goldglow

As they say, " Nature hates a vacuum ". It seems a little like the tide coming in and going out - it's impossible for the tide to stay in all the time, or out all the time. I've been researching just a little bit further, Ten oz, if you're reading this ,and it seems to me, at least , that your OP boils down to a straight choice ( that word again! ) between Determinism: " All events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes " , so denying free will; and Indeterminism: " Events have no deterministic cause but occur randomly, or by chance ". so implying that free will is possible ". ( Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ). But, of course, one of those statements has to be wrong.

It depends on the ability to read. I think most of the people in the thread can read.

Common sense and logic don't always agree. I think most of us would know of " Zeno's Paradoxes " and could invent our own version. Here's my version: i start out to walk to work in the morning and common sense says that, if i keep on walking , i will eventually get to my place of work. " Not so ! ", Zeno would say. " First you have to walk half the distance, then you have to walk half the remaining distance, then you have to walk half the distance after that, and so on and so on. Even if you took an infinite number of steps you will never get to work ! ". Logical but nonsense.

I've underlined the last sentence above just to illustrate my reply a little better: if i am sitting quietly in my garden, feeling the heat of the Sun, smelling the flowers and listening to the birds sing and i go into a reverie, start day-dreaming or just thinking about something i have to do later, then all my sensual perception stops, and i am only conscious of my thoughts until i " come back to my senses " and my thoughts go quiet again. So, i imagine that if thought was never " submerged " in the unconscious there would be no chance of any active perception, and the brain would be totally occupied with conscious thought all my waking hours. Does that seem at all relevant ?

Good answer. Thanks.

It's a pity there aren't more people in the world like you, PfA; such completely selfless altruism is all too rare. I'm fighting back the tears now. Vaya con Dios! Today,i learned that women like to look at men's butts because it helps them learn how to lip-read.

Thanks.

Thanks, DrmDoc. You wrote of a "....perceived conscious/unconscious divide or barrier....... against inappropriate responses.. " within total consciousness. Would i be correct in thinking that, in rare cases of what we call " madness ",( severe schizophrenia, for example ), the" barrier " has somehow been breached, and the whole or part of the content of the unconscious has flooded the mind and overwhelmed rational thought? I readily accept consciousness as being a whole ,single movement, but, among the good genies, there must also be many bad genies bottled-up in there that have to be kept at bay. We do need a " Guardian at the Gate ". It helps me if i imagine this whole consciousness as an engine: when we turn it on we turn on the whole engine - we can't just turn a part of it on without the rest starting too.

DrmDoc. I'm quietly looking at your post now, " thinking " of an apposite reply, but this thinking is silent, inwardly invisible to me, and i'm really waiting for an answer to present itself out of this silence, which is the absence of conscious thought, which, in turn, allows the unconscious to supply an answer without any conscious distraction. So i agree. There is a famous quote from " Aspects of the Novel ", a book by E. M Forster........" How can i tell what i think till i see what i say ? ". I think his unconscious put it a little better than mine did. Edit. A puzzling thought just came to mind: as i have just written above, my conscious, was in abeyance, awaiting a response from the unconscious, and when that response came it was, i hope , logical, reasonable and understandable, What puzzles me now is why that same unconscious cannot communicate in the same way in the dream process when what is communicated is, at best, symbolic and, at worst, completely chaotic and confusing to the waking consciousness? To add further confusion,( to myself ), is it the unconscious asking this question of itself? As Alice said: " Curiouser and curiouser " !

Ha,ha. Beautiful. Thanks,tar. Check out Joyce Kilmer's poem " Trees ". " I think that i shall never see A poem lovely as a tree............" I have recently been wondering about the role the unconscious plays, if any, in sexual orientation. I'll have to start, hesitantly, from the wide-sweeping presumption that the unconscious is both male and female, in equal balance. Not a scientific hypothesis, i know, and the unconscious is a parallel process, not just male/female, but it does intrigue me. I just happen to be " straight " myself, but , physiology apart, is my particular sexual orientation a personal "choice ", or does the unconscious play a bigger role in this decision than i have been aware of? Is anyone's sexual orientation something imprinted upon the brain by unconscious influences at birth, or a personal choice made in later life, apart from any unconscious involvement ? Or, if the conscious choice does come later, is this choice illusory as we are choosing something that was already there, just waiting to be " chosen "? Was i born " straight " so i really had no conscious say in the matter- just like someone else who happened to be born "gay "? How, too, does this idea impact on the relationship, if any, between physiology, the human physical organism, and the unconscious, for those people who feel they have been " born in the wrong body "? In a lighthearted coda, allow me to paraphrase Shakespeare: Was i born straight, did i achieve straightness, or was straightness thrust upon me? ( Malvolio in " Twelfth Night ". Act 2, scene 5. " Some are born great........etc." )

Apologies for quoting myself but, on re-reading this thread, i recalled learning of several incidents where a person emerging from a coma, or after some brain injury like severe concussion, suddenly develops the ability to speak another language, or exhibits musical skills, for example, of which they had no conscious knowledge beforehand - much to everyone's surprise.Does this imply that, during the absence of conscious activity, the shared unconscious, the storehouse of all human experience, has somehow physically altered the structure of the brain by imprinting new knowledge on brain cells which was previously absent? Would a loss of conscious memory, permanent or otherwise, prompt the shared, or even individual unconscious, to attempt to fill the void of personal memory loss? Perhaps this also relates to the debatable experiences some people claim to have had of remembering " past lives " under hypnosis, when, if they do, i think they are not actually reliving a past life of their own, but, if it is possible, accessing memories of other lives stored, perhaps even quite recently, in the shared unconscious.

I plucked out this short sentence from tar's post because it reminded me of an incident from many years ago. I was on a long bicycle ride and at some point i began to think about something or other.( Day-dreaming probably ). A long time after, i " came to my senses " and realized i had ridden many miles on a busy, twisting road without being consciously aware of my surroundings! It came as quite a shock and a fright to me. I can only guess that my unconscious was steering me safely through any potential danger to me, or anyone else, purely from sensory input alone, without any conscious involvement ,and it was making Freud's " real-time reconstructions " of a road i had travelled along many times before. It was, in fact, " re-minding " itself, quite separately from any apparent conscious input. It still puzzles me.

Yes. Every creature loves it's life. Thanks.

Ha,ha,yes. Being English, though, i don't know who Aaron Judge* is , but i do know exactly what you mean! Thanks,tar. By the way, is dopamine the same in affect as serotonin, as you have mentioned both together in an earlier post? *( I'm guessing he is a good Baseball player. ) **( Just googled him - he is. )

I can really relate to this, being a crossword enthusiast. Many times i have been stuck on clues and leave the crossword unfinished, and probably consciously forget all about it as i turn to some other task. Then, if i return to the same crossword later ,the answers sometimes, ( not always ), appear as if from nowhere, without any further thought. I think the unconscious dream-world can also be a source of wish-fulfillment too: desires unobtainable in real life can be satisfied in a dream - but only until we wake up, sadly.

I agree: the human brain is not a " tabula rasa ", a clean slate, at birth, but i do think that the brain is also conditioned later by the circumstances of that birth i.e: where it was born, the culture and traditions of the parents and the influence of their own conditioning, the education it receives etc. I agree here,too. I have often wondered how Beethoven's music could come from just the motor-skill of piano-playing and a knowledge of musical scales, or how Shakespeare's plays and poetry can be explained simply by his having a conscious knowledge of the English language. Incidentally, as Freud's model of consciousness has been mentioned, i think Shakespeare anticipated this in his play " The Tempest " where the characters of Caliban, Prospero and Ariel are, respectively, the Id, Ego and Superego. In turn, Shakespeare himself may have been informed by the ingenious metaphor of the Christian crucifixion.

Yes, that has the ring of truth to it. Sometimes, too, we say " i was given no choice in the matter " or " i had no choice in the matter " , but can that also be said to be true ? It seems to me now, perhaps incorrectly, that everything so far has led to an impasse: we will have to make choices/decisions throughout our lives, consciously or unconsciously, whether we want to or not, so there is no way of avoiding them, and all we can do is try to do the right thing each time, if at all possible, when the stakes are high. Unfortunately, many of our choices will be the wrong choice, whether coming from the conscious or unconscious, and it seems there is very little we can do to refine our decision-making. Will we just have to live this state of affairs or is there a way out? Sorry to sound so bleak - the Sun will keep on shining!

Does it help to think of the unconscious as being " long-term memory ", and the conscious as being " short-term memory " ? Or, to use a computing analogy: the unconscious is the hard-drive and the conscious is the RAM. This would make it a symbiotic, interdependent relationship between two equal partners, each reliant on the other, so that neither is permanently in the " driver's seat ". As you say : they "... take turns ". In other words, then, you couldn't have one without the other.

I am just reading a book titled " The Astonishing Hypothesis " subtitled " The Scientific Search for the Soul " by Francis Crick of DNA fame. Although somewhat out-dated compared with recent scientific understanding, ( it was published in 1994 ), it still has a great deal to offer and has an extensive " reference " and " further reading " section.

To me, this is very important, Our consciousness, our "self ", is our past. We can add to it by furthering our knowledge or new,( to us ), experiences but these then become part of that past which is our (un)consciousness or " self ". The action of our consciousness/self, as a whole movement, then, can only be a " reaction " from within the confines of itself: in other words, the action of the past which, passing through the present, is the action of the future. In this respect, the future will be the effect of the past. All our conscious future choices will then be informed by our past/consciousness. Psychologically, in reality, i see each moment as a brand new moment, totally untouched by the past but we carry our psychological baggage with us- perhaps because we are afraid of the future which is unknown to us if we leave the mistaken safety of the past. It's not all doom and gloom, though, as i don't think, however, that it is impossible to be free from the grip of the past. When we become aware of this true nature of consciousness, we are already loosening it's hold over our lives. As i said somewhere else, we can never be free of the past but we can be free from the past. To try to summarise, the " self " we attribute to everyone is another way of saying " consciousness " and we carry that " self " throughout our lives, and it is really the psychological death of that " self " that frees us from the past. There is still life after this " death of the self " but it is not touched, psychologically, by the past. Therein lies the " Free Consciousness " that doesn't choose. Sorry to sound so dogmatic- i might be completely wrong, but ,at the moment, that is the best i can offer.

In your OP, Ten oz, you wrote: " My consciousness chooses an action but the action chosen seldom ever changes what i want or feel " ; tar later wrote: " If we find....a good reason for living.... the choice was to enjoy life, and want to do it again ". ( My underlining ). I think if we ask not " what " we choose to do, but " why " we choose to do it, then these two quotes complement each other: taking tar's point first, if what we do gives us pleasure ,we permanently store the memory of that pleasure in the brain and want to do it again. It goes without saying that, if our choice has painful repercussions, we also store that memory in order to avoid a repetition, if possible. ( We still have to go to the dentist ! " ). This is well-explained in the " Pleasure-Pain Principle " ( of Sigmund Freud ) on the changingminds.org website. For Ten oz, if the chosen action doesn't seem to change feelings or desires, i think this may be because the chosen action can only be a temporary, partial satisfaction, so the desire for more pleasure, perhaps in different forms, or more wealth, or more possessions etc , will never be completely satisfied and will always remain ( we will always want more) as the desire to avoid suffering will always remain( we will always want less, if not none.... sadly, impossible.). I think this is all quite natural and necessary- we don't want to forget what it's like to get stung by a wasp!

I think the basic needs for survival were, and still are, food and shelter. In earlier,poorer times and societies, finding food and shelter occupied all the time and energy of people, and the strongest were more successful at this. In our modern world, though, in more affluent societies, these basic needs are easily satisfied: we have supermarkets, malls, hospitals, nice warm houses with running water etc. so we have the time and energy, and opportunity, to do more than just survive and have the capacity for entertaining ourselves in many different ways: we can get on airplanes and ships and travel anywhere or, indeed , go skydiving and mountaineering and smoke cigarettes, if you want to. If all our needs are easily satisfied, we have to find ways to avoid boredom and lethargy. Also, now,not just the fittest can survive, as there is not the competition for resources as there once was - in richer countries, at least.In poorer countries, however,even today life can still be a continuous struggle to survive ( a disgrace in our time ) and many, many poorer people do not have the luxury of " leisure time " when they can pursue whatever they find interesting or exciting. All human beings ,it is true, still have these animal needs for survival but, psychologically, we are more than just animals You specifically mentioned cannibalism, nec209, when it wasn't necessary for survival to eat fellow humans : this was often because of primitive rituals, or a belief that , for example, eating another man's heart ( it was usually a man ) would give you his courage, or that eating his brain would give you his wisdom, or eating his muscles would give you his strength.

I think this is all correct: ".... the sins of the fathers... " and all that, and i'm sure, too, that we do have this inherited consciousness which is, by definition, the accumulated experience of all previous generations and which is ever-present. The present is the result of the past, if you like ,and you could say we are living in the past if we don't break free from this collective consciousness which is the past in operation. As this inheritance includes all the terrible things that humanity has been through in the past, it follows that these things are always ready to burst out into consciousness again, with the same results - unless we are on our guard by being aware of these influences. I think if we are consciously aware of this, then the unconscious loses it's power over us and we can choose/ decide not to be it's victims, but only as individuals. Unfortunately, it seems too many people, especially those in a position to cause chaos, with too many others willingly ( or unwillingly ) following them, are totally unaware of this, and so carry on repeating with what has happened before "...in a loop ". People have been slaughtering each other since time began and will continue to do so, if not with clubs then with smart-bombs. The future must include the past, but it must not be the past.

I've found it helpful for me to see choice ,for now, as a decision- i hope that isn't just semantics. So i can now ask: how do we come to a decision? When we have 2 or more options what is it that makes the decision? What is the deciding factor? Sometimes it is merely a superficial preference -" I'll have red wine, please ", or, like Yul Brynner, " I only wear black clothes ". Or , it may be a decision purely from habit - " I always park my car here ". etc. Or, again, it could be a decision constrained by cultural, traditional or religious beliefs and customs. Maybe long-term memories stored in the normally dormant unconscious can influence immediate decisions, too: "what did i do the last time ? " etc. As Ten Oz says , these decisions are ".. rather basic ", and all take place in the conscious, mechanical processes of the brain-cells, which ties in with what TAR says : " ... we are .....not ghosts in a machine, but the machine itself." Fortunately, we rarely if ever have to make instantaneous life or death decisions, but i think i would be right in saying that , if that was the case, there may be a less superficial , less conscious decision to be made and the sane, " selfish " brain would act independently of thought and protect itself, and this would not be a conscious decision, nor a " fight or flight " reaction. In this case, the brain is programmed to protect itself without any conscious decision having to be made. Allow me to be a little flippant here: I've " decided " to stop now because i'm hungry..... or did hunger decide to stop me ...... or is it my habit, or my stomach's habit, to have lunch at this time? Who Knows? ( Ha, ha ). There are more questions here that need to be addressed by someone more qualified in more complex matters than i am: co-operation,language/thought and " mind " among them, and i can give no better answer than to recommend a book titled " The Astonishing Hypothesis. " by Francis Crick, the scientist who helped to discover the structure of DNA. It covers all this in a far more erudite fashion than i could.

Yes, i think that's true. Desire awakes after perception: we see a nice car, or that nice jacket, or hear some lovely music, or see someone singing on TV and then thought jumps in and says " I want that car..........i want that jacket......i want to hear that music again.....i want to sing on TV. " Then we are free to take the appropriate course of action - whatever that may be. So it is not the perception per se, but thought that is the desire, seeking pleasure, and we cannot control our thoughts but, as you say, we can make choices. The mechanism of desire is, then, the same for everyone- gay, straight, depressed or otherwise - and is impossible to eliminate. Many ancient ascetics, including Buddha, thought that controlling desire was a way to enlightenment and put themselves through all kinds of agony to no purpose. I feel that this incomplete self-awareness is a property of thought being aware of itself , and being under the false impression that it is somehow different from consciousness. Desire, fear, envy, joy hope, hate, dimreepr's " good and evil ", ( i would say " good thief and bad thief " ) and choice, are all part of one whole consciousness, which has limitations, and thought is a part of this consciousness too. Unfortunately. one thought - the infamous " I " - has tried to usurp all authority and control, and the problems start from there. This is like one fish trying to control an ocean. So i don't think there are any actual divisions in consciousness, only a division in thought. This is where the illusion begins. No it isn't simple, i agree. I hope i haven't rambled too much. I'm aware, too, that a reply is not necessarily an answer. Self-awareness is a part of consciousness too, not something separate. The ancient Greeks advised " Gnothi seauton "- Know yourself- meaning consciousness knowing itself in it's entirety, with all it's limitations, by simple self-observation but always being aware that, in the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti: " The observer is the observed. " I hope you can make some sense out of this- i'm learning too!