The Distinct and Inconsistent Reality of a Dream
When I have a dream, it appears to me, at the time, like everything in the dream is really happening. If the dream brings unfavourable circumstances, it may even take a short duration of time after I wake up, to convince myself that it was just a dream.
How is this possible, that my mind can allow itself to go into a completely distinct reality (which is not reality, yet I believe it to be reality at the time)? How is it possible, that my mind can deceive itself, by creating such a fiction, and so thoroughly deceive itself, with it's own fictional creation, that it actually believes that its own fictional creation is real? That's totally absurd.
Perhaps the solution to the problem involves the nature of sleeping, since this form of self-deception only seems to occur to this absolute degree when I am asleep. Is there something about being asleep which allows one to be totally deceived while being asleep. However, the inverse may be the case as well, as in Descartes meditations, I may also be totally deceived all the time, when I am awake as well.
What allows the mind to create for itself, a multitude of distinct and completely inconsistent realities at different times. How is it possible for me to believe, when I am asleep, that something is real, which is completely distinct from, and inconsistent with, what I believe is real when I am awake? Am I a completely different person when I am asleep, from when I am awake?
How is this possible, that my mind can allow itself to go into a completely distinct reality (which is not reality, yet I believe it to be reality at the time)? How is it possible, that my mind can deceive itself, by creating such a fiction, and so thoroughly deceive itself, with it's own fictional creation, that it actually believes that its own fictional creation is real? That's totally absurd.
Perhaps the solution to the problem involves the nature of sleeping, since this form of self-deception only seems to occur to this absolute degree when I am asleep. Is there something about being asleep which allows one to be totally deceived while being asleep. However, the inverse may be the case as well, as in Descartes meditations, I may also be totally deceived all the time, when I am awake as well.
What allows the mind to create for itself, a multitude of distinct and completely inconsistent realities at different times. How is it possible for me to believe, when I am asleep, that something is real, which is completely distinct from, and inconsistent with, what I believe is real when I am awake? Am I a completely different person when I am asleep, from when I am awake?
Comments (115)
My view is that you are the same person when asleep or awake, but your mental abilities and cognitive processes are very much different. Have you heard of the Hobson's AIM model of consciousness and his work on the neuroscience of dreams? I first head about it while reading Andy Clark's brilliant paper "The twisted matrix: Dream, simulation, or hybrid?" I've had a discussion with Claude about Hobson's model in connection with the phenomenology of dreams and how they compare to (and differ from) LLM hallucinations.
Innate world building capability? Imagine that the nucleus of the dream is some emotion, which surrounds itself with an event to explain the emotion. The event balloons out into a setting. What flips me out is that when my dream involves a social setting, there will be these weird customs that the people do, as if obligations are fundamentally arbitrary.
The subconscious mind creates what the conscious mind perceives whether what is perceived by the conscious mind is a dream or a simulation of reality.
That's all dreams are. That partial construction and exercise of the brains ability to construct a conscious reality. Its not another dimension, and its not real outside of your own image. If you doubt this, go to a science forum. Philosophy that does not address the science of its day in its musings is not philosophy, but ignorance masquerading as profoundness.
Would a science forum assure me that I'm not peeping into another universe when I'm asleep?
If its a good one, yes. :)
How would it rule that out?
Make sure it avoids conspiracy theories and has standards for posting.
I think they just need to hang out at a philosophy forum and learn what "rule out" means. :grin:
You still need a biological body and functional brain to be able to have dream. Therefore could dreams reflect the state of your body and brain? The perceptual functions of brain might be dormant during sleep.
But some brain functions such as imagination could still be active, which triggers all sort of images and activities happening in random manner, and feeding the created information into the dormant perceptual and memory functions?
Hence dreams can be the operations of your imagination while the other parts of your brain functions are dormant.
The mind creates mental phenomena, not realities.
Perhaps the question of how this occurs, in either case, is the real question - and one that seems, hitherto, unable to even be approached reasonably by intellect.
The closer one gets to lucid dreaming the more pronounced this effect. I've commented before on Castaneda's Art of Dreaming, and how the process leads to an awakening into an alternate form of reality, more vivid and compelling than normal, allowing one to become pure will.
The key to accessing this experience is summoning a form of consciousness while in the hypnagogic state. Perhaps this is a portal through which one can exert some control of elements of the subconscious, for the subconscious interprets sensory input.
Seems all of a piece for how minds operate. (Just woke from a dream where I was in a room with some other people and we were discussing some eucalyptus saplings that had been planted on the street outside. A girl asked me what kind of vegetative animal a tree was, to which I replied, a plant. Several people laughed. )
:up:
How can the two be the same person, when the things believed by the sleeping person are completely inconsistent with the things believed by the awake person.
Quoting frank
I find that my dreams start out as essentially emotionless, then certain emotions are stirred. So the emotion is caused by the event, which is the dream, not vise versa. When I was young I'd have a recurring dream of falling. The fear intensified until the emotion was so intense that it would wake me up. The dreams would start emotionless, then the emotion intensified to the point of being so intense that it actually woke me.
Quoting MoK
This is on the right track of where the op is pointing. But the question is, how can the subconscious so thoroughly deceive the conscious, so that the conscious doesn't even know that it's not awake when the subconscious is producing dreams. Maybe there is no conscious mind when a person is dreaming, maybe it's all subconscious, and that's why the conscious doesn't know that it's just a dream, because the consciousness is completely absent. But then where is the consciousness at this time, and how can we account for the discontinuity?
It's because your ability to track your own beliefs, and to detect inconsistencies between them, is greatly diminished when you are asleep and dreaming. Also, the set of the beliefs (or apparent perceptual experiences) that you acquire when dreaming, many of which are ephemeral and transient, aren't just inconsistent with the stable beliefs that you hold and are able to express or entertain when awake. They are internally inconsistent as well. So, if you would identify selves, or persons, with owners of sets of mutually consistent beliefs, then there would be either no person when you sleep, or as many transient persons as there are new inconsistent beliefs that occur unnoticed.
In the sort of lucid dream I described, one realizes exactly what is happening. I remember testing the state by knocking on a table while strolling by, feeling the fibers of the carpet beneath my feet.
I think the vivacity of dreams is a shifting ground of dream experiences not easily compared. The peculiarities of my own development must be a critical factor. I have a knack for imagining situations through models but have a poor memory of my chronology. I know people who can recall small details of their early life and the order in which events occurred. For me, it is all a shuffled deck of flash cards with few names attached.
With these differences in mind, it is interesting how we can refer to our dreaming as shared experience. Poetry and literature refer to the activity in ways that prompt recognition of the way it creates its own logic and physics. But it is no simple thing. The tension between the awakened and dreamt events emerges in different ways.
Rilke uses the gap to uncover what escapes perception without guidance:
In The Trial, by Kafka, the gap is seemingly infinite. All the particular struggles K takes on to defend himself do not reach up to a higher order of judgement where the "real" gets on. It seems to me that a lot of dreams are like that. We are dropped into a maze from which to escape but the design is changed when we start figuring some of it out.
If both sides of gap are necessary for either one to appear, then the question changes. I think of Borges in Borges and I which starts with:
and ends with:
Aren't the perceptual functions and imaginative functions pretty much the same though?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Are you saying that when a person is asleep one cannot think rationally yet they are still thinking? I don't know if that type of brain activity, dreaming, can qualify as thinking. But then what is it?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
OK, so then a "self" has no inherent consistency within one's mind, always drifting off into sleep where things get really confused.
What about the self-deception though? Why do things appear to be consistent and believable to the self in the dream state, when they are so far out of synch with what would be necessary for being consistent to the rational awake self? How can it do this to itself, to disconnect itself from all those rational capacities, and leave itself completely vulnerable to be so easily and completely deceived?
Quoting jgill
But is this really a dream though? It doesn't sound like you were even asleep, if you noticed yourself strolling by a table, and you could even knock on the table to confirm that you were not asleep.
Quoting Paine
I guess I am sort of the opposite to you then. From a young age I would put effort into putting my memories into chronological order. It's not something that really comes naturally, reflecting on what happened and putting the memories in order, more like a skill to be developed. I believe the ambition to do that was derived from the desire to explain it to someone else. There's a similarity here, to waking up after a dream, and trying to remember what happened in the dream, to explain it to yourself. The big difference is that the order of events in the dream doesn't need to make any sense, whereas in establishing chronological order to past memories, making sense out of it all, facilitates putting them in order.
Quoting Paine
I would assume that there is two sides to this, two directions to be looking across the gap. If perception must be guided by some kind of rationality, the rationality is also guided by perception. So for instance, when I try to order my past memories, perception gives me guidance by telling me what makes sense. However, the strangeness of my dreams indicates that perception itself must be guided in order for it to make sense.
Maybe this type of guidance is what @jgill is getting at with lucid dreaming.
Guess where I was walking? In the bedroom towards the closed door - which I walked through, like moving through a panel of smoke. I was fully conscious. (delightful experience, by the way)
A simple explanation is amnesia; ordinarily, you cannot remember your waking life when dreaming. Hence the reason why wannabe lucid dreamers habitually question whether they are dreaming during their waking lives, in the hope that their habitual questioning will continue when they are dreaming.
I think an interesting philosophical question is whether lucid dreams should be regarded as being a distinct category of dreams, or whether lucid-dreams should be considered to be an oxymoron that consists of tradeoff between awareness and dreaming, or even whether lucid dreams should be regarded as ordinary dreams in which one merely dreams that one is lucid.
As Stephen LaBerge famously established, there is at least a behavioural distinction between lucid dreamers and ordinary dreamers, in that dreamers who are lucid can communicate with the outside world during REM sleep. This is coherent with the idea that lucid dreams are a trade-off between dreamfull sleep and wakefulness. Certainly my own lucid dreams are never as creative or as believable as my non-lucid dreams, and I much prefer a creative and inspiring non-lucid dream in which I have no awareness that I am dreaming, over a boring and predictable lucid dream in which I am vigilantly aware that I am dreaming. (Doesn't the "dream AI" always suck in a lucid dream in comparison to an ordinary non lucid dream?)
However, this behavioural distinction isn't available to the dreamer himself, for the dreamer doesn't have external access to his own physical body from the outside - whether asleep or awake. So in spite of the lucid/non-lucid dream distinction having objective scientific validity, this does not in itself imply that the lucid dreaming/non-lucid dreaming distinction has subjective validity. For all that is available to the dreamer is dream content. So upon waking up from a lucid dream, one is right to ask whether their lucid dream involved actual wakefulness when dreaming, or whether their lucid dream was merely a dream of wakefulness.
The conscious mind just experiences a simulation created by the subconscious mind. It takes the experience granted to be real in the dream since it cannot analyze whether the dream represents something real or not. We can however have lucid dreams in which we are aware that what we experiencing is a dream. We can even have control over our actions in lucid dreams. I have lucid dreams from time to time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The conscious mind has very limited memory. This memory is also temporary. Anything that the conscious mind experiences therefore must be registered in the subconscious mind to recall it later. So, either the subconscious mind playing a game with the conscious mind, or the dream is a supernatural phenomenon in which we, the conscious and subconscious minds, are immersed within.
If I understand correctly, what you are saying is that lucid dreaming doesn't really solve the issue of inconsistency between dreaming and awake realities, but it removes the "distinct" aspect by blurring the boundary. When the boundary is blurred by lucidity, we can't really say whether the lucid dreamer is partly awake, or there is an awake person who is dreaming. Therefore lucid dreaming doesn't resolve the absurd self-deception I referred to in the op, it just increases the absurdity by allowing the conscious mind to take part in the self-deception.
So when says "I remember testing the state by knocking on a table while strolling by", this "test" is an act which confirms that the conscious mind has allowed itself to partake of the self-deceptive dream state. Instead of the conscious mind intentionally staying out of the deceptive dream state, because it cannot make any sense of what is going on, so it just stays out and lets the inconsistency and deception proceed in its own way, the conscious mind willfully allows itself to be drawn into the self-deception, ignoring the deceptive nature, and the absurdities involved.
Quoting MoK
From considering the evidence, I don't think it's possible for this to be a one way causation, of the subconscious causing, or granting, what is experienced by the conscious. As demonstrated by the randomness of dreams, the subconscious could present the conscious with almost any possible experience. However, the consciousness normally rejects the inconsistent absurd presentations, allowing them only in times of sleep. This means that in times of being awake, the conscious mind must be actively suppressing the subconscious, and exercising causal control over it, to ensure that it provides only presentations which make sense to it.
This cannot be merely a filtering of the subconscious presentations, the conscious part must be actively controlling the way that the subconscious formulates its presentations, to ensure that whatever is "granted" from the subconscious is coherent and consistent with the way that the conscious understands things. Otherwise the subconscious would be continually slipping into incoherent, and inconsistent presentations, like it does in dreaming. So this effort which the conscious part of the mind must make, in order to exercise control over what the subconscious is presenting it with, manifests as the effort of staying awake when a person gets sleepy. In general, this would be the essence of tiredness, weakening of the capacity to exercise that control.
Quoting MoK
I've heard speculations, that actually everything anyone ever experiences is put into one's memory. And, all the problems we have with memory are due to our ability to retrieve what is there in the memory. Have you ever heard of "Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory" or hyperthymesia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia
Not really true. If you take psychedelics you will be aware of the hallucinations being fake until a point you start to believe in it. It's similar to what happens when we dream.
The closest we are to define what dreams are is that the mind, in the wake state, operates on a prediction process in which every perception we have of reality around us is a construct in our brain based on it predicting the next instance of time. Through out senses our brain "ground" our experience as a form of anchor by constantly verifying our predictions with reality around us.
There are tons of psychological experiments that verify this and how easy it is to disturb our perception through manipulation of these verification sensory inputs. The famous fake-hand experiment is one such example. When our minds prediction function gets hacked by this process, it predicts pain and gets into a confused state when the hammer is slammed on the fake hand.
What happens when we dream or take psychedelics? It's basically cutting off or disrupting the sensory ability to verify predictions. Psychedelic visual hallucinations disturbs the verification process so much that the prediction process cannot get accurate verification, and so its scrambled.
It basically makes your brain trying to predict something based on the new conditions its in, and the new conditions are scrambled. This is why we soon start to believe in them, because its not our brain generating it directly, its that our verification of them tells our brain that yes, this is true.
"I can't believe what I see" is a phrase people say when they see something they have no previous experience of. The dissonance between what they see and the brain trying to predict the reality that is fed to it through sensory data. But since the sensory data is there to verify, people quickly accept the reality they witness, however unlikely it is for the brain.
So, when we sleep, the main thing that happens is that the brain shuts off the stream of sensory input that is used to verify what the brain is predicting. The only thing that's left is the internal scrambled mess of short term memory. The physical thing that happens during sleep is that the body and brain gets rid of waste products. Its a clean-up process and part of it is to flush the short term memory and fine-tune the prediction processes for the next day.
It does this because that's our evolutionary trait that we evolved into. Our ability to predict highly advanced situations in nature relies on constantly reshaping the prediction model of the world around us and it needs the brain to operate quickly in moment to moment situations. In order for it to do so, it needs to form better neural paths that prepare the brain to act on this in automatic actions. So the short term memory stores data that is used to transform the long term memory and automatic functions. It goes through these short term experiences and finding relations to long term memories in order to optimize in what way it should predict reality in the next waking state.
This is why we learn things better when we sleep better. Just "learning" during our waking state is irrelevant if we don't get a good sleep that transfers that data into a relation to the larger prediction model of reality.
So the logical reason for why we dream and why we believe the dream we have when we experience it, is because we don't have a verification process during this phase. It's only meant to find verification or correlations with long term memory so the experience we have is pure memory data consolidating itself into a new state. We believe in it, because there's no actual reality that verifies anything, only other memories. The prediction process of our brain has no grounding and so it has no other way than to accept whatever verification that exists, which is just itself a scrambled stream of memories.
This is why dreams after intensive life experiences can be extreme. Because the brains consolidation of this short term memory is so loaded with warning signs that "this emotional overload defines this experience as extremely important for survival". And the intensity of it forms such strong neural connections in the brain that it can lead to PTST, in which the smallest verification from reality (triggers) can trigger these emotional states as the brain predicts that a similar event will happen again.
We experience triggers all the time. It's the basic function of the prediction process. Everything triggers a predictive calculation of what comes next. But the emotional levels attached to these predictions is what can cause a normal mundane automatic reaction, like when we "zone out" doing something, or have an extreme PTST reaction in which we feel like we're about to die.
So extreme experiences becomes extreme dreams as the brain tries to consolidate the level of importance that this experience has for survival.
During the process, it tests the short term memory against the long term memories, testing it out. Like someone holding up a scribbled drawing comparing it to a fine drawing on the wall. If it "kinda matches" it consolidates it into a synthesis of the fine drawing on the wall with the scribbled drawing based on how emotionally important it was registered.
This process is why dream experiences often consist of a fusion between new emotional experiences and older memory, in which our experience of the dreams have this surreal mix between old memories and new experiences.
But the main thing about believing in the dreams as we experience them, is because the verification process used in the awake state, isn't "on". Or rather, it is tuned over to verify from old memories; the long term memories and deeper subconscious parts of our mind. Our new experiences in our short term memory doesn't get verification from our senses, but rather from our subconscious instead, and so we get confused as the verification process is there telling us that the feedback loop between prediction and verification works fine.
This is the closest I can get to an explanation based on what I know about neuroscience and psychology. Some of this is verified by experiments, but the overall conclusions haven't been as of yet, although the reasoning is based on the most up to date theories of the mind and sleep.
I don't think that the conscious mind has such a causal power. I experience hallucinations all the time. I see things and hear things that other people cannot see or hear. People say that I have schizophrenia but they cannot explain the phenomenon at all. It is also well known that hallucinatory substances such as LSD and magic mushrooms cause hallucinations. People who use such substances see things differently. I had a friend who reported that he could see the motion of water in a tree when he was using LSD. So either what the conscious mind experiences is filtered in our daily life when we are in a normal state and reality looks different from what we experience or there is no way to explain the hallucinations such as the one my friend and others have when they are under the influence of LSD for example.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You need a substance to put memory into it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If that is true then the memory should be registered in a substance that is not physical because we are aware of the shortage of physical memory and problems related to memory loss due to brain damage.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Therefore, such a memory must be registered in another substance other than physical. Perhaps soul! Who knows?
I've taken a lot of psychedelics, and I don't think it's at all similar to dreaming.
Quoting Christoffer
I can agree that this prediction process, is an important aspect of consciousness, but I do not really agree with the verification aspect you are suggesting.
Quoting Christoffer
I think you have this reversed, the predictions require sense perception as the basis of the prediction, what the prediction is derived from. To know what comes next requires sensing what just happened. Therefore, when sense perception is not there, in the dream, predictions simply cannot be made. This implies that what is produced in the dream state is something other than predictions.
Quoting Christoffer
In a dream, all of the so-called "conditions" are created by the dreaming mind. Therefore it is the brain generating the conditions directly, and the person dreaming believes them regardless of how scrambled they are. Verification is irrelevant, unless perhaps the person is lucid dreaming and has purposedly forced the desire for verification to become part of the dream.
Quoting Christoffer
You are neglecting the fact that a stream of sensory data is required to produce a prediction in the first place. And this is not available to the dreamer. Therefore the dream does not consist of predictions.
Quoting Christoffer
As explained above, dreams are not predictions, and verification is irrelevant. So I think the rest of your post is derived from false premises.
Quoting MoK
Have you ever considered that perhaps your mind might be somewhat lacking in this causal power which other people have with their minds, and this is why they say that you have schizophrenia?
Quoting MoK
Isn't what I said, 'a deficiency in that causal power', actually an explanation of the phenomenon? You do not accept that explanation, for whatever reason, but that doesn't negate it as an explanation. It just means that you do not believe it as an explanation.
Quoting MoK
If I understand correctly, a specific memory consists of a specific pattern of neural activity. To remember something exactly as it was experienced, requires an exact recreation of that specific neural activity. Theoretically, therefore, we could remember everything experienced, by reproducing the necessary neural activity.
Quoting MoK
The issue of memory then, is not a matter of substance, but a matter of repeating neuronal activity. But this produces the further question of what it is that is performing this repetition, on demand, as remembering. Is it the soul which does this?
The conscious mind is very passive. Its function depends on the constant flow of information from the subconscious mind since it has very little memory. The conscious mind's main duty is to think and learn different tasks. What is learned for example a thought is then registered in the subconscious mind. I also think that the subconscious mind is intelligent since it knows what kind of information the conscious mind lacks to produce a thought. It is through this collaboration that we can think, learn different tasks, etc.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I just perceive things unconditionally. My conscious mind does not have any power to even complete a sentence without collaboration with the subconscious mind. I cannot think either without the help of the subconscious mind as I illustrated above. So I don't understand which kind of causal power I have over the subconscious mind. Do you mind elaborating?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We cannot remember everything that we experienced in the past since that information is huge. When it comes to memorizing the subconscious mind is very selective and just memorizes things that are necessary for the future. Anyhow, regarding remembering past life, I am arguing that this memory should be registered in another substance since people who report such memories do not have the same body.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If we accept reporting past life as a fact then we have to accept that this memory is stored in a substance such as soul since such individuals do not own the same body.
I think I explained this already. The conscious part of your mind must have the ability to cause the subconscious part to present things to it in a sensible, rational way, or else the subconscious would be doing it in a random way like when we dream. So it is the ability to think rationally, and in a more general sense the ability to stay awake, which is the conscious mind exercising causal power over the subconscious.
For instance, you say that what is learned is registered in the subconscious. Let's call this a memory, and we'll say that the subconscious has a whole lot of memories. When the conscious mind thinks in a rational way, it needs to recall memories from the subconscious which it uses in that activity. Therefore it must have causal power over the subconscious, to cause the subconscious to present these memories to it in a way which makes sense. If the conscious did not have causal power over the subconscious, the subconscious would be presenting things in a random way, like in a dream.
Quoting MoK
I consider "memorizing" to be an activity of the conscious mind, not the subconscious. It is a repetitive practise of recollection.
That is not what I was saying. I said that the similarities are in how it disconnects or scramble the verification process in the brain. Making the brain trying to predict something it does not get a verification to ground the predictions into an easily navigational space.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's part of predictive coding theory which is the current dominant theory in the science of consciousness. If you don't agree, you need to provide something else that explains how the predictions are structured into a consistent experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why are you concluding it to be something else rather than unbound predictions based on the flow of memories? As I mentioned, in predictive coding, it's already stated that our sensory data grounds the predictive process, so you're simply wrong against the dominating theory. The basis of prediction is not sensory perception, it's the long term memory forming a predictive model of reality around us and using sensory perception to ground those predictions into a coherent experience of time and space. Short term memory is a form of RAM memory bridge that is constantly feeding experiences into long term memory to restructure it for better predictions. This process is energy intensive and sleep is a consolidation process where we essentially flush our RAM and organize the chaotic experience into a solid long term structure. This is why sleep deprivation leads to similar hallucinations and problems similar to taking drugs and alcohol.
It goes like this: Long term memory draws from previous memorized experiences to predict a construct model of reality - This construct is tested against the sum experience of sensory perception in our short term memory - The verified experience is stored in a temporal sequence in our short term memory - This sequence restructure and change the long term memory's "biases" and "weights" for the prediction model, and the process repeats.
This cycle is how we experience consistent reality. But the process is energy intensive and our short term memory is always operating in an "interfered mode" while we're awake, balancing the real-time processing and feeding long term memory sequences. When we sleep we decouple the verification from our sense perception and let the short term memory focus on streaming the sequences to long term memory formation. It's basically an optimized phase for neuroplasticity in order to update the prediction capabilities more broadly.
If we don't sleep we're constantly operating on this lower state ability to restructure long term memory and eventually are unable to construct a reliable model of reality around us, leading to hallucinations.
When we dream, it's our experience of this stream of sequences being consolidated into a restructuring of our predictive model. We experience our brain trying to predict reality based on the stream of sequences from our short term memory, but there's no sensory perception to ground that stream of experiences that's flushed out of our short term memory. So it predicts without solid footing and we experience this interplay between old and new memories as they're being consolidated into long term memories to later be used for future predictions when we wake up.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What is this "dreaming mind"? You're not describing an actual process here, just referring to some elusive conjecture called "the dreaming mind".
The reason we "believe" in the dream experience is the same reason why people believe in the hallucinations at a certain point using psychedelics. Psychosis is an intense such state where the one taking drugs fully believes in what is happening and getting an emotional reaction to it. We believe the dream experience because the verification process has nothing to do with verifying our awareness, it has to do with verifying the prediction.
Our awareness of what is real and what is not has nothing to do with the prediction and verification process. There's nothing that answers that the experience is truly real. If the verification process is scrambled or decoupled and we just experience the stream of disjointed experiences as our brain change neural structure, that becomes an experience as real as anything else.
We essentially believe what the sum of the process provides us. If we have verification of our prediction through sense perception, we believe this to be real. If we dream and the sense perception verification isn't there, we still believe in the sum of that experience.
The reason why drugs don't directly get us into a psychosis is because we've balanced the right amount to exist on the edge in which our predictions essentially predict the state of intoxication. We're predicting our experience of intoxication. But at a certain point, the amount of drugs we have in us disjoints the normal processing so much that our experience is altered by this scrambling of interplay between long term memory, short term memory and sense perception.
If going too far, we enter a state of psychosis in which we essentially dream while being awake and the experience can be so extreme that it scrambles what short term memory feeds into long term memory so much that we destroy our ability to predict correctly. It's what happens when someone gets a psychosis and never recovers from it, they essentially scrambled their prediction ability by restructuring their long term memory into a scrambled mess, which when trying to predict, does so in a way so far from what their sense perception feeds them that the process never aligns and sync up.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If your read what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying. Even though you're a bit off on the role of the sensory data (the sum experience of interplay between long term memory predictions and sensory data verifying it - is the thing that feeds the long term memory with alterations for how to predict the next moment), the concept is that without the sensory data to ground the prediction model, it can only use the short term memory's stored sequences from the last awaken state as its verification, which scrambles the experience as it's not raw data constantly grounding the predictions.
The only reason you can experience a changing experience, the sense of time in your dreams is if the brain operate its predictions. We cannot experience anything without predictions as its what produces our experience of time moving forward.
Although, an alternative interpretation could be that the time we experience in dreams is that of the processing of short term memory into long term memory - Essentially like having a solid block of both spatial and temporal data that when moved into long term memory forms an experience of time through that process. But this wouldn't really account for the behavior of dreams combining experiences of both present day and long term stored memories. That there's an interplay between new experiences we just had and memories we might consciously have forgotten about. The interplay between them is the brain looking for connections, neural paths that combine into a solid prediction before the next day.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You essentially counter-argue with the same conclusion I've already made. Which implies you don't really understand what I'm talking about. And you're not really explaining anything, you're saying an opinion and then use that to form a conclusion. You need actual science and theories behind what you conclude, not just what you agree or don't agree with, otherwise it's just opiniated conjecture.
I think you need to read up on predictive coding and what that implies for this topic. Otherwise you're getting lost in what I'm talking about.
Here's a summery from wiki:
Quoting Wiki
Perceptions require external objects, and the state of consciousness. Imaginations can happen with no external objects in the real world. When imagination happens from past memories or subconsious desires with no consciousness (while asleep), they are dreams.
I don't think that the conscious mind has such a causal power at all. The conscious mind owes all its experiences to the subconscious mind. It has very limited memory so-called working memory. It can only work on a very limited scope because it does not have access to the memories that are stored in the subconscious mind. It is also not necessary to have access to all memory when it comes to a topic that is the subject of focus. When the conscious mind focuses on a topic it requires the related knowledge of what is experienced in the past. This knowledge is registered in the subconscious mind's memory. The conscious mind does not have direct access to this memory and this memory is delivered to the conscious mind by the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you have access to all your memory at once? Sure not. A specific memory just pops into your conscious mind and this is due to the subconscious mind delivering this memory to you. Anyhow I was commenting on people who have memories of their past lives. I was arguing that such memory is not stored in the brain since such individuals do not own the same body. So I don't understand how your comment is related to what I was arguing.
I explained to you why "verification" is irrelevant.
Quoting Christoffer
No, I do not have to provide something else. I demonstrated logically, from sound premises, why your "predictive coding theory" is false in its application to dreams. There is no need for me to provide an alternative. In fact, the reason for starting this thread, was to ask others for theories. I simply reject yours, for the reasons given.
Quoting Christoffer
Unless there is something experienced as "the past", there is no grounds for any prediction of "the future". Anything predicted of the future must be derived from something already experienced of the past. When you say that predictions are based on the flow of memories you admit to this. So unless you provide another source for memories, you have not any principles to deny that prediction is based in, and requires sensation.
Quoting Christoffer
You have provided no principles to support this speculation that the purpose of this "memory bridge" is "better predictions". You simply assume "prediction" as your principle, and you see that this "bridge" could produce better predictions, so you conclude therefore it's purpose is better predictions. That is not a valid conclusion.
Quoting Christoffer
This makes no sense at all. If there is no sensory perception then there is no short term memory. Therefore the "stream of sequences" within a dream, when there is no sensory perception, is not "from our short term memory". It's very clear, from what a dream actually is, often involving relations from the distant past, that a dream is not a "stream of sequences from our short term memory". And since it is clearly not short term memories involved in a dream, it is equally ridiculous to claim that a dream is some sort of predictive process.
Quoting Christoffer
The "dreaming mind" is a mind which is dreaming. Have you never actually had a dream before? If you have, then I'm sure you've experienced your mind to be dreaming, and you know exactly what I mean by "the dreaming mind".
Quoting Christoffer
Then why present me with this theory of prediction and verification, if it has no bearing on what is expressed in the op? Are you admitting that your prediction theory is irrelevant here?
Quoting Christoffer
This is clear evidence that your prediction model is incapable of accurately representing the reality of the situation. First, there is no separation between sensory data and short term memory, as. Sensory data is short term memory, as the thing sensed is in the past by the time sensation of it is recognized. So, without sensory data (short term memory) the mind must rely on long term memory. This is why dreams often consist of long ago acquaintances. Next, long term memory does not predict the next moment. That's nonsensical, the next moment must be predicted from the last moment, i.e. short term memory. Finally, when we visit long term memories we are reflecting, or trying to learn some general principles, we are not predicting. Predicting is when we apply such principles.
So the dreaming mind, which is drawing on the long term memory, because the short term is incapacitated by sleep, is not predicting at all. Let me present you with an example, my childhood recurring dream of falling. My dreams would progress through many stages, until they'd reach the point when I am falling. Then, with the "prediction" of hitting the ground, I would wake up instantaneously. Waking up was simultaneous with predicting. So we can see that there was no predicting within the dream itself, and the occurrence of prediction coincided with waking up, as being a feature of the mind in its awake condition, not its dreaming condition.
Quoting Christoffer
I do not think that this is representative of common dreaming at all. My dreams practically never have present day experiences within them. They are almost always completely removed and distinct from what I was doing that day, having no relationship to that whatsoever.
Quoting Christoffer
Again, all I need to show is the evidence to support my premises, and logic, which demonstrates that your predictive coding theory is not applicable to dreams. Then I have a sound conclusion, and I need no science, or other theories, because I have sound premises and valid logic.
Quoting Christoffer
As I said last post, I have no problem recognizing the importance of prediction in the workings of the mind. However, for the reason explained, and the logical argument I presented, I believe that Predictive coding is not applicable to the dreaming mind (activity of a mind in the dreaming condition).
I think that what is misleading you is that predictive coding is somewhat applicable to a mind under the influence of hallucinogens, and you seem to think that hallucinating is the same as dreaming. This is why I was very quick to tell you that being under the influence of psychedelics is completely different from being asleep and dreaming.
Quoting MoK
Then how would you account for the difference between awake experiences, and dream experiences? If each is the subconscious presenting experience to the conscious, in the exact same way, why is there a difference between the two? We can't simply say that the senses are active in one case, and inactive in the other, because we need to account for whatever it is which activates the senses. The senses do noy activate themselves. Nor does it appear like the subconscious activates the senses, or else they would be activated in dreams. But in most cases, when a sense is activated (a loud sound for instance), it coincides with waking up.
The difference is that when a person is awake, his conscious mind experiences a simulation of reality that is the result of sensory inputs -- he also experiences thoughts, feelings, etc., whereas when he is asleep, he only experiences a simulation constructed by the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The difference between the two is that the conscious mind can only function properly when a person is awake, while the subconscious mind is always active. The conscious mind is also responsible for creating new thoughts based on what it perceives from the subconscious mind. These new thoughts then are registered in the subconscious mind's memory for further analysis in the future.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Becoming awake is partly due to senses (from Google): People wake up at a certain time in the morning primarily due to their "circadian rhythm," which is essentially the body's internal clock located in the brain's hypothalamus, that regulates sleep-wake cycles by releasing hormones like melatonin based on light exposure, causing us to feel sleepy at night and alert in the morning when light hits our eyes; essentially signaling the body to wake up.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I mentioned, the subconscious mind is always active otherwise it could not construct dreams.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct.
This does not address the problem. You said: "The conscious mind owes all its experiences to the subconscious mind". This implies that in both dreaming and awake, the consciousness "only experiences a simulation constructed by the subconscious mind".
Now you have simply asserted that in the awake condition the simulation is the result of sensory inputs, thoughts and feelings. But these are things experienced in the consciousness. And, you have in no way answered my question, which was how do you account for this difference. If the conscious mind owes all of its experiences to the subconscious, why, and how, would the subconscious be creating these two very distinct types of experience for the consciousness, the asleep experience, and the awake experience?
Quoting MoK
You are being inconsistent. If the consciousness owes all of its experience to the subconscious, as you claim, then it is inconsistent to say that the conscious mind can create something itself (new thoughts). And if we allow that the conscious mind has such a creative capacity, then we need principles to distinguish between what is created by the conscious and what is created by the subconscious. Without such principles, one could argue, as Cartesian skeptics do, that everything supposedly presented from the subconscious, along with sense data, are a creation of the conscious.
Quoting MoK
I don't understand what you are saying. You explain the circadian rhythm as something completely independent from the senses, yet you claim that being awake is partly due to the senses.
Quoting MoK
Again, this doesn't address the issue, which is the following. If the subconscious is always active, therefore always providing something for the consciousness, why would it at sometimes provide sense data, and at other times not? If things are as you say, that the subconscious is always in complete control over what the consciousness receives, and the consciousness has no causal influence over this, then how does the subconscious turn off and on the sense input, when it appears to be the opposite, because it is actually the consciousness which goes to sleep and wakes up? Since the consciousness is what goes to sleep and wakes up, it appears obvious that the consciousness itself turns off and on the sense data.
I should have said: The conscious mind owes most of its experiences to the subconscious mind". This is now an accurate statement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't know the purpose of dreams. There is however a collaboration between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind and that is necessary. The conscious mind is fast but it has access to its memory which is very limited. The conscious mind works on its memory and can produce a thought for example if that is possible. When the thought is produced as a result of the work of the conscious mind then there is nothing to work on anymore so the conscious mind stays silent unless it receives the new input from the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct. Please see my first comment and thanks for your comment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct. The conscious mind has the capacity to create thoughts when the person is awake. The subconscious mind can also create thought and it is intelligent as well but the most of thoughts are created by the conscious mind. The subconscious mind is intelligent because it knows what sort of input the conscious mind requires when the conscious mind focuses on a topic. The subconscious mind can create thoughts as well. It occurred to me on several occasions in my life that I was thinking about something very hard without reaching a conclusion. An idea then just popped up into my conscious mind when I was resting and the idea was very enlightening for what I was thinking. I think that such ideas are created by the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think I have discussed the responsibilities of the conscious and subconscious mind to a good extent by now.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think it is both circadian rhythm and senses that are involved when we become awake.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because the conscious mind needs to rest for a period of time, what we call sleeping.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The conscious mind has control over things, such as the creation of thoughts, decisions, etc. when the person is awake.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The conscious mind does not receive any sense data when the person is asleep. It however receives hallucinations so-called dreams when the person is asleep. The situation is different when the person is awake.
But you provide no support for that explanation. I'm referring to predictive coding which has experimental verification.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"My" predictive coding theory? Sorry, but if you're to reject an actual scientific theory that has experimental proof behind it, then I'm sorry, but you're not operating on a level enough for critical thinking around this subject.
If you are to object to it, provide references to other experimental data and theories that criticize it. There are some that do this, all thought today they're in a minority due to the experimental evidence backing predictive coding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is just you being confused about what I'm talking about. It seems you're inventing some odd interpretation of what I wrote and try to argue against it.
Predictions are based on past experiences, that's what I'm saying, but these predictions are similar to generative computation in which the generated predictions are chaotic and filled with errors. Sense data grounds this and verifies it in real-time.
If you cared to engage with the actual science of predictive coding you would understand this, but you seem to ignore it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's based on how memory consolidation operate within the framework of predictive coding.
What theories are you basing your arguments on? I see no references for your rejections and conclusions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Short term memory is not just a logic-gate, it's a RAM storage, it holds experiences in short term. If you shut off the flow of sensory data, it still holds experiences in memory until its flushed into long term memory based on biases rooted in emotional values around these experiences. Higher emotional values attached to certain experiences increases their importance to become solid neuro-pathways as long term memory.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, you are using "the dreaming mind" as a elemental object in your rhetoric as if it was an object in support of your conclusions. The "dreaming mind" means nothing without the facts on how it operates and function and why we dream in the first place. I'm speaking of the mechanics behind it, which then informs the reason why we experience the belief in our dreams as they happen. You can't just say "the dreaming mind" as some illusive part of your argument and ignore the reasons why we dream.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because it is part of understanding why it happens. When sensory verification gets cut off, people still believe the reality that is scrambled in their experience. Because there's no other system in the mind that operates as a form of separate perception of the experience able to deduce its validity or not, it's a holistic system in which the distortion of reality and the belief in that reality depends on how well the whole system is able to operate. A gradual process that at a certain point of distortion, distorts the whole process and in turn the ability to discern what's real and what's not based on our experience of verified reality.
It's hard to explain this when you seem to get lost in even the most basic explanation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For the second time, it's not "my" theory, it's a scientific theory with experimental evidence. Look it up before getting more confused about this. If you ignore engaging with the actual science on this subject, there's no point in arguing anymore as you're stuck in a bubble of your own thinking and biases.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why are you interpreting things like this? I never said there's some separation or that short term memory doesn't store sense data. But it stores not just sense data, it stores the experience of sense data verifying the predicted reality by the brain, it's the sum that's being stored.
I don't know why you don't understand this and then believe it's an objection to past "things" stored in short term memory? You seem to get confused and then construct some weird strawman that you then argues against. It's not even a simplistic interpretation of what I'm saying, it's just a confused scramble of my argument. It's weird.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No... ugh...
Short term memory stores the sum experience in the short term, which is then consolidated (Memory consolidation) into long term memory which is the sum of all our experiences using biases as "weights" for predicting reality. While this process is constantly happening, it's when we sleep that we consolidate and flush our short term memory and produce stronger neurological pathways.
The brain does not operate well in plasticity when we are awake due to how much energy is used for navigating reality. When we sleep is when plasticity is working optimally.
Predictive operation happens through the interplay between short term memory, long term memory and sense verification. Cutting out one of these out or distort it, will scramble the entire process, making the experience jarring for us, as we experience in hallucinations and dreams.
I can even argue that the reason we even experience dreams may be because the brain is testing the emotional response of the information in order to figure out the bias value of its importance before storing it in long term memory.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, what you experience is the brain attaching new experiences to older ones through neuro-pathways. Your recent experiences require context to be stored as comprehensive information in the long term memory and for the predictions to function correctly. These things develop from when we were born. As infants, they can't recognize objects in the same way as older children. Because they're developing this pool of information that is used to predict moments in time and for the brain to interpret experiences correctly. As their brains develop, the neuro-pathways forms into better and better predictive models until they start to operate on an advanced ability to predict.
It's why infants believe their parents are gone when they hold their hands in front of their faces. They are still unable to predict the outcome of the disappearing parent. They cannot predict the parent being behind an object (hands) and they can't predict that when the hands are moved away, they will see their parent again.
And as this process is constantly changing our brain, it goes fast, exponential, experiences in long term memory gets more and more complicated and the ability to navigate reality and perform complex tasks increase with time. After a few years, we're highly advanced in this regard, to the point we have problems quantifying how it all works. Which is why the brain and mind is such a hard subject to study. It's not just how the object operate at the moment, it's how it developed that informs the totality of its operation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are thinking about yourself as being attached from your own mechanics and functions. There's no "we" who visit long term memories. There's no agency in these processes that is attached, the process is us.
This is the problem with people who don't understand the neuroscience of the brain and mind, and the psychology of it. You believe these functions are some separate part of your mind in which your "identity" interact with it. It's what I refer to as the "arrogance of man", in which we as humans constantly elevates our own perspective and existence above everything else before judging or evaluating it. It's the reason why people become religious through the reasoning that we humans are somehow separate from nature and the universe, something higher and above it all. It's an arrogant perspective that ignores the simple truth that ALL science about us constantly verifies... that we're the products of reality and nature and can only operate as part of this system.
You do not visit long term memory. It's not a damn book store.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Wrong, memory consolidation and the processes of the mind are proven to be "on" even when we sleep. You are denying the science here, making shit up to support your own ideas.
It's even written as the first sentence on the general page about sleep itself:
Quoting Wiki
And since the consolidation process is the process of short term memory going into long term memory, how can you say that short term memory is "off". Like, what more sources and support for what I say do you need before accepting it?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Anecdotal evidence... jeez, philosophy 101. Your experience is not evidence and proof of what you say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Predictive coding at its core is not about you "consciously" predicting anything. What does this have to do with predictive coding? You're just confused. I recommend you read up on what you're arguing against before making up odd interpretations of what the prediction aspect is about.
And you're still placing yourself in detachement from the functions that make up the "you".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's not how it works. And you're still using your own dreams as anecdotal evidence. Come on!
People barely remember all their dreams, or all aspects of them. They're an unclear mess in which some aspects are remembered more than others. The problem with your anecdotal evidence experience of your own dreams is that the process merge recent and old memories. It can be visually a memory of the distant past, but the situation is linked to what recently happened. But the problem here is that you use your own interpretation of your own memories as a foundation for an entire conclusion about how the mind works.
Why don't you read up on actual sleep science and neuroscience instead? You can't use just yourself and your experiences to form a conclusion, that's like the most basic type of failure of philosophical reasoning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, you have not presented a logical conclusion. You have no scientific sources, you have not even addressed the most basic science on sleep and how the mind works. You use anecdotal evidence and circular reasoning in which you make a line of assumptions to fit your conclusion.
That's not even close to logical reasoning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your belief is irrelevant when the science says otherwise. And your belief is not enough for a conclusion, it's just you demanding that others accept your fantasy concept based on your personal anecdotal experience of dreaming. This is not philosophy or science, it's just nonsense.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, as I repeatably have been saying, hallucinations and being under the influence, inflicts a disruption to the interplay in predictive coding, primarily sense perception verification, which makes our brain predicting unreliable and producing distortions to our experience. It is similar to how when we dream, there's also not a fully operating predictive coding function, which leads to the brain unable to predict the temporal experience of the process of memory consolidation as it sifts through it into long term memory.
You obviously don't seem to understand the basics of what I'm talking about here, which leads to you being confused about what is different between hallucinations when awake and dreams when asleep. It doesn't matter if I tell you over and over, if you don't understand the basic concept your don't understand what differs between the two and what is similar.
Fundamentally, you ignore the science behind all of this. My argument is based on memory consolidation, predictive coding and furthermore the Bayesian approach. All which are fundamental in the most up to date explanation of how the brain works. Drawing on these, forming a holistic theory of what happens when the chain of operation is disrupted, either through chemical psychedelics and when we sleep. Your argument, however, is based on wild speculations derived from anecdotal evidence that isn't even evidence for anything you conclude.
Case closed.
Now, all you need to do is notice that the conscious mind has some causal power over the subconscious, and we'd be in agreement. From this agreement we could proceed to discuss the effect of this causal power, and the extent of it. Would you agree that what we call "will power" is an example of this causal power.
Quoting MoK
How do you know that this is not just an automatic type of action, like a computer? Maybe the conscious indicates to the subconscious what to do, and the subconscious does it, like machine. You say that the conscious mind's access to memories is limited, and that's obvious from the fact that memory is not perfect, and degrades with time, but I think that this is generally a degradation of the subconscious part.
Quoting MoK
This is obvious, in dreams, and that is the point of the op. It is the subconscious which creates those thoughts. And we must call them "thoughts", because they are not memories, but imaginative fictional experiences. But what I was arguing, is that in these instances where the subconscious is "thinking", without being directed by the conscious, the thoughts are very random and not logically consistent.
But I do not agree that you could have been "thinking about something very hard" with only the subconscious part of your mind, because "very hard" implies conscious effort. And whether you reached a conclusion or not is irrelevant to whether you were thinking consciously or subconsciously.
Quoting MoK
Dreams are not hallucinations. The two are completely different because the hallucinating person is awake. There my be a blurred boundary between the two, such as when the hallucinating person passes out, or goes into a coma. Also, the lucid dreaming discussed earlier takes advantage of a similar blurred boundary between sleeping and being awake.
Quoting Christoffer
I provided you a very good argument demonstrating that dreaming cannot possibly be a predictive process. This leaves verification, which is related to predictive process, as totally irrelevant. That was my support.
Quoting Christoffer
So-called "scientific theory" is rejected when it is not consistent with empirical evidence. That is the nature of one form of critical thinking.
Quoting Christoffer
I've provided you the argument which eliminates the possibility that dreaming is a predictive process. To reiterate, a "prediction" consists of extending the immediate past into the future, to predict what will happen. Without any sense data there is no immediate past upon which to base a prediction for the future, therefore prediction is impossible. A dream is not a predictive process. "Predictive process" theory applies only to a brain which is actively sensing
Further, I provided personal evidence, of when I have dreamed about falling. In these dreams I awaken at the precise instance that prediction enters the experience. These dreams flow by, as experience at the present, with absolutely no predictive process, and when I start falling, the awakening is simultaneous with the prediction of hitting the ground. This clearly indicates to me, that prediction is a part of the awake mind, but not a part of the dreaming mind. That is my "experimental data".
Quoting Christoffer
It seems that you have no rigorous criteria for what constitutes a "prediction". For you, a random generation would qualify as a prediction. And then instead of recognizing that a specific type of thinking is not a form of prediction at all, you look at that form of thinking which is not a form of prediction, as a prediction which is "chaotic and filled with errors". This is just sophistry, which allows you to include into a category, things which are not of that category at all, by saying that they are erroneous aspects of that category.
My "experimental data", explained above, demonstrates that prediction is actually excluded from the dreaming process. Whenever prediction attempts to infiltrate the dreaming process, the dreaming person is plunged into awakeness. This shows that the dream is not a prediction which is chaotic and filled with errors due to a lack of data from past experience. The dream actually consists of an exclusion of the predictive process. When prediction tries to force its way into the dream, the dreamer awakens.
And, when you look at the dream from the premise that thinking is fundamentally a predictive process, the dream appears to consist of predictions which are chaotic and filled with errors. But that's simply because the dream is not a predictive process, and the premise that thinking is fundamentally a predictive process is therefore proven to be false.
Quoting Christoffer
It is you who is making "the dreaming mind" into an elemental object, through your false premise. You premise that thinking is fundamentally a predictive process, and then you view all mental activity from this perspective. This gives you a significantly biased perspective.
Instead of viewing predictive capacity as a higher aspect proper only to a highly developed consciousness, with a highly developed intellectual capacity, you view predictive capacity as a fundamental aspect of any form of thinking. So when you look at the more base aspects of thinking, such as those demonstrated by dreaming, you improperly impose this highly developed aspect, predictive capacity, onto that base aspect, and conclude that the base aspect is carrying out the higher aspect to a lesser degree, which is chaotic and full of error. This robs you of the ability to properly understand the base capacity, for what it really is, and how it allowed for the development of the higher capacity, because all you can see is a lack of the higher capacity (chaotic and filled with errors), and you have no principles by which to understand what the base capacity really is.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree that this is hard for you to explain to me. Your false premise makes "verification" irrelevant. So you'll never get through to me in this way. It's like you are saying that you can explain how the different shades of red are different degrees of sweetness, and you are going on about these different shades of sweetness, when I am insisting that your basic premise, "red is sweet" is false.
That's what I'm doing, I'm claiming that your basic premise "thinking is a predictive process" is false. So you'll never get through to me by talking about verification, because I've already excluded verification as irrelevant by denying your basic premise.
Quoting Christoffer
It is your theory. You have adopted it, and support it. Therefore it is your theory, and it forms your bias, regardless of who invented it.
Quoting Christoffer
OK, let's look at this. Would you agree, that when we sleep, and we "consolidate and flush our short term memory and produce stronger neurological pathways", that this is not a predictive process? If so, then why would you think that dreaming, which is also what occurs when we sleep, is a predictive process?
Quoting Christoffer
This is completely wrong, and misrepresentative. You are just making it up.
If "predictive operation" requires three aspects, and one of them is removed, then we no longer have "predictive operation". That is simple logic. If three parts are required to make a specific whole, and one is missing, then we do not have that specific whole. Taking one part out does not "scramble the entire process", it denies the possibility of that process.
Quoting Christoffer
It appears like you are so wrapped up in your pseudo-science, and deceptive false premises, that you do not even consider your own personal experiences, and how they would easily refute what you appear to believe. When I want to think about something which occurred years ago, I "visit long term memory", just like if it was a conveniently located book store.
Quoting Christoffer
This demonstrates clearly what your problem is. You characterize "the processes of the mind" as fundamentally predictive, and you take this as a primary premise. Then you admit evidence which demonstrates that the mind is active even when we are asleep. But instead of admitting the evidence which demonstrates that the activity while asleep is not predictive, thereby disproving your primary premise, you wrongly assert that the activity while one is asleep is predictive.
Quoting Christoffer
If experience is not evidence then you are not doing science. This is more evidence that what you present is pseudo-science.
Quoting Christoffer
Quoting Christoffer
I think it's you who needs to read up on "predictive coding". You are wrongly applying the science of the neurological activity which depends on sense perception (awake), to the neurological activity which occurs without sense perception (asleep). This has gotten you totally confused.
Quoting Christoffer
Personal experience is irrelevant to you, because you are a pseudo-scientist. A true scientist knows that verification relies on experience.
Quoting Christoffer
Maybe we can get somewhere if you'll seriously consider this statement of yours. What do you think constitutes this "disruption"? Since predictive coding requires sense perception, difficulties in sense perception, evidenced as hallucinations, are responsible for the stated unreliability. Now, I ask you to remove all sense perception, like in the case of sleeping. Do you not see that there is no predictive coding at all? Therefore dreaming cannot be described by predictive coding theory.
Quoting Christoffer
What I ignore is the pseudo-science which you are professing.
Quoting Christoffer
I am waiting for you to respect the fact that when the disruption is complete, as in the case of sleeping, the operation, which is the predictive coding process, no longer occurs. Therefore we cannot apply predictive coding theory to the dreaming mind.
An argument needs support in evidence, otherwise an argument is just an opinion. It doesn't matter how logical it seems if its relying on conjecture as its support. It becomes a fallacy with you being biased towards your own conclusion. You believe you are right and therefore conclude yourself to be.
And this is the core problem with how you tackle this topic. You believe yourself to be in the right and therefore every answer following it just use that belief as its support, without you ever questioning your own logic as its entangled in that fallacy from the beginning.
You reject the actual science because it doesn't align with what you believe and therefore you believe that your own argument is more accurate than an argument based in the actual science. It's impossible to argue with someone who is so fundamentally entrenched in their own belief.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, a scientific theory is a scientific fact. When new evidence is found to contradict it that doesn't mean its wrong, it means not all aspects of it is complete. It makes it an incomplete theory that requires additional parameters to explain it fully. The empirical evidence that proved the initial theory doesn't disappear just because new evidence demands a new perspective or further explanation.
Science isn't about theories being thrown in the trash can and replaced, science is a malleable shape that attempts to shape itself as close to reality as possible. Any new evidence slightly adjusts the shape to be better at predicting reality. Amateurs and non-scientists believe that science is about theories being thrown in trash cans and new ones built from scratch. That's not how science works.
And what empirical evidence do you have that rejects predictive coding? Your own beliefs again? Your own dreams? Your statement that your logic is sound, regardless of that logic being built upon your belief?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No you didn't. You ignore the science and demand that I accept your argument as valid, without you actually having the support for a deductive conclusion.
This is the main problem, you just try to demand people to accept that you provided a logical argument, you haven't proven a single thing as you don't have anything from which your logic is built upon.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You don't understand what predictive coding is and how it works. You invent your own interpretation of it and then argue against it. This is an "iron man fallacy", similar to strawman, but instead of intentionally distorting my argument, you simply don't understand what I'm talking about and starts to argue against your own misinterpretation.
You invented the idea that sense data is the root for predictions. It's not, it's what grounds predictions. This is a key point in predictive coding and you just ignore it. It's the stored memories that is the foundation for predictions. Actions are taken based on predictions out of long term memory, then verified and grounded by sense data to form a coherent action. Without the sense data, or with distorted sense data, predictions can still be made, but without grounding, they aren't aligned to a temporal and spatial experience, they start to free-flow. If sense data is totally cut off, the brain starts to predict things and only getting verification from its own source for those predictions, creating a form of feedback loop. If sense perception is limited or distorted, the distorted sense data becomes the verification alignment, distorting the predictions, hence, hallucinations. It's why people in sense deprivation tanks experience hallucinations as it's a perfect condition to lower and limit sense perception to a minimum, within a state of being awake.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That you don't even understand why this is the reason you fail your argument is rather astounding. It's like you don't even know the basics of philosophical rigor. Your personal evidence is not enough to support your logic, nor to even come close to rejecting an actual scientific theory... I mean, come on, what the fuck is this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Experimental data requires thousands of repetitions to reach the experimental value needed to be considered a source for a theory. If you want me to laugh, you did.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What are you talking about? You're so lost in all this. That predictive process is a fundamental aspect of thinking is not "my" premise, it's a scientific theory that you reject because you don't agree with it. And then you raise the issue of being biased while you rely on your own experience as a single anecdotal evidence.... the irony of this seems too complex for you. :lol:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't view it like this, the science verifies this. Stop ignoring the fact that you try to reshape the scientific theory into some unsupported belief I hold. You simply don't understand the science and strawman my argument into being built on belief. It's your argument that's built on belief.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What science are you drawing upon to make this counter-argument? Please provide the foundational knowledge behind your concept here. Because if you have actual scientific foundation that counters predictive coding, then we can talk. Otherwise you're just presenting bs trying to demand it to be taken seriously.
Where's your foundation? What are the corner stones of your logic? I mean, actual science and evidence? I presented you with the corner stones for my argument, you have the links in there. You provided nothing other than one example of your own dream, presented as experimental evidence.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not false, it's what the science says. Why the fuck are you so dense about this? Really, why are you so unable to understand that it's not some premise I make out of thin air. Are you so in love with your own theory that you have to distort your interpretation of someone else's argument this much in order to have a sense that you are in the right? You're showing signs of absolute delusion here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What the fuck are you talking about? Can you click on a link or is that too complex of an action for you?
Predictive coding
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you unable to read what I actually write? The whole argument is that a limitation or distortion in the predictive coding feedback loop, creates the experience of distorted reality and dreams. That's the concept here. That our brain is active during sleep is a scientific fact, you can look it up, but I guess you won't and will continue acting like a fool. And since the brain is active during sleep, so is the predictive coding process. The only difference is that one part of the feedback loop is distorted and subdued, mainly the sense perception, as its subdued by glycine and gamma-aminobutyric acid. And thus, the grounding of predictions is lost or subdued so much that predictions become unreliable, producing the surreal experience.
You simply seem to not understand what's actually written, or ignore it in order to form a strawman. Regardless, you fail.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You ignore a scientific theory, that I've linked to and provided further reading on, in order for your logic to work. That you don't see any problem with this is ridicules. I can't get through to you because you're stuck in your own echo chamber. You reject what I'm saying because it doesn't fit your opinions and ideas.
Simply put, you fail at both philosophy and science.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is pure nonsensical. How can anyone read this and not laugh?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We are constantly flushing short term memory into creating new neuro-pathways, not just when we sleep. But the energy conservation to focus on that process is better when we sleep, forming stronger connections through more careful consolidation. Our entire being is being driven by predictive coding, it's always on, regardless of sleeping or being awake.
Why don't you read about the science first?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
On what basis do you form that conclusion? In what way does not the science support what I say? Please provide that in order to reject it, your opinion of it is totally irrelevant.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Does the other parts stop operating on their own principles because one of the parts is limited or stops working? If you have a car that is driving at 100 km/h and you decouple the engine through the clutch, does the car immediately stop? Of course not, the wheels function is being a wheel and doing what wheels do.
A system of individual parts operating with each other does not mean that if one of the systems fails then all other systems immediately fail as well. If your liver fails, then you don't just die instantly, the body tries to continue operating based on the new conditions you're in.
The "predictive operation" is the operational mode in which all three functions normally, what constitutes your experience being awake and navigating through reality. If you distort one of the systems, the experience will alter, but it wouldn't shut off the entire system.
This is the simple logic you fail to understand. Primarily because you ignore looking up the science I'm referring to.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Predictive coding is not pseudo science. That you talk like this while not understanding that your own logic is based on your own personal experiences is remarkably stupid.
You're just trying to create a framework about my argument that fits your own opinion. You don't understand the science, so you don't agree with me and therefor you construct this false narrative of my argument being fallacious, biased and pseudo-science in order to be in the right.
This is a complete failure of reasoning that you are totally blind towards.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your experience of remembering is not the same as the physical function of long term memory. Your experience is more or less the byproduct of the function, it is not the function itself. You're debating on a six-year old level here, in which your basis of logic is your personal experience.
Do you even understand what anecdotal evidence is? And why it is a fallacy? Do you even grasp the basics of why such use of personal experiences is considered wrong to be used in critical thinking? It's like you use words like bias, critical thinking, theory, argument etc. without even understanding the meaning behind the words. An absolute confused mess.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Stop acting like you know what you're talking about when you don't even read the initial segment of the text:
Quoting Wiki
A) Predicting the inputs - B) compare signals to the predictions.
This aligns and grounds the experience and actions we do. If sense information is disrupted or cut off, the mental model is still trying to predict, but getting no input signals and when comparing, is biased towards the prediction. Since this is then feeded back into the next temporal moment, the prediction basically only have its own previous prediction as the source for the new prediction, gradually distorting reality and our experience. When you sleep, you subdue sense input data, but the brain is still operating in its other systems.
So no, stop trying to turn the tables and say that I need to read up on it. You need to engage with the science, because its YOU who are driving a pseudo-science argument.
The proof is in the pudding of your reasoning. Just saying that the opposing side is doing pseudoscience or being bias or not read up on something does not make it so. However, the way your reason proves you're the one doing it.
It's rather desperate of you to try and frame my argument by attacking it with such labels in order to try and discredit it. But it's so blatantly obvious how limited you are in rational reasoning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you actually stupid? Or just so uneducated to what science is and how ti works? Do you not know what Replication, Iterative experimentation and Reproducibility is? Do you understand concepts like Empirical validation, Objective inquiry, Falsifiability, Controlled experimentation, Inter-subjective verification and Meta-studies?
Find ANY source that support your interpretation of how science works. Like, try it, try and blast me with some irrefutable source of information that is common knowledge and support the idea that a personal experience by a single person is enough to verify a scientific conclusion that this very same person is arguing for, and also reject an already empirically verified theory. Like, are you so dense that you don't even understand that your type of reasoning is the very foundation for what pseudo-science is? The text-book answer on it?
Are you for real?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, a true scientist knows that verification relies on reproducibility and prediction, on empirical validation, on objective inquiry and meta-studies to further verify and remove eventual biases.
You are trying to force a narrative that you are the only one looking at things scientifically, while saying what science "is" that is totally at odds with what science actually is.
Like, it's crystal clear how you fail at this and how far up your own ass you are. A delusion of grandeur in which everyone who don't agree with your opinion is a pseudo-scientist, to the point you actually try to redefine what science is to support your stance. It's absolutely stupid.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We can't get anywhere because you are not educated enough on the topic, you ignore educating yourself further and you are stuck in an echo-chamber in which any opposing perspective are branded pseudo-science while you interpret what science is in order to fit your opinion, rather than testing your opinion against the science in order to find out if it is valid or not.
It's impossible to have a discussion with such a person, because any rational person and anyone with enough philosophical scrutiny will debate within a philosophical framework in order to get away from biases and beliefs. You're not doing this, you are doing the opposite of this and because of that, you're not doing philosophy or science.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Saying it over and over doesn't make it so. You ignore what doesn't fit in your echo chamber. I rely on what the science points towards. You simply have nothing in support of your confused argument, so you rely on trying to change the narrative of the discussion in order to sound like you are right.
But people aren't falling for it. The only one who seem to fall for it is yourself. Believing your own construct reality about the discussion itself. Who are you trying to fool? I see right through you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm waiting for you to provide any actual scientific sources for your argument. Since you're never doing it, and never engaging with the material so far provided in opposition to your argument, all I have is you trying to force your belief down my throat while telling me how the science is wrong, because you say so. :lol:
In conclusion, the only thing I can provide is a reflection on your failure, presented by John Cleese.
I think the conscious mind and the subconscious mind collaborate. For example, without a conscious mind, no new thought is possible but new thought requires a constant exchange of information between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. I think that even completing a sentence is not possible without this collaboration since the conscious mind has a very limited memory so-called working memory.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think that is the case. The subconscious mind is a part of the brain, that part is a neural net, therefore the subconscious mind is intelligent. I also think that all the memories stored in the subconscious mind are present to it at once otherwise we are dealing with a regress when we try to recall something.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The conscious mind's memory is very limited, so-called the working memory. From Google: "According to current research, the conscious mind's working memory size is generally considered to be around three to five items or "chunks" of information, meaning that you can actively hold and manipulate only a small amount of information in your conscious awareness at any given time." The rest of the memories are stored in the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All I can tell is that dream is constructed by the subconscious mind. It could be a supernatural phenomenon as well. Who knows!? Thinking to me, when we are awake is the byproduct of collaboration between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind as I illustrate above.
I provided the evidence. Were you not paying attention?
Quoting Christoffer
I have no problem with the science of predictive coding, I think it's fine in its application to the mental activity of an awake human being. But since an essential aspect of that theory is sensation, and this does not occur when we are asleep and dreaming, I reject, as pseudo-science, your attempt to apply the theory to dream activity.
Quoting Christoffer
The evidence is clear and obvious, sensing does not occur in the dream state. Further, sensing is an essential feature of predictive coding. Those two premises are well supported by evidence. Therefore the conclusion, that predictive coding is not applicable to dream activity is well supported by evidence.
Quoting Christoffer
Look, this is a direct quote from the link which you provided:
[quote=Wikipedia]In neuroscience, predictive coding (also known as predictive processing) is a theory of brain function which postulates that the brain is constantly generating and updating a "mental model" of the environment. According to the theory, such a mental model is used to predict input signals from the senses that are then compared with the actual input signals from those senses. Predictive coding is member of a wider set of theories that follow the Bayesian brain hypothesis.[/quote]
Notice that the "model is used to predict input signals from the senses that are then compared with the actual input signals from those senses." If you really believe that the theory has been scientifically proven to apply to the dream state, then please explain the science. And don't simply refer to supposed chaotic and erroneous predictions that occur without sense input. These chaotic and erroneous "predictions" are not predictions at all, but acts of creativity.
Quoting Christoffer
Are you familiar with theories of adversarial dreaming? Such theories use the concept of general adversarial networks, they focus on the creative capacity of dreams, and are completely distinct from predictive coding theory:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9071267
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38097096/
Quoting Christoffer
See above please.
Quoting Christoffer
According to your referenced material, the predictive coding process operates with the use of "signals from the senses", which are noticeably absent from the dreaming process. Therefore, predictive coding is absent from the brain process occurring during sleep.
Quoting Christoffer
See above please.
Quoting Christoffer
Sure, but the way you describe predictive coding all three parts are required for it, as essential aspects. If one part is missing, then the process cannot be called predictive coding. Clearly, "signals from the senses" is an essential aspect of predictive coding, which is missing from the dream activity. Therefore the dream activity cannot be represented as predictive coding.
Quoting Christoffer
This is not a case of distorting one of the systems, it is a case of one being absent. That's why I very intentionally stressed the point that hallucinating is not the same as dreaming, when you first engaged me.
Quoting Christoffer
If you are so convinced by "the science", then I assume you can produce the science which shows that the predictive coding model is applicable to brain activity which occurs, with no signals from the senses. I'll be waiting.
How could it be that all memories which a person has could be present to a mind (subconsciously) at the same time? Wouldn't this be amazingly confusing for that subconscious mind?
Quoting MoK
Do you think that the memories are actually "stored" in the subconscious? Or is it a subconscious activity which brings the memories to the attention of the conscious mind, and the memory itself is not actually stored anywhere?
I said that all memories stored in the subconscious mind are present to it at once. If not, then there must be many subconscious minds each knowing a certain memory at once. There are however two problems here which depend on how the memories are stored in the brain: 1) Either the memories are stored in different subconscious minds independently or 2) The memories are stored in different subconscious minds hierarchically, tree likes.
In (1), there are many memories that could be related or unrelated when it comes to a topic that is the subject of focus of the conscious mind. The unrelated memories then must be filtered by another mind otherwise the conscious mind cannot function when it focuses on a specific topic. Even if the memories are related to a topic, the conscious mind needs the most recent memory since it has very limited memory and it is not economical for the conscious mind to work on something that it already worked on so we again need another mind that filters the memories and just delivers the most recent memory to the conscious mind. So in both cases we need a new mind to filter the memories. But the memories are either present to this mind at once or this mind just receives memories one by one. In the first case we achieve my argument, I call this mind the subconscious mind that is conscious of all memories at once. In the second case, this mind has to wait and check all memories one by one to find out what is the proper memory among all memories. This task if not impossible is very time-consuming since this mind receives more and more memories as time passes because we learn new things. The conscious mind however receives the proper memory very quickly therefore the second case cannot be true.
In (2), although the memories are stored hierarchically we still need a mind to go through all the memories that are stored in subconscious minds and look for the proper information that is needed. This approach, (2) however is more economical than (1) but it is time consuming. People read many books and they know the contents of books. When they are asked about something that is related to a passage in a book, they right away remember the proper book and the proper passage. Therefore, there must be a subconscious mind that is aware of the memories at once.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not at all. We cannot function very quickly at all otherwise. Please see above.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The memories are mainly stored in a part of the brain, what I call the subconscious mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The process of recalling is a subconscious activity.
No, you provided anecdotal evidence, your personal experience. If you do not understand why this doesn't work, then you do not understand the basics of critical thinking or how science works. It's as simple as that.
What is the point in trying to explain anything to someone who have such a bad understanding of scientific scrutiny? You're not even able to understand the basics of the process, yet try to operate within the parameters of it. It becomes impossible to even show you why you are wrong, where you are wrong and how, because the explanation of it demands that you understand the basics of it in the first place. An understanding that has been proven non-existent over and over now by the sheer level of the response you give. The constant rejection of critique by trying to forcibly turn the table and say the same thing back without the same critique even applying in the other direction. Like how you reject the critique of not engaging with the scientific sources of information by just saying "maybe you should read more about it", as if that applies back at a person who formulated their entire argument out of this science, who's already read enough about it to do so.
It's a display of fundamental stupidity and bias, by the very definition of Dunning Kruger and the psychological display of denial that such a person express when not able to actually address criticism. You're so proud of your argument that you are unable to process any critique it gets and so you fall back on a childish defense with "YOU TOO!" arguments.
It's impossible to engage with such a person about their argument or ideas, because you are only interested in yes-men around them. You're interested in getting praise for it, positive reviews. But philosophy is just as much about forming a good argument as it is to deconstruct and rework a faulty one. Since we cannot ignore science when talking about this topic, there are major gaping holes in your logic and ideas that you ignoring them in the way you do just makes you look like a fool.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Or, you're just ignorant and don't engage with the actual scientific material specifically mentioning predictive coding functioning during sleep and dreaming, in the exact way I've been describing having disruptions due to the subdued or cut off sensory inputs which normally grounds the predictions, leading to the surreal experience of dreams:
Quoting Karl Friston
Quoting Lisa Reisinger
Quoting Péter Simor, Tamás Bogdány and Philippe Peigneux
That last one dives into predictive coding and dreaming, in clear support of what I say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You aren't just calling what I argue about, pseudo-science, you actively point at these studies I've referenced and the science overall, calling it pseudo-science.
This is why I conclude you're just trying to bullshit your way out of this. Without realizing how you look while doing so.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What fucking evidence are you talking about? And in what way does any evidence of that argue against what I'm saying? This is just bullshit rhetoric from someone believing their use of "therefore" is enough to make the appearance of an actual argument. This is below amateur understanding of philosophical scrutiny of how to formulate an argument. Using standard straw-man tactics to try and squeeze yourself out of the critique. Are you even aware that you're doing this? Or is John Cleese right about you?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it actively predict input signals... and because they're disrupted during sleep, the predictions become scrambled as they only rely on their own feedback. As mentioned above:
Quoting Péter Simor, Tamás Bogdány and Philippe Peigneux
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here's a comment posted on that same paper:
With further answer from the authors:
Meaning, it does not oppose predictive coding, not even during dreaming. Being distinct about a certain aspect of sleep and dreaming does not remove the underlying mechanisms causing it. Just because predictive coding is a large part of why the experience of dreaming is what it is, doesn't mean the system and operation is lacking complexity and this proposition is in addition to predictive coding, focused on the generative aspect of forming virtual sensations as virtual grounding.
It seems you were just skimming through in an attempt to oppose predictive coding, without realizing it doesn't oppose it at all but is a theory to explain a specific detail within the holistic topic of dreaming. It's in addition to current theories, not contradicting anything. All while still in need of follow-up due to the critique included on it. Thus, in comparison to the body of work on predictive coding, this part, is both being an addition as well not yet being fully verified outside computational simulations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The quote you refer to here is not in opposition to predictive coding. What I argue for is aligned with this; that when sleeping, sensory input is cut off, but the predictive operation continues, forming predictions from long term memory to test against experiences in our short term memory. The adversarial process is just a layer that grounds this experience through virtual sensations. And for imagination and creativity when we are awake, it's the same thing, a decoupling of sensory verification using virtual verification to direct predictions from merely operating on reality. Something that in this paper is postulated to also be a controllable aspect responsible for utilizing predictions while being awake against a construct in order to form mental imaging and imagination.
None of this is a rejection of predictive coding, it's just expanding on details.
But since you're not even grasping the basics of what I'm talking about, what's the point in going into depth? You can't even represent my argument correctly in the first place when trying to counter-argue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not supporting the conclusion you've made, it's rather expanding in depth the argument I've been making. So I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm constantly mentioning how the senses are cut off or scrambled and how it's this very fact that makes predictions unreliable and responsible for the surreal experience. I don't know why you don't get this simple fact and constantly try to change what I say to being that the process is relying on the senses and "have to include it". It's only relying on sense input for us to operating normally when we are awake through grounding the mental predictions. But I've said, numerous times, and it's the damn main point in my argument, that distortion of sense input or a complete lack of it scrambles the prediction ability; generating an experience we can either have as hallucinations or dreams. Just because the grounding data is distorted or gone doesn't mean the brain stops trying to predict in order to reach a state of normal operation.
What is so hard to understand here? Or are you unable to read what is actually written? Or intentionally or unintentionally ignoring things in order for your brain to maintain a sense of control over the narrative? You're not even displaying a basic understanding of what I write, or you're intentionally just straw-manning. And don't try and Tu quoque the situation with some additional made up misrepresentation as another layer, that would just solidify how pathetic this is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All three parts are essential for the normal operation when we are awake. They're essential for us to be grounded in reality in order to navigate it. Our eyes do not see any "framerate" like cameras do, they operate on very few samples from our visual sense and generating predictions in-between. This is the foundation for any visual illusion experiments you can find everywhere. It's our brain predicting what we see, "filling in" between samples images collected by our eyes and visual cortex. But this is just the basic level for our ability to see.
On a deeper level, it's not only filling in the image, but the context; your brain predicts actions and spatial constructs in order to be able to navigate in 3D space. That prediction of the larger context is formed out of long term memory which have been constantly updating its mental construct of reality since our birth. This means that the predictions made from our long term memory is extremely dense with information and constantly attempting to predict any possible outcome of every temporal sample of our surrounding reality.
When our sense data is scrambled through drugs, or during sleep, any predictions made have no temporal samples to ground predictions, so it grounds it in something else; the stored experiences in our short term memory as that's where our conscious experience has been stored when awake. But since memory isn't a one-to-one representation of reality in the way sense data produces, the predictions become distorted, entangled in the memory consolidation process. While still in debate, the adversarial process may subsequently also be part of attempting to ground this experience with a virtual construct grounding the experience of these short term to long term consolidations.
That you say that it can't be called predictive coding if one part isn't working, is just some odd straw-man attempt to render the theory invalid because what exactly? The theory itself describes what happens when parts of the chain is missing or disrupted. How does this make it unable to be called predictive coding? It doesn't even make sense as a bad straw-man response. I'm trying to wrap my head around how lost you get in your own rhetoric.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, that is you interpreting it in a straw-man fashion. I've constantly mentioned one part of the system being either "distorted" or "cut off". With clear references to "distorted" being what happens with hallucinations as they're not cutting off sense input completely, rather distorting them and thus scrambles the predictions based on unreliable sense inputs. While when we sleep they're cut off or effectively subdued, and predictions must rely on something else for grounding.
It's you who straw-man my argument into leaving out the the crucial parts of my argument in order to counter it. Who are you trying to fool here? Just go back and read again and stop waste my time with these obvious misrepresentations of my argument.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I did... it's in the reading material provided and there's enough online for you to engage with. It's not my problem that you either can't understand it, don't care to actually read, or both. Normal people do some googling and research on their own if they aren't up to date on certain sciences, but your inability or active decision to not do it seems to reflect the actual reason behind why you're arguing like this; mainly to defend your ill-concieved ideas through the use of glaringly obvious fallacies in your rhetoric, in the hope they will obscure the problems with your arguments.
You still has a burden of proof for your original argument. For which your evidence is merely your anecdotal personal experiences... still.
So again, who are you trying to fool here? Your rhetoric within this type of arrogant self-indulgent behavior just becomes epistemically irresponsible. Stating that what I provide is pseudo-science and misrepresenting what I say in some textbook straw-man arguments. It's downright laughable how obviously out of depth your are while desperately trying to keep face with these pathetic attempts to miscredit other's arguments and calling actual science pseudo-science with a straight face. How on earth can anyone with even miniscule understanding of the construction of philosophical arguments and science take what you say and your rhetoric seriously? Your echo chamber is so extreme you actually believe that by simply keep hitting back in whatever fallacious form possible is making you look like you know what your talking about. But you don't, you still look like a fool and John Cleese is still right about you.
What if memory is like I suggested, a pattern of neural activity which is repeated?
Quoting Christoffer
That's the obvious consequence of a person being right. Accept the reality.
Quoting Christoffer
That's right, its pseudo-science. The final sentence in the passage confirms this. The author says, "the brain will jump from one prediction to another". Where's the verification in this? What actually occurs is not recognizable as prediction, so the author just claims, it's jumping around. The author is just assuming this to be some sort of predictive operation, so when the appearance is inconsistent with prediction, the claim is that it's jumping around.. The proper conclusion, the "bizarre, fragmented, and discontinuous dream narratives with vague, uncertain perceptual qualities" are not predictions at all.
The author makes the same mistake as you do, and provides the same pseudo science.
The author then supports this pseudo-science with what you call "anecdotal evidence", an example of a dream analyzed. How do we even know whether it's the report of an actual dream, and not just an example made up by the author?
Quoting Christoffer
I conclude that you are not very good with basic logic or critical thinling.
Quoting Christoffer
Then it's not predictive coding anymore, as the adversarial model indicates. That the two models are consistent with each other but applicable at different times, sleeping and awake, is not at all surprising, it is to be expected.
Quoting Christoffer
The big issue though, is that the internal sensations, what you call "virtual sensations" are completely different from external sensations, as the difference between top-down and bottom-up. And this is the difference which makes verification irrelevant. And since verification is irrelevant the predictive coding model is not applicable.
In the article you quoted above, the author makes a half-ass attempt to show verification in the anecdotal evidence of the example dream, but it's clearly contrived and most likely fabricated evidence.
Quoting Christoffer
"Virtual verification" is nonsense. It's a self-contradicting concept, fabricated in an attempt to apply the theory where it is not applicable.
Quoting Christoffer
As I said, the adversarial model does not reject the predictive coding model. Nor did I ever reject the predictive coding model. I accept that it has its areas of application. However, the adversarial model is not an "expanding on details" of predictive coding. It is a representation of a distinct activity.
What I'd like to point out to you is that the two models are very distinct, modeling two distinct types of brain activity, one known as top-down, the other as bottom-up. They each have there place in the brain of a living human being, one taking priority when we are awake, the other when we are asleep. That these two are distinct is the reason for the op.
Quoting Christoffer
I see you still refuse to differentiate between hallucinations which involve an input of sense data, and dreams, which do not. You do this intentionally so that you do not have to distinguish between a brain process which relies on sense input, and one which does not. This allows you to argue that predictive coding is applicable to dream activity.
Do you not recognize that being asleep is completely different from being awake? If you understand this, and recognize this difference, why wouldn't you also accept that the principal brain process when a person is asleep, is different from the principal brain process when a person is awake?
Quoting Christoffer
This is true if "normal operation" is restricted to predictive coding. That restriction however, is your mistake. Since dreaming is not explainable as predictive coding, this restriction leaves dreaming outside the category of "normal operation".
Quoting Christoffer
Sense input is not "scrambled" in sleep, it is absent. See you keep clutching at straws in your attempt to apply predictive coding where it is not suited.
Quoting Christoffer
This is pure speculation, and it really makes no sense. If the predictive operation relies on sense input, how could it suddenly switch this reliance to memory instead? Even if it did, it wouldn't be predictive coding anymore, it would be a different process.
Quoting Christoffer
When an essential aspect of a theory is missing from the thing which the theory is being consider to be applied to, the theory is not applicable. That's simple logic, it's not a straw man.
Quoting Christoffer
If it's grounded in something else, then it's not consistent with predictive coding theory. The obvious conclusion, is that predictive coding is not applicable, as the supposed jumbled "predictions" are not really predictions at all, and there is no point in even looking for the "something else", because it's a completely distinct process.
I didn't deny that.
If it is the case, then memories are not things stored in the subconscious, and your post is pretty much irrelevant.
No, I call the part of the brain where the main part of memories, long-time memories, is held as the subconscious mind.
But if memories are simply neural activity, then they are not "held" anywhere. They are something which happens, and it happens only when the memory is present to the mind.
The memories are stored in the synapses. Synapses are the junctions between nerve cells. They change when we memorize something new.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What do you mean with the mind here? If by the mind you mean a substance, rather than physical, that ideas, such as thoughts, feelings, psychological time, etc. are present to it then I have to say there is a mind with the ability to experience the ideas. The ideas are however the manifestation of the neutrals' activities.
I don't think that's accurate. Memory is attributed to synapse regulation, which works through synapse plasticity. So memory is a feature of this plasticity, which is a feature of synapse regulation, not the synapse itself. To understand memory is to understand how synapse plasticity is regulated.
Quoting MoK
No, I don't think of the mind as a substance, I think of it as a cause of activity.
Quoting Patterner
This is the real feature of dreams, the reality of dreams, which Christoffer is busily denying by reducing dreams to predictive coding.
It is accurate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. The synapses only change when a new thing is memorized or learned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, memory is only a feature of synapses.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, without synapse plasticity we just cannot memorize a new thing.
My way of explaining this is that it is not that you (i.e., that I-ness) which is the agential first-person point of view (i.e., which is the conscious intellect during waking states) that devises the given dream which one as first-person point of view experiences no more than it is you as an agential first-person point of view which produces that which you see, smell, hear, etc. during waking states. Rather, it is that you (that I-ness) which consists of ones total self or being (more specifically: ones total mind, the unconscious aspects of it included) which produces the REM dream which is experienced by you as a first-person point of view during sleep. Just as its your unconscious mind which produces that which you are conscious of during waking states.
But this gets bound up in the philosophy or else psychology of what a self is constituted of. To use William James' basic dichotomy, which mirrors that of Kants and of Husserls, the first-person point of view is the pure ego which is that I-ness that experiences and thereby knows the phenomenal aspects of ones total self; i.e., the I as knower of the experienced self; e.g., I see; I choose, I remember, etc. All aspects of selfhood that are experienced by this same pure ego is then broadly classified as the empirical ego; i.e., the I as the self which is known via experience (this by the pure ego); e.g. I am tall/short (or: I have two hands); I am stupid/smart in relation to some topic (or: I have an unconscious mind); I am of this or that nationality, etc. The first consciously experiences phenomena; the second is constituted of the phenomena experienced. So, during a dream, the agential first-person point of view (the pure ego) can well be surprised by that which agencies of its total unconscious mind present to it. To further complicate matters, the pure ego can in certain dreams hold an empirical ego quite distinct from its empirical ego during waking states. But this is a very broad and possibly very different topic.
Apropos, to add to the anecdotal accounts, some years back Ive had a series of REM dreams (rather than daydreams) that were as coherent as any waking reality, in which I interacted with others in a coherently stable town and environment. In this series of dreams, it was always the same town, the same environment, and the same general cohort of people. What tripped me out upon awakening from these rather vivid dreams was that, in the later portion of these dreams, Id while dreaming remember as vividly as any waking memory events that had occurred during previous dreams in this series. These dreams where clearly distinct from waking reality, but they were not distinct from each other and certainly not inconsistent.
Things are being learned and memorized at every moment in time.
Quoting MoK
Memorizing is not a one time thing. Each time a person recollects, and memorizes, one does this in a new situation, under new conditions, therefore a new thing is memorized each time. Notice that to memorize something requires repeating the same thing over and over in the mind. The strength of the memory is dependent on the quality of the repetition. Whenever repetition is done under different conditions it is not really "the same thing" which is repeated. because of the new conditions. Plasticity allows that the memory can be strengthened or altered depending on the conditions of the repetition.
So, the synapses change accordingly to allow for memorizing things in time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you disagree that memorizing requires synapse plasticity?
Don't you think so?
Quoting MoK
I think I was arguing the opposite. What I was saying is that despite talking about memories as if they are fixed objects, stored somewhere, they are never truly fixed. The plasticity means that they are always changing with each recollection.
Sure, I think that the synapses change all the time. The memory however is stored in a chunk of synapses so it is a collective thing. Any neural net however has a capacity for memorizing things. If you enforce a neural net with limited capacity to learn new things which is beyond its limit then a part of memory is erased as a result.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, any memory is stored in a chunk of synapsics. Changing one synapse does not necessarily remove the memory but if you insist on changing more synapses then there is a point at which changing one more synapse destroys the memory.
[I]Just as its your unconscious mind which produces that which you are conscious of during waking states.[/I]
I am conscious of the temperature, various sounds, my hunger, things that I see, itches and pains, symptoms of illness... How is my unconsciousness mind producing all of that? I would have thought it's role is in different areas.
To take visual perception as one relatively well studied example, the retina of the eye is technically a portion of ones brain. Most retinal Information crisscrosses from the eyes into the occipital lobes, and from there into other lobes of the brain.At the very least, retinal brain processes and occipital lobe brain processes occur before conscious sight takes place of that which the eye takes in.
I take it that the brain itself, be it the retina, or the occipital lobes, or other regions, is not an inanimate object that causes mind as its effect - such that first there is inanimate brain, or portion of it, as efficient cause and then at a subsequent period of time there is a corresponding state of mind as effect. Instead, I take it that the mind is the top portion of a largely bottom-up non-causal process, one which could be termed supervenience. Save for the minds top-down non-causal process which I then associate with what is commonly considered free will (e.g. repeating the conscious decision to cease smoking can alter one's physical brain into one that eventually no longer craves nicotine).
In so understanding, there is then nothing that I visually see of the external world which is possible in the absence of unconscious mind processes. In terms of my visual perception, these basically being those aspects of mind which emerge via superveneience on physical brain processes regarding visual sight, specifically brain process that occur prior to the moment of me consciously seeing X: these, again, being retinal brain processes, occipital brain processes, etc.
Of course, the brain isn't just one specialized mode of perception. It does many things simultaneously. Most of which is done unconsciously, i.e. without conscious awareness. And, in my view, many of these unconscious processes of mind end up converging into one's conscious mind, aka consciousness.
BTW, if its of interest, the lapse between retinal input and conscious sight is measured in milliseconds. Here is one article addressing certain aspects of the general concept as regards both conscious and unconscious vision.
Im glad that the general view I presented makes some sense to you. The part you quoted, written in haste, is in truth a generalized hypothesis I make given my best understanding and interpretations of the current data. When I wrote it I forgot that some might find it a controversial notion.
Our brains have different brainwave states, these correspond with levels of alertness. Dreaming takes place in theta or delta brainwave states, which are the lowest alertness. You can experience theta state while awake, and it's a drowsy "brain fog" feeling, although it is also associated with creativity.
So you're not quite as alert in a dream, although people do still sometimes realize that they are dreaming and enjoy lucid dreams. Personally, I don't only have lucid dreams but also in-between states, like finding everything happening quite odd, but never quite working out that I am dreaming.
Thanks for your input Mijin. "Brainwave states" provides a different perspective. Maybe there is some real science here, instead of the stuff that Christoffer is offering. I assume the higher brainwave states, gamma, beta, represent higher mental activity, and the lower states theta, delta, represent lower activity.
Can we correlate more active brainwaves, higher frequency, with more focused brain activity, therefore stable, rational, thought, and also correlate lower frequency with less focused brain activity, unstable, irrational, fluctuating, like dreams. If so, how do you think it is possible that higher frequency brain activity (rapid change), corresponds with focused, stable thinking?
It is very interesting the topic of brainwaves. I look forward to reading what you both write about it.
I like the point of @Mijin that the "theta state" is also related to our creativity. I think the following image is pretty illustrative:
If the retina is part of the brain, then are the sensory nerves in the toes? I don't know what your definition of [I]brain[/I] is.
If the sensory nerves in the toes are part of the brain, then are the signals generated by the toes when something brushes against them an event of the unconscious mind, just as signals generated by the retina when struck by photons are?
This explains it more succinctly that I could in my own words:
Quoting the last paragraph in the wikipedia introduction on the retina
Whereas the retina is a part of the central nervous system (CNS), more specifically the brain and not the spinal cord, dendritic outreaches into one's toes, for example, are part of the nervous system at large, but not of the CNS proper - which strictly consists of brain and spinal cord in at least vertebrates.
Nearly forgot:
Once the signals from the dendrites reach the CNS, I uphold that they then, and only then, become the first constituent aspects of one's unconscious mind. This, naturally, together with all other most basic, constituent portions of one's unconscious mind (other sensory inputs, sense of balance, etc.) which, I'd again uphold, converge into greater levels of agency and awareness till some such portions become our lived consciousness. All this very succinctly expressed.
EDIT: As an example, as far as feeling something brush against one's toe(s), dendrites in one's toes are always active; but one is not always consciously aware of what one's toes feel in tactile manners (it seems that never is one consciously aware of what all portions of one's skin feels in tactile manners at any given time: from the toes to the scalp) . That one becomes conscious of something brushing up against one's toes is then inferred by me to be determined by one's unconscious mind.
This article https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-reveals-universal-pattern-brain-wave-frequencies-0118 describes how scientists have determined distinct layers in the brain, with different frequency brain waves associated with the distinct layers.
High frequency oscillations occur in the upper layers, and this is where new data is received and processes. The information is maintained in the lower layers through low frequency activity. A balance is required between the high frequency and low frequency, with the middle layers acting to accomplish this. The balance is required so that one does not overpower the other, causing "neuropsychiatric disorders". It is suggested that ADHT is when higher frequencies dominate, and schizophrenia is when lower frequencies are too strong.
A balance between top-down and bottom-up activity is required for everything which we do, but you can see how it is necessary for the balance to tip one way or the other, depending on what a person is doing.
Wow! It is very interesting. Isn't it? Thanks for the link to the article. It amazes me that those frequencies can actually be drawn on a paper so we can figure out what they look like. Science is helping us to understand things again. Now, it is time for a cookie!
That's rather fascinating information about the embryonic development of the retina!
I'm afraid, though, it throws my understanding of things into chaos. Lol. I thought the first step in the evolution of the eye was supposedly molecules that changed shape depending on the amount of light they were exposed to. Then these molecules, or groups of such molecules, became connected with parts of the entity that moved. Thus, it moved in different ways, depending on the light.
Then, the nature of the connecting structure between the eyespot and moving element changed, becoming a neuron, and eventually a brain.
If that's accurate, then the light-sensitive part did not originate as part of the connecting structure. So, at some point, the connecting structure started producing the light-sensitive material, and the old method of production ceased.
But that's another topic. :grin: I'm thinking that, even if sensory nerves of any other type, in any other part of the body, are not officially part of the brain, they serve the same function as the retina. That is, they send signals to the brain that contain information about things outside the body. And the signals they send to the brain play the same role as the signals the retina sends to the brain.
As far as the details of this go, it depends on how one goes about conceptualizing what an eye is.
Light detection is found in prokaryotes (like bacteria), single-celled eukaryotic organisms (such as ameba), and, of course, in plants. It would be odd in many a way to then claim that any of these then have eyes; e.g. that plants see light via their eyesight. On the other hand, animals such as flatworms are stated to have eyespots on their heads, this rather than eyes.
If an eye is taken to in any way consist of a lens and thereby be camara-like, common consensus is that eyes have evolved analogously, and not homologously, numerous times via convergent evolution. In other words, that not all (lens-endowed) eyes in nature have evolved from a single common ancestor.
As one example, although its difficult toward impossible to conclusively establish strictly via fossils and DNA, common consensus has it that cephalopods (like octopi and squid) and vertebrates have evolved their eyes independently via convergent evolution. A reference for this.
The human retina of itself has five different types of neurons. (Reference.) So the retina is not strictly composed of dendrites that extend from out of neuron bodies that are themselves located within the CNS, which again is the brain + spinal cord (in contrast to the fingers or toes, for example, which do only contain dendrites (and axons) in the absence of any neuron bodies). Instead, the retina is a part of the neuron-constituted CNS itself, not only due to development, but also due to of itself being constituted of neuron bodies. So the retina is a portion of brain that sends information to other portions of brain. This, in some limited ways, in parallel to the way the occipital lobe sends visual information to the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe.
These details aside, (maybe as you yourself imply (?)) I so far dont find all this much mattering though when it comes to basic appraisals of the unconscious mind and consciousnesss dependence on it.
If the activity of the eye is part of the unconscious, why, in your opinion, do we need to close our eyes when we sleep?
TheQuoting javraYes, I think this was mentioned in [I]Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness[/I], by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
Quoting javraNo, I'm just curious.
However, I don't understand your use of "unconscious". I'm sure partly due to my ignorance of the topic. But also possibly because different people mean things in different ways. I'm wondering which, if any, of these you mean. And I'm seriously winging all this.
1) Any brain activity. Which could include those that control heartbeat, temperature, etc.
2) Brain activity like visual, audible, and tactile signals, as well as pain, fatigue, and I don't know what else, since we react to such things, but which are not, themselves, behavior.
3) Brain activity that is reacting to things like visual, audible, and tactile signals, as well as words, memories, and anything else, but which we are not consciously aware of. Which I mighty guess could include such things as Freudian Slips, posthypnotic suggestions, and conditioning. Also the vaguely-defined intuition.
Barring exceptions such as those of sleep paralysis and sleepwalking wherein the individual can be asleep in part or in whole with eyes wide open, such that they actively take in visual information of the external world, Im at a loss as to the significance of the question.
Usually, when our eyes are not closed, we persist in being consciously alert to the outside world and so do not fall into sleep, wherein our conscious awareness of the outside world momentarily ceases. Hence, we will willfully close our eyes when we intend to fall asleep to assist in so doing. This doesnt always work thought, with insomnia as a common enough example.
Or maybe you're thinking that retinal input is necessarily and instantly consciousness? To keep things simple, it generally needs to travel through the occipital lobe and then into other lobes in order to become conscious. And, so, the activities of brain which occur in the retina alone are in no way consciously experiences and are therefore aspects of the unconscious mind. Somewhat more complexly, blindsight directly speaks to how some visual information originating in the retina is, or at least can be fully unconscious. Related to this, from what I remember being taught, is that we will sometimes reflexively turn our gaze to something moving in our extreme periphery of vision prior to being consciously aware of it.
Maybe my answer to Patterner will help out.
Fair enough. Ill try to better explain.
To first reiterate, I take CNS processes to be that via which mind is in vertebrates. To use Aristotelian terminology, this via material causation and not via efficient causation. And, thus, that the immaterial mind supervenes upon material CNS processes. And, for a fuller disclosure, I then likewise take mind to be capable of changing material CNS processes (such as by eventually changing via neural plasticity the strength or else very occurrence of certain synapses) via formal causation or one type or another, but, again, not via efficient causation.
So the immaterial mind is what the material CNS does this in the strict sense just outlined. And this in those lifeforms endowed with a CNS. But, again for fuller disclosure, myself subscribing to the idea of all lifeforms having some form of mind, this as per views such as those found in Mind in Life, I dont take mind to be necessarily dependent on the occurrence of a CNS such that, for example, an ameba or a bacterium will have its own lifeform-specific mind, which is materially caused by the organizations and behaviors of the organic molecules which constitute the physical cell. A bacterium then has a vastly, almost unimaginably simpler mind than any lifeform endowed with a CNS. But back to the issues of the human mind:
Thus understood, the immaterial mind can then be generally divided into two parts: a) the conscious mind, i.e. that which is consciously aware of anything, and b) the unconscious mind, i.e. all those aspects of mind in total as previously addressed of which the conscious mind is not in any way aware of.
This basic rudimentary dichotomy can become quickly complicated in any number of ways: e.g. a visually recalled memory is consciousnesss (the conscious minds) conscious awareness of that which the unconscious mind presents to it (here stated rather laconically).
In a bacterium, there will quite likely be no such dichotomy between conscious and unconscious mind whatsoever.
But in a highly complex mind such as that of a humans, this dichotomy will always hold. Such that the conscious mind can never fully equate to the total mind that supervenes upon the CNS. As youve somewhat pointed out, we are unconscious of the active, CNS-dependent volition via which our heart beats, etc. Likewise are we unconscious of the active, CNS-dependent volition via which that which we consciously will to say ends up being oppressed and nullified via a statement we did not consciously intend, thereby resulting in a slip of the tongue.
We have no way of mapping the unconscious mind vs. the conscious mind onto the CNS because we have no way of mapping consciousness onto the CNS to begin with; see for the example the binding problem of consciousness.
Because of this, I can not cogently answer what the unconscious is by mapping it onto certain portions of the CNS at expense of others. Nor can I cogently uphold that the unconscious equates to CNS activity at large - for consciousness too is to be found in at least certain aspects of this same CNS activity at large. So I cannot then equate the unconscious mind in humans to any of the three possibilities provided.
Rather, again, I take consciousness to be a convergence of certain unconscious agencies and loci of awareness into an ever-changing non-manifold unity. Thereby, again, making the conscious mind dependent on the workings of the unconscious mind, this in any organism complex enough to hold any form of dichotomy between the two.
To use a common enough metaphor, consciousness is like the visible tip of a glacier whose remaining mass is submerged beneath water, the latter being the unconscious mind. The two are not divided masses, they are not separate, but are rather intertwined as parts of the same mass. This total mass then being equated to the immaterial mind in whole.
The question is, if visual sensing is really part of the unconscious mind, rather than the conscious, why do we need to close our eyes to go to sleep? You would think that visual sensing could continue along, just fine, when the person is a sleep, if it is a feature of the subconscious mind.
Quoting javra
Yes, I agree that when we intend to fall asleep we close our eyes, to aid this. However, I think that this is because we know that having eyes closed is necessary for sleeping. So for example, when a person does not intend to fall asleep, yet starts falling asleep, one cannot keep one's eye's open. It appears like the eyes are forced to close by some unconscious process. Or, does keeping the eyes open, in general, anytime, require conscious effort?
The significance of this again eludes me. And again, this readily happens when people sleepwalk. So it can and does, in fact, happen: Sleepwalkers can visually see the external world while fully asleep and thus not consciously aware.
Why then don't we all sleepwalk all the time when asleep? One relatively short answer is that natural selection tends to rule this out due to the perils of so doing all the time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Keeping one's eyes open is, generally speaking, fully voluntary - meaning that it is subject to our conscious volition. This unlike, for example, keeping our heart beating, or pangs of hunger/thirst, or the experience of physical pain, etc. To that extent, yes, of course.
Edit: I should add that, generally speaking aside, there are of course exceptions when keeping the eyes open occurs unconsciously: see for example sleepwalking with eyes open.
This is the point then. If keeping one's eyes open is "generally" a matter of conscious volition, why would we conclude that the sense perception of seeing is unconscious? It would seem like "seeing" is something controlled by the voluntary act of keeping one's eyes open.
Do you think that it would be the case that the neurological system is "seeing" all the time, unconsciously, regardless of whether the eyes are open or not? And, the volitionary act of keeping one's eyes open is a sort of conscious control over this activity? This might provide an explanation of dreaming as the unconscious continuing in its activity of seeing, after conscious volition has shut down, and the eyes are closed. Where do you think that the images which are "seen" in the act of dreaming derive from? Do they come from the eyes?
Ah. I can now understand what you meant. But this is a misattribution of what I claimed. My claim, again, was that consciousness (in at least humans) is dependent on processes of the unconscious mind.
So in terms of seeing things, my position is as follows: our consciously seeing via the use of our eyes whose eyelids are under our conscious control will all be in some ways dependent on processes of mind of which we are not conscious of, thereby being dependent on the workings of our unconscious mind. If these processes of the unconscious mind did not occur, we would then not be able to consciously see - with blindsight as one example of this. But because they do occur, we do in fact consciously see things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think this is the case, not when one regards seeing as necessarily consisting of input from the retina. I think the way we see things in dreams is often a more vivid form of the way we see things when daydreaming or imagining. Only that when dreaming the unconscious mind assumes far greater agential control over what is in thus manner seen.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It gets tricky here, in part due to often numerous ways in which terms can get understood. But, in principle, though we are not of a waking state consciousness while dreaming, we as a first-person point of view (as consciousness in this sense) are yet present in our dreams. Not only that but, as a somnio-consciousness (a term which I coined that I think nicely enough expresses our dreaming consciousness), we almost always yet have some degree of agential power (i.e., ability to accomplish) - hence, some degree of voluntary, rather than involuntary, volition. With one possible extreme of this degree of dreaming volition being that of lucidly dreaming.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, though I haven't looked into it, I don't think they in any way derive from the eyes, the retinas to be more specific. But that they instead likely at least in part derive from those aspects of the sensory cortex which are active when we are willfully imagining or daydreaming things.
You don't think that there is input from the retina in dreams? What do you think the so-called rapid eye movement is all about?
Quoting javra
I don't think I agree with assigning agential power to the somnio-consciousness. I agree that there is such in the case of lucid dreaming, but this is done through an intentional act which I believe degrades the dreaming. In other words I look at lucid dreaming as an act of intentionally converting one's dreams into something which isn't really a dream.
When I dream I find that the experience is one of having something happen to me which I am powerless to control. This is why, when it is a nightmare, the overwhelming anxiety of not being able to do anything about it, forces me to wake up. So in my dreams, I am doing things, but I am not at all in control over what I am doing. I am really not deciding where to go, or what to do, in my dreams, or anything like that, I am just finding myself in situations which draw me into them like a curiosity or something like that.
Here is something that is less than opinion;
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep#Eye_movements
Emphasis mine.
Also something less than opinion: When one sees a house in a dream, one does not see the house due to photons being picked up by the retina and thereby due to retinal input.
As far as opinions go, I personally tentatively uphold the explanation given in the last sentence mentioned in the quote above. I have no way to prove this opinion, but I find it likely in part on grounds that people who do not sleep for long periods of time don't only become extremely exhausted but also tend to have psychotic breaks, i.e. go insane, which seems plausible if procedural memory is not properly processed. I also don't personally know of a more plausible evolutionary explanation for why REM dreaming evolved to begin with given that mammals at large as well as birds exhibit REM sleep.
My last few days have been crazy busy. i've only read your latest response to me once, which isn't enough for me to have absorbed much. hopefully soon!
As for the conversation the two of you are having, why not substitute hearing or smelling for vision?
Beliefs can be groundless, irrational, misleading and blind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No.
No worries. Please take your time.
Quoting Patterner
Ah. On one hand, MU was focusing in on the visual aspects of dreams, to which I replied as best I could. On the other hand, hearing and smelling (as well as touching and maybe even tasting) get far, far more complicated. :grin: We all experience our dreams uniquely in many a way, but I've certainly heard of cases wherein the dreams of a sleeping person were affected by that which surrounded them in the external world, including sounds and smells, even though they were not at the time in any way conscious of what was taking place in the external world. Then, also, there's the alarm clock, which at first unconsciously wakes you up into consciousness from sleep and the dreams therein had. (A good shove can also due :grin: )
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Didn't have as much time and neglected this part in my last post. I have no qualms about what you say, especially in regard to your own experiences of dreams.
That said, we do all experience dreams differently. It is not utterly uncommon for some humans to have dreams in which they fly through air at will. I too have had such dreams growing up. I remember them being rather serene and euphoric for the most part. And I distinctly remember being therein endowed with a supra-human capacity of will, hence volition, to travel through the air as I wanted simply by so willing it. In dreams such as these, there is certainly found a free will (or at least a sense of free will for the free will deniers) in which one chooses as one pleases between alternatives. In this case, alternative paths of motion and different destinations.
On the other hand I too have had my fair share of nightmares. In some of these, the main terror was in an inability to do what I wanted (often to run) when surrounded by extreme dangers. And, hence, via such dreams, I can relate to the experience of not having somnio-conscious volition in dreams. But, maybe, it might be the very same, felt terrifying experience of not having that ability to do what one wants which directly points to a lack of what one during the very same dream in some way had expected to be there: one's functional somnio-conscious volition.
With that said, I again have no problem in the view which you yourself currently uphold. But due to my own experiences of dreams, I will choose to yet uphold that which I previously presented: namely, that (at least at times and in some people) some degree of volition will be present to the somnio-conscious dreamer.
What I was thinking is that we can go to sleep without shutting out sounds as thoroughly as we shut out sights. Sine people have white noise machines. Some people seem to require absolute silence. But, as a species, we can fall asleep in a room with many conversations taking place, and music playing. Why does that sensory input not as bother our sleeping as much as visual input?
Im only taking by best shots in the dark with this. So, some thoughts. As a species we are highly visual animals. Just looked this up for accuracy's sake and found this:
Quoting https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29494035/
This is not the case for many a different eye-endowed animal species.
But then all other mammals and birds (that I know of) close their eyes to sleep - and also to undergo REM sleep (which I infer to indicate dreaming) - so this might not be as important a it might at first seem.
Then there's the reality that opened eyes can get permanently injured when having the cornea scratched. So the eyes ought to be protected (in humans and other species by eyelids) when asleep. Closing one's eyes voluntarily might then be a preparation for going to sleep, and could well serve as a indicator or sign that one is wanting to so do to certain aspects of the unconscious mind. (I infer both mammals and birds to have a both conscious and unconscious mind due what i so far know of the structure and functioning of their CNS; an educated guess basically).
The other external sensory receptors and mechanisms (we do also have internal sensory receptors; e.g. this for proprioception, hunger, etc.) all tend to not risk getting harmed when asleep.
And, again, I'll maintain that the very process of falling asleep is regulated and brought about by the unconscious aspects of our mind. With insomnia as an example of when we consciously will to fall asleep but, because our unconscious mind is unwilling, are unable to. So in normal circumstances, if we are tired (something that our unconscious mind in part informs us of, imo; thereby informing us that it, or we as a total self, are in need of recharging our batteries, so to speak) and if we voluntarily want to fall asleep in a room with many conversations or with music playing, we'll often be able to do so just fine.
Anecdotally, I know of people that benefit in their ease of falling asleep by having the TV on.
Quoting javraIndeed. It's not our conscious mind that makes us sleep. Our conscious mind often fights it in any way it can. Eventually failing.
Quoting javraYes. Some need silence, and others need noise. I would guess the tv acts as white noise. Just background droning. I would guess, that's all it is, those people would not be able to sleep if the show varied greatly and sounds. Conversations of several minutes followed by bazooka and machine gun fire might not work for them. i've never tested what noises I could fall asleep too. I can read a book in a room with people talking, or on the couch next to the television. but that's not the same as trying to sleep.
So this would constitute a big difference between "seeing" in your sleep, and "seeing" when you are awake. How do you think that the house is caused to appear to the person in a dream, without the photons being picked up by the retina?
Suppose that this creation of "the house" in a dream, is an aspect of "procedural memory". How is this any sort of real memory, when the brain seems to be just creating random things rather than consciously remembering things? Rather than a type of memory, which is what the conscious awake mind is doing all the time, remembering things, dreaming seems to be a completely different sort of activity, where the brain is just exploring all sorts of weird things, maybe like a trial and error activity.
Quoting javra
So if dreaming is allowing the brain freedom to go off on exploratory adventures, without be pent up by the rational inclination of the conscious mind to process sense information in relation to memories, as is what the conscious mind does, then maybe it is the case that we need this sort of release in order to prevent ourselves from going insane. It could be sort of like too much work causes severe stress and anxiety, so we need a vacation to let the brain relax and do its own thing to maintain mental health. If this is the case, then the question is, what exactly is this, what is called "its own thing", when the brain is free from the constraints of the conscious mind forcing it to be what it believes constitutes "rationality".
Quoting javra
I agree. In my experience, the senses other than sight are more likely to cross the boundary of being asleep, and the input can enter into the dream, and have great influence over the dream. Since a dream is only truly remembered when I awaken, it appears from my memory of the dream, that the sound, smell, or even taste which enters into the dream actually causes me to awaken, because I come to notice the sensation when I do awaken. However, it may be the case that these senses commonly influence my dreams without me even knowing it, because I do not awaken to notice it.
These instances, when sensations influence the dream, would be cases of the brain receiving, and dealing with sense information, in a way which is totally inconsistent with the awake (what I called "rational" way). This implies that the brain actually has different ways of processing sense input. The conscious way is to channel the energy through some recognition process, but the sleeping way is to channel the energy off somewhere else, to be absorbed into the brain with minimum affect on its working activity. This is sort of like the difference between paying attention to something, and not paying attention. I think that since so much energy is entering the brain through the eyes, the best way to maximize "not paying attention" is to have eyelids. Eyelids seem to be a feature quite low on the evolutionary scale, and whether their primary function is to keep things like dust out of the eyes, or to maximize "not paying attention", I think is debatable.
Quoting javra
OK, I see the point. There definitely is something within the dream which constitutes the self, "I", and the self is clearly doing things, therefore agential. But the self is doing things which appear to be irrational, and the things which are happening to the self are equally impossible to make sense of.
We can ask, then, what is creating these imaginary scenarios. It is a sort of "self", which knows little if any bounds of rational thought. Above, I distinguished between conscious, rational thinking, as the activity of the mind, and I was careful to describe the dreaming as the activity of the brain. This was done with the intention of separating the conscious "mind" from the unconscious activity of the brain in sleep. The brain in sleep would be a brain free from the influence of "the self" which is a product of the conscious mind. However, I now see that the self cannot be excluded from the brain activity in that way. I think, that even if we tried to totally exclude the trained habits of conscious rational thinking, from the brain, and allow the brain freedom to do what it wants (notice I can't even exclude the agential self in speaking because something has to guide that activity), it still produces a mental "self", and does not seem to be able to avoid this, even if allowed to act in the most random way.
Quoting Patterner
Perhaps it is as I describe above, the brain gets tired from having to adhere to the restrictions of the conscious mind forcing it to be "rational". The brain needs periodic "vacations", to do its own thing, in order to maintain the mental health of the individual.
Yes, I find this question of how the brain operates, relative to the conscious understanding of self, and how the sense of "I" as an agent, is related to this relation, to be very interesting.
We don't know. We have guesses related to problem solving, or the brain "repairing" itself, but this is completely speculative.
The richness of the phenomena way exceeds the proposed explanations. Sure, one can see the appeal that a dream is often related to something we are thinking about, sometimes unconsciously - but the weirdness involved is quite striking (in my case anyway).
I suppose one could point out something similar, which is that if you are daydreaming, it's often the case that we do not notice the transition between daydreaming and being awake.
Maybe the differences we can describe when awake, are not so large as they seem. Perhaps there is something to that often-corny phrase, that life is a dream.
Certainly, the first instant of remembered conscious experience is quite dreamlike, waking from an eternal slumber.
When we're awake our imagination (dreams) function in such a way as to be fit to surface (in the world). When we sleep, the autonomous constructions and projections don't stop; they just function without much regard to fitness for surface. Both processes are made-up; one works to create meaning in History, the other also functions to create meaning, but strictly within one tiny locus of History (so it doesnt signify in the same linear logic of our waking narratives). The question isn't are you the same person; you are. The question is, are you really that person? Or, is that person real?
I don't really understand what you mean by "fitness to surface", but your post doesn't resolve the problem. The question is why do I at sometimes use my imagination to create things which are ft to surface, and at other times I do not have regard for fitness to surface. If these are both the same me, as you claim, why does my imagination behave in these two completely distinct and inconsistent ways.
If there is a question to be asked as to "is that person real", then how would we answer "no" unless we said it was actually two distinct people? But it's not two distinct people because the awake person has memories from the dreaming condition. And the awake person rejects the dreaming condition as "not real", but the dreaming person does not even remember the awake condition to be able to reject the awake condition.
If I said dreams are autonomously moving signifiers called out of a
storage in memory, with no central agent, you would consider the arguments against that, but generally, you'd accept the possibility.
But if i said, so too are all of your so called experiences in your waking. Only in waking, these autonomous manifestations follow eons worth of evolution, such that they structure and project effeciently, following certain laws which serve their only function. First, the will to manifest (because the primordial, original or true nature of these images---the imagination---was to stimulate conditioned responses; built in was the drive to function or manifest). Following that, highly functional laws to sustain and promote the manifestations (all made-up by the evolved system), from difference, to cause and effect, reason, logic, grammar, and so on, and out of these, History.
Because dreams are just the outflow of the manifestations which have evolved not to stop, they do not conform to the rules which structure the ones in waking. So, the former seem to be what we would call random. They still signify, but that's another discussion.
The waking manifestations have been regulated, conditioned to follow a dialectic of such efficiency that only the images structured most aptly for the situation (given umpteen factors, run through speedy dialectic, conditioned trials and errors) get to manifest. That is, these operations of mind, are the most fitting to surface. To be simple, your eyes see a round red edible thing, your stomach may release triggers of hunger, etc. But these images stored in memory, autonomously flood those real bodily events with so called experience, their efficient constructions. And "apple" and the hundreds of corresponding structures displace the body with these Narratives. The "I" itself is just a structure which, in the promotion of manifestations, emerged as functional, surfaces a lot and so on. But it is just as autonomous a process in waking as in dreams.
They're both dreams, and in neither of them is "I"/ are you the real being. The body is and always is.
I don't think that this explanation properly allows for the creative capacity of dreams, and waking life for that matter. It cannot be that all experience consists of signifiers called from memory, because there must be a first experience, and the first cannot consist of any memory. Therefore I believe that the creative capacity, which is defined by being in the moment, living at the present, rather than by memories of the past, is just as important to the dreaming (and waking) experience, as the memories which you describe. And this is where we find the real being of "I", which you end up denying.
Not to be argumentative. I understand your points. Fair enough.
What was your (or, for that matter, 'the') first experience of 'apple'?
I do not deny the creative capacity. It's creative capacity all the way down [to the forever forsaken so called first experience]. But you're right that I deny the "I" as the source. "I" is a product/tool.
There is a so called real so called I. The body. Although that is affected by the creativity, feeling a positive bond with the "I", the feeling is real, but the object of the bond, the "I" is a small-c creation.
We are not two persons. So, again, the dreaming and the waking human is one: the body. The intriguing problem you raise is a function of the make-believe, or creative capacity.
I don't see how you reduce the "I" to the body. In my dreams I do things that a body could not do, randomly jump from one location or situation to another. That "I" in my dreams cannot be a body. So why do you insist that the I is a body?
If you assert that both the waking and sleeping I are the very same I, then you have to allow the reality of both. The I in the dreams is not constrained by the limitations of the body. You might argue that this is simply imaginative creativity, but the very essence of creativity is that it allows us to extend ourselves beyond the limitations of our bodies. Therefore "I" is something more than just my body.
You are correct, and I have caused confusion.
The "I" is imaginary; in waking and in dreams. What I meant to say is that the real being is the living body, not in the narratives constructed by its imagination in both waking and dreaming. Although the latter is where we conventionally identify the real being (that is, with the "I").
I understand that you still take issue...I just thought I should clarify.
Thanks for clearing that up ENOAH. Now I understand. However, I prefer to think of the real being as a unity of the two, the living body, and the "I" which thinks and has feelings. It may be the case that it is more difficult and complicated to conceive of the living being as a unity of two completely different aspects, but I think it's the only realistic way.
To conjoin this with what I was previously mentioning, my own interpretation is that dreaming is a form of sheer imagining, only that in dreams the unconscious mind agentially determines most of what is being imagined, this rather than the conscious mind's volition as is typically the case when we are awake and willfully imagine things (things which in common speech are said to be seen by us with the mind's eye). When we willfully imagine a house while awake, we do it with a conscious intention. I personally believe that in dreams the somio-conscious "I" is constituted of a lesser quantity of yet unconscious awareness-endowed agencies, a sleeping "I" which then interacts with fully unconscious agencies via imaginary phenomena that are mostly intended by these unconscious agencies of mind. In contrast, a typical awake "I" would then be a non-manifold unity of agential awareness which is itself constituted from far more otherwise unconscious agencies of mind. It gets difficult in succinctly explain but it does coherently tie in with the view I presented to Patterner here - this regarding how the conscious mind is a convergence of certain aspects of the otherwise unconscious mind.
Maybe tangential, but to me it also accounts for the how and why of the waking "I" dissolving into non-occurrence when falling asleep and then re-manifesting as a somnio-consciousness when we dream: Basically, the waking "I" dissolves, or if one prefers fragments, into its constituent unconscious agencies which are otherwise unified, and thereby transiently vanishes; then, in dreams, the sleeping "I" reemerges but in what most often is a qualitatively lesser form; upon awakening, the waking "I" then is reunited from its constituent unconscious aspects. Because of this the waking "I" can sometimes remember what the sleeping "I" experienced during dreams, but the sleeping "I" most always doesn't have memories of waking "I"'s experiences.
Hoping some of this makes sense, even if disagreed with. At any rate, it's my best interpretation so far.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Want to draw attention to this typically being so only upon our awakening. When we are experiencing the dream first hand, we don't typically at that juncture hold an awareness of the dream being irrational. It merely is; and we find ourselves doing what we do in it.
It could be the case that the reasoning of most dreams is fully metaphorical with meanings understood by at least certain aspects of our unconscious mind but not by our awakened state of rationality. This, for one example, as the surrealists of a century past more or less maintained.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Most definitely. The visual appearance of an imagined or daydreamed house, for example. Imaginings and daydreams are typically under the full sway of conscious volition, but in cases of hallucination, for a different example, a person can see a hallucinated house - difference from the former being that here the unconscious mind controls the imagining without any sway from consciousness's volition. Such that in more extreme mental disorders the consciousness will presume the hallucination to in fact be an integral aspect of the external world. And everthing just stated can readily apply to sensory experiences other than that of vision (smell, taste, touch, or sounds (such as that of hearing voices)).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm thinking that what I've so far stated by in large addresses this question. Its not a self so much as a commonwealth of sometimes disperse agencies of one's unconscious mind conveying information to one as a somnio-consciousness via imaginary - and I take it most likely metaphorical - means.
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To add to this muddle of views and information - and as much as materialists will snide and scoff at this - there also are notions such as that of Jung's collective unconscious. When entertaining such notions, not only can one obtain things such as meaningful synchronicities, but it can also allow for the possibility that at least some dreams in at least some people are influenced by the collective unconscious.
Anecdotal but true: one of my grandmas repeatedly had premonitions via her vivid dreams. Hard to explain even one of them in succinct manners, but the point is she would inform us of what will be, and it would then occur as she predicted from her interpretation of here dreams. One can question or deny the verity of this, but for me, who grew up with her, to claim that all her dreams and predictions were mere coincidence would verge on absurdity.
Maybe this is too far off topic. But I did want to draw attention to the possibility that some dreams might be more than merely the 'irrational activities of one's own physical and fully autonomous brain,' or some such.
What occurs to me, is that you have effectively divided the mind into two distinct sources of agency, the conscious I and the unconscious I. I take this as two distinct I's. And this is compatible with Plato's mind/body dualism, if the unconscious I is the source of bodily desires. Plato describes a thirsty man as being driven by the bodily (unconscious) desire to drink, but the rational (conscious) mind overrules this desire, knowing that the water is not fit for consumption. So there are two competing I's, as described by the op, the bodily I which is fully active in sleep, and the conscious I which is active when awake.
Plato posits a medium between the body (unconscious) and the mind (conscious), which he describes as passion, spirit, or emotion. In his description, in waking life, the ill-tempered person has the bodily (unconscious) desires to rule over the rational (conscious) mind through the means of the passions, while the virtuous person uses the rational (conscious) mind to rule over the bodily (unconscious) desires through the means of the passions. I assume that what you call "agencies of mind" is analogous with Plato's medium, the "passions". These are the emotive forces which produce what the mind creates. Notice that in Plato's description these so-called agencies are the same agencies operating in two different directions. This is the commonly made distinction between top-down and bottom-up.
Quoting javra
I really think that we must look at these as two distinct I's. These are both sources of agency, each with its own sense of self, or "I", and also very much incompatible and inconsistent with each other. So, the question is what happens to the conscious I when you say that it "dissolves", when the person falls asleep. All the agencies remain, yet they are no longer united and directed by the conscious self, they are released into the power of the subconscious I.
This implies that the conscious I is not the real I. It dissolves, and disappears for extended periods of time. That presents a further, very perplexing problem. What is the purpose of the conscious I? The conscious I must itself be a creation of the unconscious I, yet the conscious I is opposed to, and resists the inclinations of the unconscious I, designating the imaginary dreaming activities of the unconscious as not real, when in reality the entire conscious I is itself not the real I. Why has the true (unconscious) I created an elaborate consciousness which understands itself as "I", and actually deceives itself into believing itself to be the real I, thereby suppressing the true (unconscious) I and only allowing it to reign at night? It's as if the true (unconscious) I knows itself to be deficient in its capacity to act, so much so that it creates a false (conscious) I, which lives in an illusory world, its own dream, which is supposed to be the real world, where it has causal power to exercise free will, when it's really only the true (unconscious) I which has an power to exercise free will in the world. And, the unconscious I recognizes that power to be extremely deficient.
Quoting javra
Now we have to question directly, the rationality of the awakened self. The awakened self self-designates itself as the real self, with the real experience, when the sleeping, unconscious self is actually the true self. The awakened self justifies this self-designation through reference to rationality, but its entire logical structure is, at its base, a creation of the unconscious self, and it is essentially a self-deceiving structure created by the unconscious, designed specifically to create a false illusory self. Since the entire conscious self is a self-deceiving structure, created by the true unconscious self, for that very purpose of self-deception, then the validity of all its logic and so-called rationality is called into question as part of that elaborate scheme of self-deception.
Quoting javra
We can look at hallucinations as a breaking down of the self-deception. Notice, that the structure of self-deception which creates the conscious I, is so elaborate, and delicately balanced, that just a slight chemical imbalance, either from drugs or mental illness destabilizes it. These situations undermine that self-deception which constitutes the conscious I, and the person is thrust back toward supporting oneself on the real I, the unconscious, which is totally inconsistent with the created self-deceptive conscious I.
Quoting javra
I believe, that once we break down the entire conscious experience as an exercise in self-deception, we have almost nothing to start on as a solid, concrete foundation for rationality. This allows for virtually any possibility as the true reality. I would think that the only true approach to reality is to determine the fundamental elements out of which the illusion of the conscious self is produced. This would be found in the activity of dreaming. The entire conscious I, and the supposed reality of being awake, is like an elaborate dream, which has produced its own rules of coherency allowing for its persistence.
I take from having read your post that by "I"s you intend to specify selfhoods of agential awareness. As I previously mentioned, what i myself intended as reference to the term "I" was simply a "first-person point of view". An individual plant is certainly a selfhood of agential awareness (plants are known to be minimally aware of sunlight and gravity, and will grow their leaves toward the light and their roots toward gravity, thereby exhibiting agency; this in conjunction with an ability to act and react to otherness as a selfhood), but I find it highly non-credible that a plant will have a first-person point of view, aka an "I", as vertebrates, at minimum humans, are known to have: i.e., that which we term conscious awareness.
Thus interpreted, for various reasons (some of which I'll try to specify), I don't interpret the unconscious mind as having its own non-manifold unity of a first-person point of view; in other words, its own "I". For starters, in dreams wherein one interacts with multiple others, each other can very well be inferred to have its own, transiently occurring, dream-state first-person point of view, its own "I" - and these in some dreams more than others can conflict not only with oneself but with themselves as others relative to one's somnio-conscious self. Each with its own perspectives and volition.
Notice that I'm not claiming it metaphysically impossible for certain aspects of one's unconscious to unify in what could be inferred as a secondary agency-endowed conscious awareness. I take it that in certain mental disorders, such as that of alien hand syndrome, this in fact occurs to some extent. But I don't find reason to uphold that the unconscious mind is in and of itself a unified conscious awareness, an "I", of which we are unconscious of.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Though I approach the subject matter differently and make use of different terminology, I can very much relate to this, yes. What we experience as pangs of emotion - say pangs of envy which we denounce as improper, or else pangs of attraction toward another which we want to not occur, etc. - are certainly not of themselves the conscious "I" which is antagonistic in its views and volition to these "passions". Yet each such emotion shall be aware of the contextual realities we are consciouslly aware of; they will each try to pushwardly drive us toward certain actions via their own volitions; and they typically can only be dispelled via the passions of the conscious "I" per se to so dispel them. All this unless one willfully converges with the pang of envy to then, and only then, become oneself envious. Or else with the pang of attraction; etc. At such junctures, I take it that the conscious "I" converges into a novel non-manifold unity with what formerly was the pang of emotion.
It gets to be a very complex topic though.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting. I take it that here and what follows you found what is real based on that which is permanent rather than transient. But then I don't find reason to presume that the agencies of awareness of the unconscious mind are themselves in any way permanent either. Although its one of multiple possible perspectives, this is where I find the Buddhist notion of no-self can quite validly fit it: there is no permanent self anywhere at any time, eternally so or otherwise.
Having stated that, I find that the ontic reality of the first-person point of view is as real as anything real can get. That "I as a first-person point of view am (occur) when in any way aware" - although maybe not technically impossible to be wrong - is certainly incontrovertible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There's different ways of addressing this question. When one strictly focuses on physicality and maybe ponders why consciousness evolved (say among animals, with living sponges being amongst the simplest lifeforms in the animal kingdom / domain - and certainly lacking a conscious mind), I can't find any discernible reason whatsoever. There can be, however, metaphysical explanations for this - which, obviously, will be contingent on the metaphysics in question. I'll use Platinus as an example. If the One ontically is a fixed and unmovalbe end of being, and tf the grand telos to being is therefore to eventually become one with the One, then the evolution of consciousness will be derived from this premise to be a stepping stone toward this very finale. Of course things could get far more complex, but, in short, consciousness can be viewed as a manifestation of a cosmic will toward unity of being. And it's only in this latter type of perspective that I can find any meaningful explanation for consciousness's occurrence and purpose.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So, again, as previously expressed, I don't view things in this way. But in terms of consciousness's functioning and interactions with the unconscious mind given that consciousness currently is: most of what we intentionally, voluntarily do will be done without any deliberation on our part between possible alternatives. In all such instances we are consciously in fully accord with our unconscious processes of mind - we in essence become fully unified volitionally with the whole of our unconscious mind. In the best of times, we term it being in the zone, or else having flow. There are times, however, when our unconscious presents to us two or more alternative courses of action or of thought. Sometimes we choose not to choose between them (thereby allowing our unconscious to make the decision for us) and sometimes the choices we are aware of are peripheral to that we give primary attention to (here can can sense ourselves to make the choice while it remains quite conceivable that the determination was in fact made by aspects of our unconscious mind into which we willfully inhere volitionally). Still, there can be distinct moments in life were we find ourselves at a crossroad of alternatives between which we pupusfully deliberate, and the choice we consciously made is then pursued by the totality of our mind (and body). Only in the latter can we possibly deem ourselves to have metaphysically viable free will in that which is chosen as conscious beings.
OK, that all briefly outlined, we as consciousnesses do not create the alternatives which we as consciousnesses are aware of. These competing alternatives for what will be are all (at least typically) brought about by our unconscious portions of mind. My further interpretation is that our unconscious mind comes to an uncertainty as to how to travel onward and, so, presents to us as a conscious awareness these alternative courses. In essence, our unconscious volition is no longer unified but fragments into different volitions regarding what should be done - each alternative being in effect what a fragment of the unconscious believes to be the optimal path. We as conscious awareness then vote on which path to take, and our unconscious (typically) then accepts our vote as a determination of which alternative is to be pursued at expense of all others which then become denied. This is (or at least nicely conforms with) the terminology of Romanian Christian Orthodoxy wherein free will is termed "liber arbitru", the free arbiter - such that we as conscious awareness, as the "I", are the free arbiter.
At any rate, whenever we choose between alternatives, this with or without free will, we necessarily interact with the disparate volitions of our unconscious mind so as to resolved disagreements therein. (Yes, sometimes ultimatums and the like are presented to us from without, but even then we only become aware of, ultimately, what our own unconscious mind makes available to us.)
So this is certainly one reason for there to be a consciousness embedded within a total mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
:smile: Getting into the metaphysics of rationality can be a very complicated issue. And I've already written my fair share for one post. But I'll say that - to here lean on Nietzsche's terminology for a bit - though in sometimes utterly different ways, the coherent and thereby orderly reasoning of Apollonian thought is of equally value for us as is the creative trial and error approaches of the Dionysian mindset.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To my mind it could be rationally enough explainable in an Apollonian sense, but it requires a metaphysics drastically different from that of materialism. Contrast, for example, the Jungian notion of a cosmically collective unconscious with the ancient Stoic notion of an anima mundi. Terms (and their detailed implications) aside, it's pretty much the same thing to me.
Well, I guess I misunderstood you then. But you did say:
Quoting javra
That is what led me to think you were proposing a duality of I's.
Quoting javra
The unconscious agent can be known to be permanent, because it is there all the time, as the cause of dreams in sleep, and as the cause of the pangs you talked about, along with other emotions, when the person is awake.
Quoting javra
I don't think we can draw this conclusion validly. Evolution, and life in general consists of a lot of trial and error. The errors are a sort of dead end process which is not consistent with success. So if we assume that there is an ultimate goal or purpose, we cannot automatically conclude that the way of being which is current is necessarily conducive to the ultimate end. It could be an erroneous 'dead end' way. This lack of necessity, which is involved with teleological relations in general, makes teleology very difficult.
Quoting javra
I think, perhaps that the unconscious has actually created the consciousness (through evolution), to help it deal with this uncertainty which you say that it experiences. I think that the conscious I is like a second I, a completely different perspective which the unconscious has created in order to give it another way of looking at things. The essence of this way of looking at things is "the point of view" which you described.
The point of view is the observer, the conscious mind is primarily an observer. The true agent of creativity, and activity in general, is the unconscious. However, the mode of agency of the unconscious is principally trial and error. And, without an observational perspective there is no way to discern failure from success in any particular activities. The point of view is required for judgement. The observational perspective is based in a complex memory capable of taking in all sorts of happenings internal and external. This observational perspective, point of view, or consciousness, has been created to provide what is required to make judgements concerning failure and success.
Quoting javra
This supports my proposal that the conscious mind is an observer only. It does not even provide options for judgement, it only observes them, memorizes them, etc.. What actually resolves disagreement within oneself? The conscious mind provides all sorts of information, to facilitate judgement, but what part of the person is actually responsible for judgement?
For example, I awaken from a dream, and after a brief moment of reflection I make the judgement, that was just a dream. Prior to this the dream was judged (in some way) as reality. So my conscious mind has created a sort of narrative, a history, and as soon as I awaken I reflect briefly on these memories, and assure myself it was just a dream. I suggest that it is not the conscious mind which makes this judgement, because it doesn't even need that judgement. The conscious mind was never a part of the dream, and when I wake up not from a dream I have no question of whether this is reality or not. The conscious does not judge whether what it experiences is reality. So in actuality, the unconscious was in the dream, and it gets reassured by the consciousness that it was just a dream, and it makes the judgement that it was just a dream.
OK. I did however clearly express "the somnio-conscious 'I'". I don't find how consciousness and somnio-consciousness can co-occur to thereby present a duality of I's. I, for example, can still vividly recall certain dreams and nightmares I've had decades ago: to me, I am the same I I was in these dreams and nightmares as a first-person point of view (with differences in my empirical ego, contexts, etc., of course): same first-person perspective regarding otherness, same affinities and aversions, etc. Hence, to me, a continuity rather than a duality of I-ness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I can see what you mean, but I myself don't subscribe to the unconscious mind being an agent (a unified agency). Again, I find reason to believe that the unconscious mind is constituted of a plurality of sometimes discordant agencies, themselves always changing. As one example, when awake and experiencing a pang of envy one can at the same time likewise experience one's conscience influencing one against becoming envious oneself: here there will then be two distinct agencies that are antagonistic to each other, each emerging from one's unconsciousness, each attempting to influence one's future course of action or of personal being. This as one example of how the unconscious mind can well consist of a plurality of discordant agencies.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course. I did say that it can get very complex. If free will is to be upheld, for example, there's always choices between, for one example, further sustaining and growing one's (dualistic) ego at the expense of others' well-being and becoming more selfless in one's mindset and doings. Assuming that selflessness as an ideal is good and that selfishness as an ideal is bad, many will willfully chose the latter - this even if something like absolutely selfless being (which can conform to many a neoplatonist notion of the One) were to be the ultimate telos of being. But all this is simplified examples regarding the complexity I had in mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not intending to engage in debates about this. What you here say indeed reminds me well enough of many a Hindu interpretation of atman, "witness consciousness". Yet, myself, I'll heavily lean toward this same consciousness being that which actively judges which alternative is optimally beneficial and should be manifested - this at expense of all other alternatives, i.e. of all other possible courses of action or of manifestation which then become rejected - and thereby chooses. In my own understanding, then, the agent (the conscious mind) always holds responsibility for the choices it itself makes, this in accord to its own judgments.
Yet, again, in this I don't intend to insinuate a division, else a duality, of mind. As per the iceberg metaphor, to me its the same total thing; only that some aspects of it as a commonwealth of agencies converge into consciousness and others don't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't know. Doubtless that the unconscious mind influences consciousness in many a way. But, at the same time, I find that the conscious mind can via its judgments choose to believe in many a weird thing. To my shock, having partaken of this forum (and the previous one) for some years, I've learned that some conscious minds will for example choose to believe in solipsism - such that what we know to be our waking states of being they interpret as also being a dream produced by their individual mind (sometimes reduced to their individual brain). For starters, it's a rather egotistic, selfish, else self-centered means of interpreting the world at large, but all the same it can happen.
The issue of duality is not a matter of how the conscious I relates to its conscious experience, and how the conscious I remembers a dream. Those ar both part of the wakened experience. It is a duality between the way that the conscious I remembers the dream, and the way that the somnio-conscious I exists, as itself, in the dream.
If we insist that the only true "I" is the conscious I, then we need to account for the appearance of a somnio-conscious I in the dreamworld. We might say that the I in the dream is just an illusion, as we say about the entire dream itself, but as I explained in the other post, it's more logical to designate the I in the dream as the true I, and the conscious I as really the illusion. This is because we cannot maintain two completely distinct I's, and we must designate the I which underlies all our experience, both sleeping and awake, as the true I. As a result, we need to conclude that the conscious I which separates itself from the somnio-conscious I, with thoughts like "that was just a dream", is actually producing an illusion that it is the true I, when in reality the deeper I which is the somnio-conscious I is the true I.
Quoting javra
Don't you consider the living being itself, as a unified body, with all the organs, heart, lungs, brain, etc., working together in a unified way, to be itself "an agent". If all the parts of the body act together in a unified way, and the body itself acts in a way which can be said to be the act of an agent, shouldn't we conclude that even if the acts of that body are unconscious acts (dreaming for example) they are the acts of "an agent", referring to unified agency.
That the unconscious can consist of discordant agencies does not need to be argued, it is clearly evident from the fact that the consciousness sets itself apart from the unconscious, and claims itself to be the true I, thereby suppressing the feelings and images (dreams) of the unconscious, designating them as not rational and not real. Therefore features of discordance are very real, and we do not adequately understand the reasons for them. The argument which Plato mounted against the theory that the soul is a harmony deals with this issue. If the soul is a harmony then any degree of discordance would negate the harmony leaving the being lifeless. The conclusion was that the soul is more like the cause of harmony, and discordance accounts for illness, as the soul is less than perfect in its attempts to create and maintain the harmony which are the organized parts.
Quoting javra
This leads directly toward the complexity you mentioned. I agree that the conscious mind looks at evidence, ideas, principles, and actually makes judgements. And this, the act of making a judgement, is a sort of act. There is a problem of complexity though, which Plato brought up in his arguments against sophistry, a problem which Augustine much more thoroughly analyzed. In his attack on the sophistic principle that virtue is knowledge, consequently the idea that virtue can be taught, as some sophists claimed, Plato demonstrated that a person can make a rational knowledgeable judgement as to what is good, yet still act in a contrary way. This indicates that the rational conscious mind does not have "the final say". The rational judgement of the conscious mind is not the actual cause of an individual's actions, as is demonstrated by a propensity of some people to act contrary to their conscious judgements.
This is partly the reason why Augustine divided the mind into three parts, memory, reason, and will. And as Aquinas later pointed out, "will" must ultimately be designated as free, even from reasoned judgement, to account for this reality that people act contrary to their better judgement. This is consist with what I present above, that the conscious rational I is not the true "I" of agency. The conscious I deceives itself into believing itself to be the true I by not properly understanding the real evidence and truth that it is just an illusory I created by the true underlying unconscious I. That the conscious I moves toward contradicting the true I, and negating it as unreal, is an indication of discordance, illness.
Having read your entire post, do you then find it fair for me to characterize the duality you are addressing as a duality between an illusory conscious I-ness and a real somnio-conscious I-ness? And if it is a fair interpretation, that you then interpret the real somio-conscious I-ness to occur while the waking conscious I-ness is also occurring only that the former is unconsciously occurring relative to the latter? Or is this not quite right? If its not correct, then I still dont quite understand what do you intend to express by duality of I-ness.
Maybe my addressing the notion of agency might better illustrate my current best understanding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The notion of agent is to me not at all simple, such that that referred to as the (first-person) agent can readily change within different contexts of contemplation, but I do find the notion coherent despite these complexities.
To first define agent, to me it is any (at least relatively unified) identity which holds agency. In turn, also in keeping with common place notions, agency to me is the ability to accomplish (more explicitly to accomplish some end) and hence to do or undergo something - thereby meaning the capacity, condition, or state of exerting power (power here in the strict sense of ability to do or undergo something) and, therefore, the capacity, condition, or state of engaging in actions (i.e. in this context, of intentionally doing things).
One could differ as to the definition of agency and thereby of agent (i.e., that which holds agency) and if so, Id very much like to know how but for now granting this definition of agent:
Yes, a total self (to include both its physical and psychical/mental aspects), else a total organism thus understood, can well be construed to be an agent per se in many a context. Yet in other contexts such as those philosophical contexts that seek to address the possibility of libertarian free will the total organism cannot possibility be the agent in question for one example, because the alternatives between which it as agent chooses can very well completely be aspects of its own total self's discordant agencies of (unconscious) mind. In these latter contexts, then, the addressed agent is what William James terms the pure ego (the knower of ones own total self) rather than the empirical ego (the total self which is known).
I-ness, in turn, can likewise address the total self (e.g., I am tall, hence tallness as a constituent aspect of my very I-ness, this being contingent on the physiology one as a pure ego knows oneself to be as an empirical ego) which, maybe importantly, of itself as total self pivots on the occurrence of the pure ego which is so aware of its empirical ego. Else, I-ness can strictly address the pure ego per se (e.g., that I-ness which can validly affirm I am aware of my body or thoughts; else: I am joyful rather than sad, I am psychologically at ease rather than upset, etc.; else: I choose X rather than Y or Z; all these here then being either activities which the pure ego of itself engages in or states of being pertaining to the pure ego of itself). I find that this subject can indeed get very complex. But when I expressed I-ness as a first-person point of view I thereby intended to address the pure ego as agent this rather than the empirical ego, i.e. the total self of which the pure ego is aware of, as agent.
Having roughly addressed what I reference by the term agent (again, that which holds agency as previously defined), Ill again affirm that I interpret a total human (or else relatively developed; e.g. birds, mammals, etc.) mind to be an almost literal commonwealth of agencies which are sometimes partly discordant and sometimes fully unified in at the very least that which they intend as agencies. It most certainly wont sound right due to the connotations which weve been habituated to understand by the term agent (this being one reason why I find the need for new terminology to address this in my own philosophical endeavors) but, when looking at the definition of agent that I previously provided, one could then appraise each and every distinct agency of a total mind to be a distinct though transiently occurring agent, replete with its own pure ego of sorts that apprehends and reacts to at least certain phenomena.
So construed as a commonwealth of agencies, I again take it that some such then converge in the non-manifold unity of the conscious I as pure ego this in waking states of being. And that when asleep and dreaming, the same convergence of certain agencies of the commonwealth of total mind occurs so as to produce the non-manifold unity of the somnio-conscious I as pure ego.
Just as the conscious I as pure ego dissolves upon falling asleep, so too does (I take it) the somnio-conscious I as pure ego dissolve into the various agencies of the total mind in-between periods of REM sleep such that it is reunified as a dreaming pure ego in each period of REM sleep. Upon awakening, the unified pure ego of dreaming states can then become further unified with other agencies of a total mind such that it once again remembers waking states of former being while also (sometimes more than other times) remembering some aspects of what the sleeping pure ego experienced during the dreams of the night.
In so construing, I then interpret a continuity in the pure ego as agent both in the pure ego of waking states from one day to the next and in the pure ego which occurs during dreams in between awakened states. Id dont find reason to believe that the pure ego of dreams continues to occur unconsciously while the pure ego of awakened states occurs. This such that I find the conscious I as pure ego to be no more real or else illusory than the somnio-conscious I as pure ego, and vice versa. It's just that the conscious I as pure ego interacts with the world whereas the somnio-conscious I as pure ego interacts with various unconscious agencies of its own total mind.
Also, because I look upon a total human mind as a total commonwealth of agencies, I dont find reason to presume that there is a division between the conscious pure ego as one agent which interacts with its unconscious mind as a then separate agent in total. There can occasionally be found certain interactions between the conscious mind (the conscious pure ego as I-ness) and certain aspects of its unconscious mind (with one such example being consciousness's interaction with its conscience), but I don't find evidence for the unconscious mind being of itself a unified, and hence singular, agent in some way divided from the conscious mind as agent.
I could continue, but Ive written a bunch as it is and I dont know the extent, if any, to which youd find significant disagreement with what Ive so far expressed.
In short, though, yes, the total person as a total self can well be considered an agent, but that is not the agent I was referencing when addressing the I as a first-person point of view (the latter instead being what William James termed the pure ego).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Aye, it can indeed get very complex, agreed. To my mind at least, consciousness and unconsciousness are at all times interconnected, hence never in any way divided, and perpetually influence each other via top-down processes (formal causation in Aristotelian terms) and bottom-up processes (material causation in Aristotelian terms (which is not to be confused with what we today construe to be mater, as I so far believe you very well know [Aristotle, for example, gives the example of letters being the material cause of syllables (for syllable are made up of letters) or else the example of parts (say the ideas from which a paradigm is constituted) being the material cause of the whole (here, the paradigm of, say, biological evolution itself]).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Id say that while conscious decisions will typically have a final sway (rather than "say", here in the sense of dictatorial authority) over what the unconscious mind proceeds to do, it can often enough be the case that the unconscious mind vetoes the consciously made decisions with a good, and relatively extreme, example of this being a heroin addict who consciously chooses to no longer take heroin no matter what but (even when construing this choice to be that of libertarian free will on the part of the conscious pure ego) then is compelled in extreme manners by the unconscious mind in any number of ways to continue so taking despite the conscious choice made.
Notwithstanding, the only chance a heroin addict has of no longer so being is to repeatedly make the same conscious choice to no longer so be - this until the consciously made choice at last has the ability (the power) to convince the majority of the unconscious mind to so no longer take in heroin despite the transient unpleasant consequences of not so taking. Which is to say that, to me, consciousness still has a significant role to play as agency relative to the total mind's doings.
I think that this is exactly what I meant to express, so you understand well.
Quoting javra
I believe that the qualification of "to accomplish some end" is too restrictive to make a proper definition of "agent" or "agency". It implies that the agent must have some knowledge of what it is doing, before it acts, and acts toward accomplishing something. This would exclude the possibility of an agent which simply does random acts. Further, when something exerts power, in an agential way, I don't believe it is necessary that the thing exerting power must be "intentionally doing things", in the common sense of "intentionally".
I can exemplify this problem in the following way. When a human being, as an agent, acts, we commonly distinguish between effects which are intentional, and effects which are unintentional, the latter being commonly known as accidents. And, I think it is conceivable that there could be an agent which acts, in a trial and error sort of way, a way which we could say is completely accidental, without having any intentional end.
This way of looking at things requires an analysis of the separation between the means and the end. The end is commonly known as "the thing intended", and the means is "the act itself", which is intended to bring about the end. I think we need to consider the possibility of an agent which has as its intention, simply to act. This would mean that in this case the means and the end are one and the same, but there is absolutely no specificity to restrict the act (the intent is to act freely). The agent simply has as its intention, to act, and this allows that the agent acts randomly.
This is why I talk about the separation between the observer and the agent, because this perspective allows for a true model of trial and error, where "the thing intended" is unknown to the agent acting. The agent then acts randomly, without any knowledge of what the effects of its acts might be, and the observer notes the effects. But this produces a very pronounced problem, and that concerns the nature of judgement. If the agent acts, and the observer observes, and we are modeling trial and error, then we need a judge to pass judgement as to success or failure. The need to pass judgement is the reason why we always include "the thing intended", "the end" in our models of agency.
But as Plato explains in "The Republic", the good, as the thing intended, cannot be said to be a feature of knowledge. "The good" itself always escapes the epistemic constraints as to what constitutes "knowledge". This puts the judge in a very difficult position. The judge must assume that there is an end, speculate as to its nature, and pass judgement on the act, based on a comparison between observation and an assumed end which does not obtain the status of known as the end.
Quoting javra
So these two roughly correspond with what I described as the agent, (pure ego), and the observer (empirical ego). My representation has the empirical ego as the knower, and the pure ego as the random acter. The issue is the unity of the two, which is the existence of knowledge, judgement. In my representation, the pure ego would have no knowledge inherent to it, the empirical ego has knowledge in the form of observational memory, but no real principles by which the unity, "the total self" is actually known. This is due to a lack of understanding as to why (the end, or good for which) the pure ego acts. So from the perspective of the empirical ego, the knowing self, the pure ego may just as well be acting in a completely random way, because the good, or end for which it acts is completely hidden.
Quoting javra
You're right, that doesn't seem right to me. You break down the animal, or creature into a multitude of "agencies". By your definition of "agent", an agent works to accomplish something. This means it must have a goal, or end in mind which it is tasking toward. So we cannot divide the animal into distinct agencies because the distinct parts don't really work toward accomplishing anything specific, and known to them. They just act in a way which we describe as purposeful, and we say that they have a function. But that's just us, projecting our perspective on to them, and we cannot really say that there is any specific thing intended, as the goal or end, by those distinct agencies.
This is the difficulty which arises from your definition, which I explained above. To say that a thing has a purpose or function is to place its activity into a larger context, the activity as means, is related to the end, which is a distinctly larger context, a sort of whole. So when a bunch of agents act together toward a common end, we set the end as a property of the collective, making the collective a whole by virtue of having that common end. However, the parts, the individual and distinct agents, may or may not have an individual goal or end which they apprehend as a unique and specific goal which one works toward.
In a collective of people for example, each works toward one's own end apprehended by that person, without necessarily knowing the larger whole of the collective. Then in the group of agencies within a living body, we assign a purpose or function to each part, though the part does not know its own purpose and act toward accomplishing it. And, we do not necessarily know the purpose of the whole by which we assign purpose to the parts, as this may be speculative. That is because we would then have to put the individual living being into the context of a larger whole, the human community, or life in general, to be able to assign to it a specific purpose. But when we take this larger context we lose track of exactly what the individual part's purpose might be, and the person's actions start to look more and more like random choices.
Quoting javra
So this relates back to the way we make judgements. We can look at bottom-up causation as unconscious, random acts, because we do not fit them into a larger whole, or we can look at them as having a purpose within a larger whole, assume the larger whole to be the conscious whole, and claim that this perspective is top-down. Of course we see purpose in the acts, so we are inclined to judge the the top-down perspective. However, as explained above, the larger purpose remains elusive, and cannot be identified in this way.
This forces a second look at the situation. What I am arguing, is that when we take a good, true look, we see that the conscious is just a small part of the larger whole living being, which includes the unconscious. And, the unconscious is really a much larger part, and more representative of the larger whole. This forces us to invert our perspective. The true top-down causation is from the unconscious to the conscious, while the causation of the conscious, as a small part of the larger whole, is actually a bottom up causation, the small part relative to the larger whole.
Your post clarifies your views for me some. We do hold a lot of disagreements when we get into the details.
You maintain that agency will not always be purposeful due to it sometimes being random, giving trial and error processes as an example. And you introduce the reality of accidental doings to this same effect.
As to accidental doings say, accidentally knocking over a vase in contrast to intentionally so doing this to us will always be relative to what the conscious agent as pure ego intended. So, for example, if I as a conscious mind intended to knock over your vase to peeve you off, you will hold me accountable for the doing, and take action accordingly. But if you presume or else know that my knocking over your vase was not what I as a conscious mind, as a pure ego, intended, then you might find reason to not hold me responsible for the loss of your vase.
Accidental doings can themselves occur for different potential (end-driven) reasons: it could have been unconsciously intended even if not consciously intended (with slips of the tongue as one example of this); else, just as the outcome of a basketball game can be deemed relatively random prior to the game's commencement despite all agents involved playing with clear intentions to have their own team win, so too can an accidental doing conceivably be the outcome of a multitude of discordant agencies within the same total mind. Neither of these, however, refute the purposiveness of each individual agency of a total mind concerned.
As to trial and error processes, I can so far only disagree with such being purposeless. On one hand, to engage in trial and error processes without an end pursued would potentially incur sometimes maybe grave costs despite not holding any benefits of which any agency might be aware of. So doing would then be evolutionarily unfit. And so it would not then be as common an activity in lifeforms as it currently is. On the other hand, whenever we as conscious humans engage in trial and error processes it is (as far as I know) always with a purpose in mind. Example: a person wants to get rich, this being the end pursued, so they might engage in trial and error processes of finding gold in different geological locations. I venture I could find, or at least validly infer, an end pursued for any particular trial and error process example you might provide this granting that it pertains to the activities of life.
While I grant that our unconscious doings might at times seem random to us, I can so far find no reason to entertain that any intention-devoid agency can occur. I acknowledge the possible reality of randomness in relation to agency at large, but will deem it to be the outcome of discordant agencies, each intention-endowed, whose interactions results in outcomes unintended by any. This be the agencies individual humans or else the individual agencies of a singular total human mind.
Maybe we are at a standstill at this point? Our perspective do seem to hinge on this issue regarding the possibility of random (else, intention-devoid) agency.
The point was not to refute the purposefulness of individual agencies, but to question how we identify and locate the purpose or intention. If there is a group of agencies which work together, in a united way, it is not necessary that any one of them knows "the thing intended" by its actions. The goal or end to the agent's actions might be something completely outside the actions of the agent. This is a matter of how we identify the purpose of an action, by placing the action within a larger context. What gives the action its purpose is the larger context, so that the purpose of an agent's actions are not necessarily something which is derived from the agent itself. Therefore we cannot accurately say that the agent is trying to accomplish something.
Accordingly, we cannot accurately describe acts of intentional agency as acts motivated toward accomplishing something. And, an agent may act in a completely accidental way, not intending to accomplish anything. This means that we cannot exclude the possibility that an act of agency may be fundamentally accidental.
Quoting javra
I agree that it is impossible for an act of trial and error to be purposeless, that would be contrary to the meaning, therefore self-contradictory. The point is that the purpose may be something completely independent of the agent making the trial and error act. If we assume that the observer in the trial and error act is separate from the acter, this becomes very evident.
Suppose I assign to you the task of turning over all the rocks in a specific area, because I am looking for something underneath one. You, the acter only know the specified act, without any knowledge of what constitutes success or failure, only I, the observer, knows. We can take what that analogy demonstrates, further, and assume an agent which has been endowed with the capacity to act "freely", in any way possible, instead of being assigned a specific task. This free agent simply acts randomly, without any goals or intentions, and like the example of you turning over rocks while I observe, it has no specific idea, of the "intention" of its acts, inherent within itself, but it is being observed, and its actions are being judged by the observer in relation to some principles of success and failure.
The trial and error actions of the agent in this scenario, are from the perspective of the observer, very purposeful. But from the perspective of the agent there is absolutely no purpose for its actions. If the agent allows any sort of purpose to direct its actions then it is not fulfilling its true purpose, as assigned by the observer, and the trial and error experiment would be corrupted.
What I propose, is that to have a truly objective trial and error process, the purpose must be separated from the agent in this way. If the agent grasps the intention in any way, this would contaminate the trial and error process by guiding the agent's actions in a subjective way.
Quoting javra
This is a correct account of trial and error. However, there is another factor to consider. Since error is highly possible, and it could be injurious or even fatal to the acting agent, it is beneficial to the one proceeding in a trial and error process, to have someone else carry out the actions, and simply observe the other. So when we separate the agent from the observer in this way, trial and error takes on a completely different appearance. There is a fundamental form of deception which the observer must impose on the agent, to withhold information from the agent, concerning the intent of the agent's actions. True objective trial and error requires a separation between agent and observer such that the agent does not know the intentions of the observer.
Quoting javra
What I am suggesting is that randomness is a necessary aspect of true trial and error. The higher the degree of randomness there is in the actions of the agent, the higher the quality of the trial and error process. This is due to the nature of the trial and error process. To be a true trial and error process, no foreknowledge (constituting prejudice) can be assumed. Since no foreknowledge can be assumed, then there can be no relevant guidance provided to the agent.
Further, this implies that "intention-endowed" actions are not necessarily guided in any particular way. That is due to the fundamental deception described above, which forms the basis for true objective trial and error. The separation between the observer and the agent, which allows for the occurrence of true trial and error, also implies that the agents act with no apprehension of the intention. And although the agents are "intention-endowed" they are not guided or directed in their action by that intention, being intentionally deprived of that information by the fundamental deception.
Yes, we again don't see eye to eye on this. I for one don't find reason to assume the observer is separate from the actor (here specifically as pertains to the act of choice making). To me, the pure ego as observer (e.g., that which is aware of alternatives) and the pure ego as actor (e.g., that which chooses) are one and the same (this irrespective of the metaphysics one entertains for the choice between alternatives taken).
In the example you provide, on the other hand, I as the actor must for whatever (I uphold end-driven) reason first comply with your request if I am to at all act as you wish on your behalf. Once I so comply, then my actions will themselves all be end-driven - this not by your want to engage in trial and error actions whose end is unknown to me - but by my own then actively occurring want to successfully end up so "turning over all the rocks in a specific area". This in itself then being the end which teleologically drives, and thereby motivates, my actions.
So, at least in the example provided, I still find all activities to be end-driven and thereby purposeful.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you then suggesting that intentioning can occur in the complete absence of any intent? Such that X can consciously intend some outcome Z despite not being motivated by any intent/end - an intent/end which thereby equates to Z's successful actualization at some future point in time?
No biggie if we end up disagreeing at this point. But, again, I don't find reason to entertain what you've so far suggested.
The reason to assume a separation between actor and observer is that this separation is purposeful. The purpose is as I explained, it provides for a more objective trial and error process, by separating the judge who holds the principles for judgement (good), from the agent. This removes prejudice from the agent's choice of actions allowing that the agent will explore all possibilities, thus enabling true objective trial and error.
Do you agree that trial and error forms a significant part of a living being's activities, and that the process we know as evolution demonstrates a large scale trial and error process?
Quoting javra
This is a good point to consider, and I think that the example is applicable. In the way you explained the example, you simply have a desire to turn over all the rocks, and that itself is your end. From my perspective that so-called end is just the means to a further end, to look for something which is assumed to be under one of them. As Aristotle pointed out in his analysis of ends and means, each specific end can be viewed as the means to a further end, and this produces an infinite regress if we do not designate an ultimate, final end, which he named as happiness. So this activity of turning over rocks is like your "happiness", you are fulfilling what you perceive as your ultimate end, you apprehend no reason for this act, or even doubt the possibility that there might be a further reason which you are unaware of, therefore you are satisfied in your acts, and you are "happy" fulfilling your desire.
However, like I explained, true understanding of "purpose" requires that we put the activity of the part into a larger context, and this means into a relation to other parts and the whole. So, in this respect, your understanding of your goal, the end which motivates you, is actually very deficient and incomplete. Your actions of turning over rocks, though this makes you very happy appearing to be the only thing desired, are completely meaningless, unless we put those actions into the context of the observer, and the judge who is judging them in relation to a further end. This larger context gives your actions meaning.
Now, the issue we need to consider is this relationship between you and I in the example. In this example, I am somehow able to set you about, in your motivated actions, which are actually carried out for the purpose of my goals, without you knowing that you are doing this for me, therefore a further end. So, I somehow communicate to you, what you must do, and motivate you to do it, for my purposes, without you even being aware of my existence as an agent myself, with intention.
Then we can apply this to the dream/awake relationship. We commonly believe that the dreamer is set free to go about the random process of dreaming, so that the dreamer would be like you, randomly turning over rocks, except given a wider parameter of activity, to dream up virtually anything. And, in this understanding, the dreamer is unaware of the conscious observer, who has set the dreamer to this task, so the dreamer does not realize that this is actually being done to facilitate a further end of the conscious mind.
So here's the key point. In my description, of the relationship between conscious awareness, and the dreaming unconscious, I've revealed that the common understanding is really a misunderstand, and we need to invert this relationship to understand what is actually the case. In reality, the unconscious is the true observer, who sets the consciousness to the task of performing random acts. And in sleep, the unconsciousness is processing the observations, allowing the conscious only glimpses of this process through dreams. This provides the consciousness a glimpse of the reality of the unconscious, but not enough for the consciousness to understand why it behaves as it does, and the true meaning in its activities.
As demonstrated by the example, there must be some relationship between the unconscious observer/judge, who sets the agent to work, in order for the consciousness to receive its marching orders from the unconscious, but this relation is kept to a minimum to maximize the objectivity of the trial and error process. So the consciousness receives different urges and motivations from the unconscious, having very little understanding of the true meaning of its actions, and why it is doing what it does.
Quoting javra
I am suggesting that if we maintain a separation between means and end, i.e., the act and the desired result of the act, then X can consciously intend the act without being motivated by the end. Further, if we assume two distinct types of agency, one which communicates motivations to act, and the other which carries out the physical acts, then the agent which is motivated toward physical actions can consciously intend these actions without knowing the intended end of the actions. And this is not to say that there is no further end because in this scenario the agency which communicates the motivation to act is simply not revealing the further end, to the one which carries out the physical act.
Quoting javra
Do you agree that trial and error forms a significant part of the activity of life on earth, in a general way? If you agree that evolution is a process based in trial and error, then you might see the need to determine the nature of the trial and error process, and what principles are required to produce a true and objective trial and error process.
Im having a hard time with your post. This in large part due to the quantity of disagreements I have with what you've written. Ill do my best to reply, but if the quantity and severity of our disagreements persist, Im intending to let things be as they are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes to the first portion, but I have the suspicion that the phrase trial and error means different things to us.
To me, trial and error is a method of problem-solving, such that the solving of the problem is its entailed end. It also, in all non-metaphorical senses and applications, strictly applies to sentience: it can only be sentience that tries and sentience that determines failure from success. Trial and error in no way overlaps with unintended, and hence accidental, discovery: if one, for example, accidentally discovers a valuable jewel underneath ones sofa while cleaning ones room, there was no trial and error involved in the process; on the other hand, trial and error, because it always seeks an end, is always purposeful, intentional, such that when the problem is solved by this approach, its so being solved is not an unintended accident. For emphasis, although when, if ever, the problem gets resolved via the trial and error processes will be uncertain up until the time of resolution, and although many forms of trial and error utilize haphazard heuristics in the trials toward this end of resolving a problem, the resolution to the problem will never be unintended, hence will never be an accidental discovery in the sense just specified (unless one engages in equivocations of what accident signifies). Lastly, neither can a sentient beings engaging in trial and error processes be devoid of observation (for then one would not be able to discern success from error) nor can it be devoid of doing (for trial and error is itself an intentional doing seeking to resolve some problem) such that the agent, here the sentient being, which so engages in trial and error must be both doer and observer (in no particular order) at the same time in order to so successfully engage in the activity.
As to evolution being a trial and error process, I then find this to be a fully metaphorical application of the phrasing. Evolution is not a sentient being; and thereby cannot as process of itself intentionally problem-solve anything, much including via any trial and error means. More bluntly, what problem might evolution be intending to solve? This is not to then claim that evolution is not in large part a teleological process, but evolution is not the type of teleological process which applies to the intentioning of individual agents (and only to the latter can trying and failing and then trying again, this with a set goal in mind, apply).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In an Aristotelian model of things, optimal eudemonia (what youve termed happiness) is everybodys ultimate end at all times and not just for he who has agreed to uncover rocks for someone else. It will hence equally apply to he who wants the rocks uncovered for his own hidden purpose by the person whos agreed to do so. And this Aristotelian conception of the ultimate end is only the most distal (distant) telos of an otherwise potentially innumerable quantity of teloi any person might be intending at any given time. And in so being, though one might get closer to it at certain times rather than others (when one is more at peace, or else joyful, for example), this ultimate telos of optimal eudemonia which can only translate into a perfected eudemonia is the most unreachable telos of all teloi out there. The most difficult, if at all possible, to actualize. It here drives, or else determines, all other teloi, this at all times, but it itself cannot be obtained for as long as any personal suffering occurs or is deemed to have the potential to occur. This includes some personal interpretation, granted, such as in what "suffering" signifies. But I still find it to be the only coherent way of understanding 'happiness as ultimate end'.
Secondly, why did the person whos agreed to turn over rocks so agree in this first place? Teleological reasons can range from that of having a gun held to his head (with the person preferring to do so rather than die due to his ultimate end of optima eudemonia), to having been offered a fair sum of cash for so doing (with the person finding the cash worth the time and effort required to so turn over rocks), to simply wanting to make the person who so asks happy (harder to briefly explain but yet a teleological reason). So the person whose turning over rocks isnt considering all rocks having been turned as his ultimate end. At the absolute least, hes turning over rocks as a proximate end in order to satisfy the more distal end regarding the reason hes agreed to turn over rocks to begin with which all then being yet governed by the far more distal telos of optimal, hence perfected, eudemonia.
So of course there are (teleological) reasons galore for the act of turning over stones which do not end in the successful act of so turning over all stones in an area. Endlessly ask someone why they did X starting at some concrete doing and you will obtain an endless list of reasons for their doings, much including teleological reasons. (Sure, some such reason that some will give might be the incorrect reasons for their doings - reasons given for things done while hypnotized comes to mind as an example - but this yet presupposes that there are accurate reasons for that which we do, have done, and will do.)
This would be one type of trial and error, to use it as a way of solving a specific problem. In the more general sense it is defined as "the process of experimenting with various methods of doing something until one finds the most successful". So it is a way of acting in which one is attempting to find "the most successful way", i.e. the best way. In this way, each attempt, each trial may solve the given problem, but we're looking for the best way to solve the problem.
Quoting javra
I see we really do disagree. Discovery by trial and error is an accidental discovery. That you can give an example of an accidental discovery which was not made by trial and error, does not indicate that trial and error does not produce accidental discoveries. If a person already knew what would qualify as the best way, they would not have to use trial and error. We cannot define what would constitute the best way, prior to the trial and error procedure, therefore the way which is found to be the best way, cannot be said to have been identified as the best way, prior to the procedure. So the thing found was not being looked for, and its discovery as "the best way", is accidental.
This is a matter of moving from the general to the particular. The general is "the best way". But the particular which is settled on, was not identified as the particular being looked for, only the general was being looked for. So that particular thing, as what fulfils "the best way", was found accidentally. In other words, we cannot go into a trial and error process with the idea that X constitutes success, because we do not know what will constitute success until we compare the trials. This is relevant to the point I made about how knowledge concerning the end prejudices a trial and error process, robbing it of objectivity.
Quoting javra
Of course the intention of the trial and error process is success, but that does not imply that when success is found, it was not found accidentally. The issue may be best illustrated this way. We can only try a finite number of ways. So if we try ways A,B,C,D, instead of ways W, X, Y, Z, and find that C is the best way, instead of finding that X is the best way, this difference is dependent on the random choice of the finite ways that we try, and it is therefore accidental. Any success found through a true trial and error process, is fundamentally an accidental success. This is due to the nature of choosing the trials. And if there is specific knowledge which prejudices the selection of trials, this is not a true trial and error process, but a process based in some prior knowledge about what constitutes the best way.
Quoting javra
You are restricting your definition of "trial and error" to problem solving rather than allowing the more general sense of seeking the most successful way. If you allow the latter then you could consider the possibility that living beings are seeking the most successful way of living through the trial and error process we see as evolution.
Quoting javra
It was your response to say that the person's end is to turn over the rocks. That would mean what the person wants and desires is to turn over rocks, so doing this would make the person happy. So clearly the person would be happy doing this, because doing anything else would interfere with what the person wants, and that is to turn over rocks. Therefore the person would be most happy turning over rocks.
Quoting javra
That is the issue I got to later, about communication.