SpeedOfSound wrote:

IanRaugh wrote:I see, so right now the primary effort is to pin down definitions of the terms we use so then we can discuss them while all using the same language, does that sound about right?

Lets' try and break it down.

I make the statement 'I am conscious of that apple over there'
Someone else states that the "dancing monkey in the little patch of reflection on the surface of the apple was 'in my unconscious mind' "

Presumably to explain consciousness we need to explain the physicality behind my making such a statement. We want to find physical underlayment for what we believe is happening to me. There are some things we can assume and there are ways to create simple models from what we know about brains.

We also need to justify someone else claiming that something in my brain was in my unconscious mind or brain parts'

It is my claim that when we get into the fine details we smack up against some devious issues.

One of the devious issues would be that when you make a statement you are communicating with another person, and using the assumptions of folk psychology? This would need to be included in the physical description of what your brain is doing?

Would it be helpful for people who think 'unconscious' means something to offer their definitions and examples?

Did watch the video I posted? Did you understand it's relevance to the topic?

zoon wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

IanRaugh wrote:I see, so right now the primary effort is to pin down definitions of the terms we use so then we can discuss them while all using the same language, does that sound about right?

Lets' try and break it down.

I make the statement 'I am conscious of that apple over there'
Someone else states that the "dancing monkey in the little patch of reflection on the surface of the apple was 'in my unconscious mind' "

Presumably to explain consciousness we need to explain the physicality behind my making such a statement. We want to find physical underlayment for what we believe is happening to me. There are some things we can assume and there are ways to create simple models from what we know about brains.

We also need to justify someone else claiming that something in my brain was in my unconscious mind or brain parts'

It is my claim that when we get into the fine details we smack up against some devious issues.

One of the devious issues would be that when you make a statement you are communicating with another person, and using the assumptions of folk psychology? This would need to be included in the physical description of what your brain is doing?

That's the 1st part of the four-part statement.
I AM ConsciousOf(x)
I, AM, Cof(),x

So we are actually talking about three or four different things. The key is to shave away at this until we end up with what the philosopher is complaining about when he complains that C is not yet explained.

I don't see any problem with explaining I, x, The temporal designator-AM, or that I have a cognitive ability to identify x.

Note that Cof(x) is being taken as two things and not just one. This is the start of many ills.

Simplify to Exp(x) then decompose Exp(), something like S<-->O, a relation of subject to object.

'I AM' in unnecessary complex for a C - Un-C topic.

GrahamH wrote:Simplify to Exp(x) then decompose Exp(), something like S<-->O, a relation of subject to object.

'I AM' in unnecessary complex for a C - Un-C topic.

I'm going to guess at an English translation as follows:

'I AM' is unnecessarily complex for a C - Un-C topic.

While the confusion between x and Exp(x) is the 'start of many ills' the crass presumptions behind 'I am' and 'I was' are the root of the disease. So no. Not unnecessary at all.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Simplify to Exp(x) then decompose Exp(), something like S<-->O, a relation of subject to object.

'I AM' in unnecessary complex for a C - Un-C topic.

I'm going to guess at an English translation as follows:

'I AM' is unnecessarily complex for a C - Un-C topic.

While the confusion between x and Exp(x) is the 'start of many ills' the crass presumptions behind 'I am' and 'I was' are the root of the disease. So no. Not unnecessary at all.

When you say that another person looking at an apple can be presumed to have awareness, you are presuming that that person has a sense of "I" which is distinct from your sense of "I"? What would be the physical basis in your brain when it makes that distinction? You could dissolve the distinction by seeing that person as a mechanism which you could use, but they would probably object as strongly as you would object to the reverse approach?
I think I'm in agreement with you that when thinking of oneself in a world of rocks and trees, the sense of a separate self tends to become irrelevant. It's when other people are involved that the boundaries between selves become sharpened and difficult to ignore, and I'm not clear how your approach deals with this?

I think this is important and nicely illustrates what is meant by 'unconscious', so I will repost this.

Creativity is not a conscious function. We become aware of constructs, akin to entering an unfamiliar room and becoming aware of what it contains. Consciousness discovers but does not construct of arrange. The term 'unconscious process' refers to the construction or arrangement. It
'just happens' and the processes are not open to conscious awareness.

GrahamH wrote:I think this is important and nicely illustrates what is meant by 'unconscious', so I will repost this.

Creativity is not a conscious function. We become aware of constructs, akin to entering an unfamiliar room and becoming aware of what it contains. Consciousness discovers but does not construct of arrange. The term 'unconscious process' refers to the construction or arrangement. It
'just happens' and the processes are not open to conscious awareness.

In practice, the distinction between conscious and unconscious thoughts is that conscious thoughts can be described verbally by the subject, while unconscious ones cannot? In that video, unconscious thinking is inferred from the way ideas arrived fully formed while the subject was in a state of creative flow: the subject could describe in words how the ideas were used after they appeared in their consciousness, but could not describe how they were formed.

I don't think it has much to do with language. It has to do with what falls within conscious awareness == is experienced == is conscious.
Clearly anything you are not aware of / do not subjectively experience is not readily reportable.

I'll repeat that I really don't like the term 'unconscious thinking' because 'thoughts' refer to experiences. We experience thoughts, we experience 'having a flash of inspiration.' What this topic is really about is not 'unconscious thinking' but ' unconscious processing' or, as in the video 'unconscious creativity' or 'unconscious problem solving'. 'Unconscious cognitions' is a possible, using the cog-sci meaning of cognition.

'While the subject was in a state of creative flow' is an interesting phrase. IT implies that 'the subject' is creating. Is it? If so, what is it, and hiw does it create?

An alternative narrative could be that the experience is of an abstract sense of creating far removed from the actual work of finding patterns and making connections. It isn't 'the subject' that creates. 'The subject' only represents what the organism is doing, and in 'flow' the doing is very poorly represented, a rough sketch. Indeed 'flow' is where we 'loose ourselves'. Conceivable the brain more or less shuts down the tracking of self and 'the subject' is therefore all but absent during flow.

[ETA]

'subject' here is 'subject of experience', 'conscious mind', 'subjective observer' etc, not the person as a whole, nor a brain.

This may pertain to speed of thought where creativity flows to a different degree to standard thought
It might also have something to do with endorphin release since it can also generate positive feelings
as well as creative thought. But even here the brain is still functioning as it usually does for nothing
happens with out that. Neurons may be firing faster but there is still processing as with all thought

Multitasking....nah....

http://aeon.co/video/psychology/daniel- ... a-68637837

Good find Kennyc.

Note that Leventin mentions that 'you don't know that you're doing it' which is my definition of unconscious.

If the brain uses resources task switching then that seems to fit the way we lose awareness of some things when we have focused attention on something else. The brain stops tracking itself, notices less of what self is doing, as it gets busy doing it.

Levitin's descriptions match what I think of as unconscious processing. Stare out the window and you solve the problem without being aware of working on the problem. It isn't conscious attention that does the work.

At 5:19 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'.

GrahamH wrote:Good find Kennyc.

Note that Leventin mentions that 'you don't know that you're doing it' which is my definition of unconscious.

If the brain uses resources task switching then that seems to fit the way we lose awareness of some things when we have focused attention on something else. The brain stops tracking itself, notices less of what self is doing, as it gets busy doing it.

Levitin's descriptions match what I think of as unconscious processing. Stare out the window and you solve the problem without being aware of working on the problem. It isn't conscious attention that does the work.At 5:19 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'.

I suspect that it is conscious attention in the past that really does the work, because time is often required for thoughts to take shape. Therefore, it is misleading to dismiss attention, per se, as irrelevant.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Good find Kennyc.

Note that Leventin mentions that 'you don't know that you're doing it' which is my definition of unconscious.

If the brain uses resources task switching then that seems to fit the way we lose awareness of some things when we have focused attention on something else. The brain stops tracking itself, notices less of what self is doing, as it gets busy doing it.

Levitin's descriptions match what I think of as unconscious processing. Stare out the window and you solve the problem without being aware of working on the problem. It isn't conscious attention that does the work.At 5:19 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'.

I suspect that it is conscious attention in the past that really does the work, because time is often required for thoughts to take shape. Therefore, it is misleading to dismiss attention, per se, as irrelevant.

How does conscious attention - the subjective qualia-experience of it, do work? My point is that the neurobiology does the work, the physics does the work. The subjective experience of thinking lacks work being done. Answers 'come to mind'. 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'. Often removing attention from the problem, thinking about something else, daydreaming, leads to answers and creative ideas 'coming to mind'.

Sometime something more methodical with close attention leads to a solution, but then it seems the algorithmic process is doing the work, not the qualia-conscious feel of it.

The best case for conscious creativity seems to be where we have no subjective insight into how ideas come about. Religious types sometimes attribute their best ideas to something gifted to them by god. It is a starkly un-conscious thing.

GrahamH wrote:Answers 'come to mind'. 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'. Often removing attention from the problem, thinking about something else, daydreaming, leads to answers and creative ideas 'coming to mind'.

Sure, but my point was that none of that happens without previously paying conscious attention at some stage. The unconscious part of the process, ending in the answer "coming to mind" would not happen without previous conscious attention, without which the unconscious would have nothing to work on, surely? The key is that you said "removal" of attention, which implies that attention must have occurred at some point.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Answers 'come to mind'. 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'. Often removing attention from the problem, thinking about something else, daydreaming, leads to answers and creative ideas 'coming to mind'.

Sure, but my point was that none of that happens without previously paying conscious attention at some stage.

I don't agree. Ideas often come 'out of the blue' where we have not been attending to an obviously related 'problem'.

GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Answers 'come to mind'. 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'. Often removing attention from the problem, thinking about something else, daydreaming, leads to answers and creative ideas 'coming to mind'.

Sure, but my point was that none of that happens without previously paying conscious attention at some stage.

I don't agree. Ideas often come 'out of the blue' where we have not been attending to an obviously related 'problem'.

What makes you think that such a situation is different from what I suggest is really happening - that thought about the actual problem in the past is what gives rise to the idea coming "out of the blue" in the present? If you hadn't ever thought about a problem at all, the idea about the answer would have no way of popping up.

EDIT: I think you probably said as much yourself, a couple of years ago, when we were discussing what "random ideas" were.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:Answers 'come to mind'. 'The solution comes to you just like that, from out of nowhere'. Often removing attention from the problem, thinking about something else, daydreaming, leads to answers and creative ideas 'coming to mind'.

Sure, but my point was that none of that happens without previously paying conscious attention at some stage.

I don't agree. Ideas often come 'out of the blue' where we have not been attending to an obviously related 'problem'.

What makes you think that such a situation is different from what I suggest is really happening - that thought about the actual problem in the past is what gives rise to the idea coming "out of the blue" in the present? If you hadn't ever thought about a problem at all, the idea about the answer would have no way of popping up.

EDIT: I think you probably said as much yourself, a couple of years ago, when we were discussing what "random ideas" were.

As I said I disagree. We don't have to identify a problem ahead of having an inspirational idea. I think it is more common but not essential. What is required is to make connections. Conscious attention keeps pieces in play, increasing the chances that connections are found, but the connecting doesn't seem to be a conscious process.

GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
Sure, but my point was that none of that happens without previously paying conscious attention at some stage.

I don't agree. Ideas often come 'out of the blue' where we have not been attending to an obviously related 'problem'.

What makes you think that such a situation is different from what I suggest is really happening - that thought about the actual problem in the past is what gives rise to the idea coming "out of the blue" in the present? If you hadn't ever thought about a problem at all, the idea about the answer would have no way of popping up.

EDIT: I think you probably said as much yourself, a couple of years ago, when we were discussing what "random ideas" were.

As I said I disagree. We don't have to identify a problem ahead of having an inspirational idea. I think it is more common but not essential. What is required is to make connections. Conscious attention keeps pieces in play, increasing the chances that connections are found, but the connecting doesn't seem to be a conscious process.

If you don't even know a problem exists, how can the solution occur to you (regardless of whether that solution came out of the blue, or as a direct result of conscious thought about it)?

I agree that conscious attention "keeps pieces in play".

Obviously, you see the problem and solution at the same time.