From: Joseph Sterlynne (vxs@mailandnews.com)
Date: Sun Sep 12 1999 - 08:33:31 MDT
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
>> Robert J. Bradbury
>> Given the amount of processing power that the brain has, it seems
>> to me that a *huge* amount of stuff is thought about that we are
>> never aware of.
>I disagree. [. . .] There's no "unconsciousness" capable of independent
>cognition.
>The discipline of
>self-awareness occurs first by learning to admit the things lurking in
>the corners of your mind; second by studying the evolutionary origin of
>our conscious motives; not, at any point, by bringing unconscious
>cognition into consciousness.
The existence of sophisticated unconscious cognition certainly is doubtful.
Of course, there is a fair amount of literature on unconscious perception
and processing which suggests that such activity does have a not
insubstantial effect on behavior. Merikle and Daneman (1998), for example,
find that unconsciously-perceived stimuli can have an even greater effect
on some behavior than consciously-perceived stimuli.
Unconsciously-perceived information---in contrast to consciously-perceived
information---tends to be superficial and stimulant of automatic reactions.
Nevertheless we are unaware of the exact channels by which this reaches
consciousness.
There is also the notorious "hidden observer" phenomenon in hypnosis (where
a subject's attention appears to divide so that consciousness remains with
only one division while conscious-style processing continues in both),
which is admittedly sometimes disputed and still under investigation.
Hypnosis has produced other examples of "divided consciousness" (all of
which are of course still being studied).
So probably much or all of unconscious processing is of a lower or at least
qualitatively different form as compared to conscious processing. Some of
that huge amount of stuff of which we are not aware is the constituent
processes of awareness itself. Some may not contribute directly to
awareness; and some (like autonomic housekeeping) in general remains out of
consciousness. So while we might not find whole conversations being
conducted beneath our awareness it should be interesting to catch the
fragments of thoughts for insight into our perception and behavior. Our
concepts of all this are far from complete.
--------
Merikle, Philip M. | Daneman, Meredyth. 1998. Psychological Investigation
of Unconscious Perception. _Journal of Consciousness Studies_ 5: 5--18.
Also available on the Web somewhere.
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