesses. The part of the mind that decided to send you looking for food has it's own reasons, and it does not bother to clue you in to them most of the time. Now, it is possible that hunger is a mechanical reaction to certain stimuli, no thought required, but evidence suggests otherwise. As anyone who has ever ordered their favorite pizza would agree, you can be hungry even while completely stuffed.

The classical analogy used is that of the 'tip of the iceberg'. A mind is composed of three elements, the id, ego, and superego. Only a small fraction of the ego is conscious. The conscious mind is the part that decides how to act. It rounds up the desires supplied by the id, the rules supplied by the superego, and whatever memories or hopes the rest of the ego contains and makes a decision on how to behave.

An example:

Id "I am hungry, and sleepy, and thirsty"
Superego: "If you eat in bed you will get crumbs, that is bad. If you eat before you go to sleep you will get fat, that is bad." (not first person because superego is supposedly an internalized parent)
Ego (unconscious): "I remember drinking while lying down and it did not work very well, I choked."
Ego (you): "Okay, I will eat and drink first, then I will go to bed. I don't care about getting fat because I am really hungry. Okay, I do care about getting fat, I will remember to eat earlier next time.".

My dog, on the other hand, does not seem to have much of a conscious. She will regularly go lie down, jump up to drink, go lie down again, lick her butt, jump up to get one piece of food, bring it into bed, forget about it and go back to sleep, etc.
 
I think one of my biggest problems with "the unconscious" is the "the". Nervous system processes clearly happen outside of conscious awareness, but "the" implies some unitary entity. Especially when people (usually but not always circularly) attribute their behavior to some sort of unconscious motivation--i.e., "my unconscious made that decision". There are entirely too many different parallel throughput processes going on, and what might "unconsciously motivate" one behavior might well be utterly irrelevant with regard to another behavior.

And of course, the colloquial use of "the unconscious" is precisely as some sort of unitary thing. Even the iceberg metaphor (thanks, Freud) implies the same.

It is much more obfuscatory than explanatory.
 
deep44 said:
If it's being used improperly, how did these papers pass peer-review?
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Appeal to authority. there are many who publish total nonsense in many fields.
Well, it's not my definition, it's from the dictionary: "the part of the mind that is inaccessible to the conscious mind but that affects behavior and emotions".
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Some events are pre-conscious for sure but most 'unconscious' processes can be studied through rational study and even to the first person observer. It is mainly a matter of post facto observation. Like learning what factors contribute to the 'perpetrator yuckey signal' that some of us experience where very violent perps send out this 'signal', as in 'gaydar' one can examine how one came to that conclusion.

The main problem with the term unconsciousness is the baggage of the term consciousness.
 
Perhaps it's (once again) just a semantic issue? The likes of Merc & Jeff object to the term because they come at from it's history within their field of expertise where the term appears to have been the cornerstone of a lot of pseudo-science. For others it's just a handy label for all that other stuff we know goes on but we don't label as conciousness.
 
Mercutio said:
"the" implies some unitary entity.
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Not necessarily. We talk of "the transportation infrastructure" for example.

I think as long as we're clear what we're referring to, we should not let our vocabulary become handcuffed by popular misconceptions.

And what's our alternative? Inventing some new term that no one is familiar with?
 
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