What is the Subconscious?

I’m not sure that works Howard. At one time I thought about how I move my legs when I walk. But when it became habit I don’t think it involved thinking as such. That is it wasn’t merely a process I chose to ignore but the very nature of the process changed.

It’s easy to see this. Merely think about how you are walking. Suddenly how you walk changes. It isn’t just an element of awareness. So I’m not sure mental language does justice here. Something is different.

Right, but I guess what I’m saying is that a habit doesn’t involve a “consciousness” at all. Rather habituation is moving from awareness (either formal awareness or awarenesses we aren’t aware of) to a lower level faculty. So to me I wouldn’t call that subconscious simply because to me consciousness is about mental descriptions. The move to habituation means that those mental descriptions no longer are descriptive.

But does “mental” equate with “consciousness”? Primary-perceptual consciousness is itself a highly shifting and, I would argue, selective state or succession of states. Items that enter into one conscious state, might not enter into another, but nonetheless be “mental”, (as witness their possibility of being conscious), and exercize an effect on the conscious state even when they have not been incorporated in it as a conscious item, (as witness that one might be able to recover and become aware of it in a subsequent conscious state). And then what of phenomena, usually due to neural impairment, like blindsight, wherein one is not aware thematically at all of experienced inputs, but behavioral tests reveal that one acts as if aware? And are the neural processes that give rise to conscious states and their contents, but logically can’t be conscious, since they generate consciousness, clearly, unambiguously physical rather than mental? It seems to me such pre-conscious processes are nonetheless effecting the contents of conscious states, (and, indeed, in impaired conditions, can come into conscious experience, such as with freeze-frame conscious states), in terms of generating the selections which generate them and their succession. Affects also strike me as highly ambiguous as to whether they are mental or bodily states, and not only can they effect our conscious states or dispositions unawares, but tracing their sources can be difficult, but nonetheless can be brought into awareness as something previously experienced unawares. Finally, some sort or other of memory is crucial to the existence of any sort of mentality, but memory must be “forgotten”, as well as, capable of being retrieved, for conscious states to exist and function at all. It seems to me that if the mental is equated with that which can have experience, then we are precisely aware that we experience more than we are thematically or focally aware of. Indeed, that would be a prime marker of the finitude or limitation of consciousness, and hence its potential for individuation. It seems to me that consciousness is characterized by being burdened with the pressures of a complex of experience of which it forms a part, but which exceeds it. That is part of what makes it “tick” and of what it is “for”: to select and sort experience for salience in determining behavioral responses.

Doh. I’m clearly conflating the two Michael. Good call.

John, I think the mental clearly applies to conscious states. The issue is whether it does to the unconscious and subconscious.

Howard, I think the question (as I read it) is what kind of descriptions are appropriate. You’re shifting to physicalist descriptions which is fine. The question is whether mentalistic descriptions are also appropriate. I tend to agree with Davidson that one can’t translate between the two.

More later when I have time.

I think it’s just a linguistic issue.

I think one problem is that we assuming thinking is fully revealed by what we are conscious of doing. (I think this is an assumption that to varying degrees pops up in the free will debate for instance) I think there is something “give” to our awareness (which is not to be confused with the myth of the given). It is still mediated but the idea that what we are conscious of thinking is what we are thinking is as erroneous as the idea that my perception of a thing is a full “capture” of the thing. While we all recognize that when I see an apple the apple is more than I see we tend to fall into the trap of thinking my awareness of thinking is my thinking.

I think Jung, to the degree I dare say I understand him, is wrong simply because (a) his theory of dreams is wrong and (b) he adopts something like the idea there is a hidden language of thought and that is what is thinking.

While I think we can use mentalistic language to describe elements of thought (whether we are aware of it or not) I think we just have to recognize that the issue at hand is linguistic descriptions and what is appropriate to use. Yet we have to be careful to not reify language nor assume that our language of the mental necessarily reflects natural kinds. The other extreme to avoid is the extreme that some take in which all mentalistic language is inappropriate and we ought adopt only the language of neurology or the like. But that, frankly, is just silly.