The Mythical Unconscious Thought

GrahamH · **#2361** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 12:15 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:When I attend to that square yellow shape then the rest seem to dim down. But I never get the sense that I see a yellow shape and all else has disappeared. It is a continuum in my head but seems not to be so in yours?

Why would you ever have a sense of that which you are not aware having disappeared? TO notice it disappear you have to be aware of it initially. If you are unaware of it you don't notice it's absence. If you aren't watching the apple than obviously you don't notice it disappear if the monkey swipes it.

SpeedOfSound wrote:I do not imagine I see richly detailed scenes, I see them. I know, and as Matthew pointed out he does to, the difference between seeing and imagining sight. If I think I see it then I bloody well see it.

Not sure how to sort this with you. Look at a complex visual scene. Now close your eyes. Do you still see it? If you don't then something connected to your primary visual sensory cortex has changed and you are aware of the change. You know this and you have protested when I put it this way. But I think you gloss over the significance and then what follows from you is not clear to me at all.

A 'recognition network' is present in every minicolumn of your striate cortex. In fact millions of such recognition's are there. If you want to call it that. I think the word recognition is a bit of misleading folk psychology and I don't like it. You have a dozen or more matrices of neuronal groups in your brain that map your entire retina. Spatially. Some are in charge of color, others lines and others differences in brightness. Some are color. Some control what your eyes are doing. Another has been shown to work in what we choose to attend to or what chooses it for us. Forty percent of your brain is given to millions of such recognizers of visual details. They are arranged in hierarchies and heterarchies. They feed back and forward in a chain and then some areas jump a few links both back and forward. Fifteen percent of the energy your body uses each day processes visual scenery.

Yep. Lots of complex stuff going on. Is any of that it actually subjective experience? Is the bit that detects lines also having line-seeing experiences? Does a gonit that detects a red blob know what it's like to be a subject seeing red?

SpeedOfSound wrote:Yet you insist we are only seeing what we remember that we saw?

You are going to have to get much finer grained and specific about what is recognized.

The important bit is, I think, what is recognised as salient subjective events. Not lines or apples, but what is the distinctive shape of this brain's response to lines or apples.

You have some of that with narrow attention. You describe "an equal bit of attention" and that's what I'm talking about. Those bits of attention can include a lot of stuff, but it isn't inherent in the function of the sensory cortices that they have a bit of attention on what's salient in GW. The salient peaks in GW have to be identified, just as the contrasty bits in the visual field have to surpass a detection threshold. Why wouldn't that apply?

GrahamH · **#2362** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 12:22 pm

surreptitious57 wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Why a continuum? Our basic sensory functions are not on a continuum, so why would our consciousness of them be different? I only see what I point my eyes at, and then I only see what stands out against the background. I only hear what is loud enough and distinct enough to hear. The same applies to electronic sensing systems. It seems to me that what gets experienced is
what gets noticed in the complex of neural activity. What stands out from the noise and background chatter, just as for
primary sensing. It makes no sense to say my eyes receive a continuum of visual information from areas not in view. If
something is in view but camouflaged It can go undetected. It isn't on a continuum. There are regions and thresholds

The definition of consciousness that I am using here is : any state of self awareness that is activated by a sensory response to external stimuli.

OK. So are you suggesting that all sensory responses are also states of self awareness? I'm suggesting they are not. That sensory responses may occur that do not register as states of self awareness. That your eyes may point as something you have no experience of seeing. If that is possible then consciousness is not a continuum.

surreptitious57 wrote: Therefore as long as one is capable of experiencing this then one is conscious. The degree of consciousness is a different matter entirely but all activity falls on the same spectrum ranging from the simple low order thinking of object recognition to the complex high order thinking of abstract thought. Which includes all physical responses referenced by some or all of the five major senses that are filtered through the thalamus onto the specific region of the brain associated with the sense. And this is regardless of whether one is specifically aware of them or not after such neural processing has taken place

You seem to be saying that all experience falls in a continuum, which is tautological and a very different thing than I thought you were saying. If you are not "specifically aware of them after such neural processing has taken place" are you still calling that a subjective experience?

SpeedOfSound · **#2363** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 12:35 pm

surreptitious57 wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
Why a continuum? Our basic sensory functions are not on a continuum, so why would our consciousness of them be different? I only see what I point my eyes at, and then I only see what stands out against the background. I only hear what is loud enough and distinct enough to hear. The same applies to electronic sensing systems. It seems to me that what gets experienced is
what gets noticed in the complex of neural activity. What stands out from the noise and background chatter, just as for
primary sensing. It makes no sense to say my eyes receive a continuum of visual information from areas not in view. If
something is in view but camouflaged It can go undetected. It isn't on a continuum. There are regions and thresholds

The definition of consciousness that I am using here is : any state of self awareness that is activated by a sensory response to external stimuli. Therefore as long as one is capable of experiencing this then one is conscious. The degree of consciousness is a different matter entirely but all activity falls on the same spectrum ranging from the simple low order thinking of object recognition to the complex high order thinking of abstract thought. Which includes all physical responses referenced by some or all of the five major senses that are filtered through the thalamus onto the specific region of the brain associated with the sense. And this is regardless of whether one is specifically aware of them or not after such neural processing has taken place

I think I like your version. I go a little further maybe. If you are sensing at all, that is awake, You are conscious and further, you are conscious of everything being sensed. From that great pool something may be picked out and become conscious-OF whatever it is recognized to be. You could then become conscious-OF thoughts and associations on the object. All that at a higher level. I would call that in the domain of 'knowing'. If you don't pick these things out you will not remember them even a fraction of a second later and will not know that you experienced them.

I have lot of explaining to do though in this regard. It wont be easy. An interesting thig is in relation to eliminativism and thinking that Conscious of is some kind of a thing apart from the physical description of what the brain is doing. I don't think it is.

GrahamH · **#2364** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 12:43 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:An interesting thig is in relation to eliminativism and thinking that Conscious of is some kind of a thing apart from the physical description of what the brain is doing. I don't think it is.

Nobody here is suggesting some kind of thing apart from what the physical brain is doing.
Interestingly you used 'physical description of what the brain is doing'. Well consciousness is not a physical description of anything, let alone what a brain is doing. Consciousness is not a description of synapses firing.
Consciousness could be seen as a non-literal describing of something related to what the brain is doing. That's what I'm suggesting.

surreptitious57 · **#2365** by **surreptitious57** » Dec 03, 2014 12:52 pm

GrahamH wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
Therefore as long as one is capable of experiencing this then one is conscious. The degree of consciousness is a different matter entirely but all activity falls on the same spectrum ranging from the simple low order thinking of object recognition to the complex high order thinking of abstract thought. Which includes all physical responses referenced by some or all of the five major senses that are filtered through the thalamus onto the specific region of the brain associated with the sense And this is regardless of whether one is specifically aware of them or not after such neural processing has taken place

You seem to be saying that all experience falls in a continuum which is tautological and a very different thing than I thought
you were saying. If you are not specifically aware of them after such neural processing has taken place are you still calling
that a subjective experience?

All experience is subjective by definition. There is no such thing as an objective one because sense perception and
cognitive interpretation vary significantly. Also not everything referenced by the five senses will stimulate neural
processing beyond the simple recognition of the thing itself but that does not invalid it as an experience per se

GrahamH · **#2366** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 1:07 pm

surreptitious57 wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
Therefore as long as one is capable of experiencing this then one is conscious. The degree of consciousness is a different matter entirely but all activity falls on the same spectrum ranging from the simple low order thinking of object recognition to the complex high order thinking of abstract thought. Which includes all physical responses referenced by some or all of the five major senses that are filtered through the thalamus onto the specific region of the brain associated with the sense And this is regardless of whether one is specifically aware of them or not after such neural processing has taken place

You seem to be saying that all experience falls in a continuum which is tautological and a very different thing than I thought
you were saying. If you are not specifically aware of them after such neural processing has taken place are you still calling
that a subjective experience?

All experience is subjective by definition. There is no such thing as an objective one because sense perception and
cognitive interpretation vary significantly. Also not everything referenced by the five senses will stimulate neural
processing beyond the simple recognition of the thing itself but that does not invalid it as an experience per se

Of course experience is subjective by definition, but the topic title asserts that all sense perception or
cognitive interpretation is subjectively experienced. I'm not suggesting any that invalidates something as an experience.

If you are not specifically aware of a stimulus after neural processing has taken place are you still calling
that a subjective experience?

SpeedOfSound · **#2367** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 1:42 pm

GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:An interesting thig is in relation to eliminativism and thinking that Conscious of is some kind of a thing apart from the physical description of what the brain is doing. I don't think it is.

Nobody here is suggesting some kind of thing apart from what the physical brain is doing.
Interestingly you used 'physical description of what the brain is doing'. Well consciousness is not a physical description of anything, let alone what a brain is doing. Consciousness is not a description of synapses firing.
Consciousness could be seen as a non-literal describing of something related to what the brain is doing. That's what I'm suggesting.

So then it becomes an interesting question to look into what your brain is doing when you are describing what you are conscious of. I am claiming that you can never describe what you are conscious of. You simply don't know. Can't know. That doesn't mena we can't produce a physical description on a timeline of you trying to know.

What we can do is just accept that you have access to your entire sensory cortex and every hierarchy up the chain. That means there is no unconscious part of the brain. Because there is no conscious part of the brain.

GrahamH · **#2368** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 2:03 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:An interesting thig is in relation to eliminativism and thinking that Conscious of is some kind of a thing apart from the physical description of what the brain is doing. I don't think it is.

Nobody here is suggesting some kind of thing apart from what the physical brain is doing.
Interestingly you used 'physical description of what the brain is doing'. Well consciousness is not a physical description of anything, let alone what a brain is doing. Consciousness is not a description of synapses firing.
Consciousness could be seen as a non-literal describing of something related to what the brain is doing. That's what I'm suggesting.

So then it becomes an interesting question to look into what your brain is doing when you are describing what you are conscious of. I am claiming that you can never describe what you are conscious of. You simply don't know. Can't know. That doesn't mena we can't produce a physical description on a timeline of you trying to know.

What we can do is just accept that you have access to your entire sensory cortex and every hierarchy up the chain. That means there is no unconscious part of the brain. Because there is no conscious part of the brain.

You misunderstand me. I suggested consciousness was a sort of describing of what is happening to the self, not that consciousness is describable using language. I'm not suggesting any transposition from experience to language.
I take it as read that language is inadequate for the task.

I don't know what you mean by "access to your entire sensory cortex and every hierarchy up the chain".
What is "access"? Do you mean you can attend to the detail? Do you mean you can introspect into it?

SpeedOfSound · **#2369** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 5:32 pm

I mean it to read you simply can't tell at all. Not just a language problem. An evidence problem. I intent to develop the case where we ask ourselves "what am I conscious of". I have developed the case of "what was I conscious of a moment ago". I have heard nothing that refutes my position that you have no way of knowing either by introspection or science.

So we have a thing that has no possible evidence pertaining to it and it is a thing that makes no difference anyway. So I suggest it exists as much as Jesus is Lord.

Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.

SpeedOfSound · **#2370** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 5:56 pm

So what we 'were conscious' of is meaningless. Along with what was in the unconscious. There is still one case to deal with. What I am conscious of now. I showed my card on that already. i don't think that one makes any sense either. So conscious and unconscious makes no sense and either needs to be reformulated, as something very different than what our intuition is telling us, or discarded.

I think we are stuck with the first option because the god damned thing is not going to go away. There is something that we refer to in these 'how does the brain' discussions and it is very real. So a reformulation is my choice.

I'm not sure of all the details of such reform. I do strongly suspect that the phrase 'unconscious process' will have no part to play in it.

BWE · **#2371** by **BWE** » Dec 03, 2014 6:46 pm

Sos, maybe you already answered this, but "awareness" and "attention" don't seem to reduce all that well. For example, if you can be aware of a thought, that means that the signal is parsed and attention focused on it. The simple fact that attention works like it does seems to make at least the labeling of unconscious thought a reasonable term which can be used as a referent and decoded by a receiver. That stream of language which one can become aware of by careful internal observation.

That said, your mission makes more sense to me now and I think the goal is probably reasonable. The method is wrong I think, but the.outcome might be the.same either way. From my perspective you can't build an ontology which banishes ontologies through language.

SpeedOfSound · **#2372** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 9:25 pm

Maybe banish is too ambitious a word to apply to what I am doing. You are correct on this.

My hope is to nail the definition to the wall. At least with thumbtacks. I think I can recover a definition for consciousness. It's just going to have a different look and feel to it. Will get to your question BWE, after my meetings.

GrahamH · **#2373** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 9:46 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:I mean it to read you simply can't tell at all. Not just a language problem. An evidence problem. I intent to develop the case where we ask ourselves "what am I conscious of". I have developed the case of "what was I conscious of a moment ago". I have heard nothing that refutes my position that you have no way of knowing either by introspection or science.

So we have a thing that has no possible evidence pertaining to it and it is a thing that makes no difference anyway. So I suggest it exists as much as Jesus is Lord.

Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.

Now there's a claim that cries out for evidential support. You say we can consciously attend to activity in virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex. Please show us.

SpeedOfSound · **#2374** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 10:00 pm

GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:I mean it to read you simply can't tell at all. Not just a language problem. An evidence problem. I intent to develop the case where we ask ourselves "what am I conscious of". I have developed the case of "what was I conscious of a moment ago". I have heard nothing that refutes my position that you have no way of knowing either by introspection or science.

So we have a thing that has no possible evidence pertaining to it and it is a thing that makes no difference anyway. So I suggest it exists as much as Jesus is Lord.

Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.

Now there's a claim that cries out for evidential support. You say we can consciously attend to activity in virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex. Please show us.

I actually said "all sensory information is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it".

/consciousness/.match("Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.")
=>nil

GrahamH · **#2375** by **GrahamH** » Dec 03, 2014 10:09 pm

SpeedOfSound wrote:
GrahamH wrote:
SpeedOfSound wrote:I mean it to read you simply can't tell at all. Not just a language problem. An evidence problem. I intent to develop the case where we ask ourselves "what am I conscious of". I have developed the case of "what was I conscious of a moment ago". I have heard nothing that refutes my position that you have no way of knowing either by introspection or science.

So we have a thing that has no possible evidence pertaining to it and it is a thing that makes no difference anyway. So I suggest it exists as much as Jesus is Lord.

Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.

Now there's a claim that cries out for evidential support. You say we can consciously attend to activity in virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex. Please show us.

I actually said "all sensory information is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it".

/consciousness/.match("Access-to means that it is a candidate for attention and further developing of network 'storms' around it. Virtually every cortical column in primary sensory cortex has this access potential.")
=>nil

So it's not all a candidate for attention. I guess that's easier than providing evidence.

Now, about those 'storms'. Lets accept that all cortical columns have the potential for developing 'storms'. How do they relate to 'access' or 'attention'?

SpeedOfSound · **#2376** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 10:27 pm

No it's all a candidate for attention. Global awareness. It may not be the C you are used to but that shit doesn't actually exist anyway so no loss. If I am looking at something I have access to it.

SpeedOfSound · **#2377** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 10:35 pm

GrahamH wrote:...

Now, about those 'storms'. Lets accept that all cortical columns have the potential for developing 'storms'. How do they relate to 'access' or 'attention'?

No one knows that for sure yet but there are some growing trends. The pulvinar has a retinotopic map or two of it's own. Also seems to have some association skills for other modalities. It is suspected in attention. If it's in the map, and it is if you are seeing it, then you have access to it. If you attend to various parts even from a moment, not even a moment that ends up in your 'i am conscious-of' knowledge base, the physiology will guarantee it's persistence. This is all across some interval of time mind you. Damn it! Timelines!!

So a state is being built up in the brain across those things that were attended to and anything in the retinotopic fields or any other architectonic field, is a candidate. There is a product being built across time.

I am really fucking jumping too far ahead here.

SpeedOfSound · **#2378** by **SpeedOfSound** » Dec 03, 2014 11:01 pm

BWE wrote:Sos, maybe you already answered this, but "awareness" and "attention" don't seem to reduce all that well. For example, if you can be aware of a thought, that means that the signal is parsed and attention focused on it. The simple fact that attention works like it does seems to make at least the labeling of unconscious thought a reasonable term which can be used as a referent and decoded by a receiver. That stream of language which one can become aware of by careful internal observation.

That said, your mission makes more sense to me now and I think the goal is probably reasonable. The method is wrong I think, but the.outcome might be the.same either way. From my perspective you can't build an ontology which banishes ontologies through language.

Awareness is often confused with attention. They really are two different things in the brain and guys like Baars make a big dal out of that. Attention has to do with working memory and the thalamus and the basal ganglia and lots of powerful state changes.

Now I separate these as Aw and At. Sets that contain elements of awareness and elements of attention. I would insist that you can never figure out all the things and bits in Aw. To do so you have to drag each bit into Aw and then it is transformed and mediated. So I may have a thought but thinking I have a thought is an entirely additional process. This process of course creates new elements in the Aw set and we are back at the beginning. Always trying and never succeeding in figuring out what we are aware of.

Is that clear? Or confused?

BWE · **#2379** by **BWE** » Dec 04, 2014 2:23 am

BTW, I find a lot to like in the global workspace theory. Functional definitions can be very valuable.

GrahamH · **#2380** by **GrahamH** » Dec 04, 2014 9:37 am

SpeedOfSound wrote:No it's all a candidate for attention. Global awareness. It may not be the C you are used to but that shit doesn't actually exist anyway so no loss. If I am looking at something I have access to it.

If you see something you have access, but just looking at it does not guarantee that you will see it. So what's the difference between looking at and seeing?

The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Re: The Mythical Unconscious Thought

Who is online