h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No. The whole point is that there *isn't* a part of the mind that's doing the driving. Just a collection of parts - albeit heavily interconnected.

And, yes, there is a "self" - the sum of the parts. If it's outside us, it's not part of our thinking mechanisms, obviously. But there's no part that gives "the idea of self" as such - just various parts that pass impressions from the senses and/or the memory. The "self" in terms of the little homunculus inside is a complex illusion.

Does it help to think about it this way:

You got to work without being conscious of having driven there. Were you conscious of the surrounding traffic along the way? I'd hope so!

So was it the conscious or the unconscious self that was driving? The answer is 'Yes!'.

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Does my "idea of self" differ in a meaningful way from my "idea of my chair"?

Aren't both of them representations? And what is it that my idea of self" represents?

>>"In other words, the part of the mind that did the driving is not accessible to (conscious) introspection, yes?"

Well, one might arrive at work without a *memory* of anything that happened on the way there - on a regular journey, the part of the mind in charge of driving may simply have not encountered anything worth paying special attention to, or committing to long-term memory.
Had some incident happened, it is quite possible that one would have been able to subsequently remember some things that happened on the journey *before* the incident occurred - effectively, one would become conscious due to subsequent events of some thoughts and information that would otherwise have been lost, and possibly labelled as 'unconscious'.

It wouldn't seem that the areas of operation that would normally be forgotten about need be *necessarily* inscrutable, merely that they habitually process large amounts of transient information, most of which is of little long-term importance, and so doesn't get flagged-up as worth paying real attention to.
I get constant feedback from my nervous system whenever I walk, but most of the time that information is of little or no real interest. After a leg injury (when I'm trying to work out a way of working around the injury), or when I'm trying to walk on an odd surface, I may direct attention to the relevant systems and obtain much information that I normally ignore.

It does seem at least a sensible design to have a brain where some higher-level processes have the *potential* for accessing all sorts of internal information, yet which aren't overwhelmed by the huge amount of information of minimal significance (or abandoned speculative thoughts, etc) which passes through the brain every day.

If one is to have the ability to use language, some part of the mind must be able to concentrate on a single thread for long enough to string sentences together.
It's only if I identify myself rigidly with that language unit that I could really say that anything it hasn't focussed ita attention on is something 'I' was not conscious of.

"...and so doesn't get flagged-up as worth paying real attention to."

Of course, there I'm falling into the trap of defining the conscious/linguistic/serial element of the brain as 'real' in terms of attention.

>>Does my "idea of self" differ in a meaningful way from my "idea of my chair"?

>>Aren't both of them representations? And what is it that my idea of self" represents?

Eek! Now we're getting all Platonic, I'm in danger of over-reaching myself. Yes...I think that's right (ie it No, they don't differ. Yes, they are both representations). BUT all an idea/representation is is a collection of interrelated memories. When one sees a chair, it's assesed for 'chairiness' by comparison with previous chairs.

So...the "self" is a collection of interacting memories, yes?





'Which came first...the chicken or the idea "chicken" '

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Kantian actually

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Hmmm, not sure. The "idea of my self" is a construct, a subset of our memories. "The self" I would say also includes other stuff that could only very loosely be considered memories, such as genetic predispositions, which need not be part of my idea of myself (or which may be part of my idea of myself even if I didn't have them).

Noggin

>>The "idea of my self" is a construct, a subset of our memories

Ah...so if you suddenly remember something you'd previously forgotten...you're a different self? You have a different idea of self...or what? I think I'm agreeing. This elusive 'idea of self' is the subset of memories that are most to the forefront.

>>"the self" I would say also includes other stuff that could only very loosely be considered memories, such as genetic predispositions

Yeah. Memories was the wrong word. 'Information'? But there's not some distinct, overseeing self pulling all the strings.


And my starting point remains. There's nothing mystical, other-worldly or vaguely unusual about it. We're just meat machines and our minds are firmly of the physical world.

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Something like that, although for most people, most of the time, there is a continuity to the idea of self that is only very marginally affected by minor changes.

We also have ideas about our idea of our selves, ideas about self in general, ideas about our idea of self in general, and so on and so forth.

I think the elusive 'idea of self' has to do with the memories or structures that are most persistent, rather than with those at the forefront at given moment.

The system is of of course dynamic, and can combine or recombine its elements in innumerable ways.

Noggin

>>The system is of of course dynamic, and can combine or recombine its elements in innumerable ways.

So no immortal soul, then?

Would it be a fair and accurate observation to note that religion, in general, operates in a pro-social (as opposed to anti-social) manner? [I.e. it supports society, and therefore may tend to act against the individual, as any pro-society thing might.]

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

<...our minds are firmly of the physical world>

Instead of making the obvious comment , could I ask you to expand on what you mean by that, Ed?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Name:

Chair title: Lord designate of the Ganticaboldist Faith and worshipper of the Great Green Obstacle

Anything that makes sense at the time, usually hovering between sufism, Ouspenski, Nietche and Quantum Theory. Re-incarnation by the Eternal Return, and a rather suspect obsession with the nature of time!

You can...but (as you imply) it's bleedin' obvious: There's nothing mystical about the mind. Mysterious, yes...pending further study. Mystical, no.

Which wasn't what you were talking about, I know. What I'm rying to poke at, though, is your earlier suggestion that god/religion may appeal to the unconscious mind. I have a problem with this. My mind is (more or less) the same as anyone else's. But god doesn't appeal to me. I (provocatively ) suggest that god appeals to the *uneducated* mind.

>>"Would it be a fair and accurate observation to note that religion, in general, operates in a pro-social (as opposed to anti-social) manner? [I.e. it supports society, and therefore may tend to act against the individual, as any pro-society thing might.]"

At best, I think that'd be a hefty generalisation. A particular religion may support a particular *kind* of society, but may well oppose another kind. For example, a religion with liberal social attitudes may be a thorn in the side of a reactionary society or vice versa.

Additionally, a religion which leaves much to interpretation may be used to support various individual opinions (or prejudices) which may or may not be in opposition to the general opinion of a given society. People both for and against the death penalty, female equality, etc may seek to use the same religion to provide support for their positions.

From the standpoint of someone who doesn't see any evidence for the supernatural elements soem religions claim, and who views religions as human constructs, they seem to be nothing more than a collection of ideas and emotions, with no fixed relationship with society or individuals.

To the extent that religions have some *political* aspect in the sense that they have some ideas about how people should interact, I'm not sure what distinguishes them from other kinds of collections of thoughts - overt political parties, various campaigning organisations, etc.
They may claim some special source of inspiration, but not one likely to be taken seriously by people who aren't members, and so of limited use in convincing anyone else of the value of any ideas which do impinge upon society.

Welcome, VoodooBluesMan!



Interesting! Care to expand on your, er, suspect beliefs? I've always been fascinated by time. I'm currently trying to wade through some linguistics stuff about different culture's views of time, and how this is expressed in their languages. Mr Whorf (Worf?) et al.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

<...our minds are firmly of the physical world>



<...There's nothing mystical about the mind. Mysterious, yes...pending further study. Mystical, no.>

I sort of meant that the mind might be taken as an example of something that *isn't* physical....



I didn't mean to imply that *any* nonconscious mind is unavoidably fascinated by religion. Rather that, if there *is* such a fascination, it is more likely to derive from the nonconscious mind than the conscious mind. I think the general message of religion may be angled toward the unconscious mind, and maybe that religion appears relatively uninteresting to the conscious mind.

"Uneducated"? Maybe "sane"?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

<>

On a local level, yes. On a scale any larger than that, the effect is just the opposite. Religion, in general, creates subsets of society with a particular set of traits, then marks any subsets who lack those particular traits as the enemy. The net result is contention and division of society.

Would it be fair and accurate? Neither.

>>I think the general message of religion may be angled toward the unconscious mind, and maybe that religion appears relatively uninteresting to the conscious mind.

Oh dear. I'd rather hoped I might have persuaded you by now that there's no difference between the two. Even allowing for such an assumption, though...surely there are many, many people who would argue that they have convinced themselves into religion intellectually. Even the staunchest atheist such as I will accept that religion may have developed as a sincere, intellectual attempt to explain the world - albeit one which is superceded by what we now know.

>>"Uneducated"? Maybe "sane"?

No...educated rather than sane. Just because people trust in their outmoded cultural assumptions, doesn't mean they're nutters (even if Math, in his more paranoid moments, is convinced that I want all druids locked up).

>>I sort of meant that the mind might be taken as an example of something that *isn't* physical....

It's as physical as the bits and bytes in your computer. Physical is all there is!

>>Mr Whorf (Worf?) et al.

Whorff. See also 'Whorff-Sapir' and 'Sapir-Whorff'. They're now believed to have been largely wrong. It's something of a dead end in linguistics.

>>"I think the general message of religion may be angled toward the unconscious mind, and maybe that religion appears relatively uninteresting to the conscious mind"

You still seem to be assuming that there's some fixed dividing line between the conscious and unconscious, in the sense that the unconscious mind deals with quite different areas of mental processing, and is inherently opaque to conscious examination.
That's *one* interpretation of 'conscious/unconscious, but it's certainly not the only one.