Is There An Unconscious Mind?

[sigurdV]

This thread has its roots in biotheology and telepathy if you feel like hunting them threads up.

Hi all!

 

First a word to the Administrators: There is a very promising newly emerged Science called "Neurology" or something such, it seeks to find the areas of the brain involved in ,say, cognition.

 

I find its eventual results of the highest importance and suggests the administrators open a forum for them poor admirable things... Thanx in advance!

 

Next to the question of how to "interprete" the irregular writings of sigurdV, (executed by the eminent Dr Happiness):

 

To his surprise there are some readers out there (including me) actually finding it worth to set some time off to check his text for content! (He has as yet not paid me for it:)

 

Sigurd himself seems to think that everything he says is caused by, or at least under the influence of,

what he decided to call the "Ouija" effect. His arguments there is as yet vague and evasive...

Depending on expected future results of so called "neurologicians".

 

He points to spelling errors as being somehow intentional, but not always consciously so -not always being random events. Obviously this only shows he is in need of psychatric treatment: A schizofreniac entering the paranoidic phase...

All that remains here is to note that he has litterary ambitions but the chance that that hell be mentioned on the same page as ...say... Stephen Potter is close to nil. -And now folks we give the word to sigurdV

 

Lets begin by imagining ourselves driving a car, and suddenly we hear a voice from the backseat: Take to the right in the next corner! The road and everything on it belongs to reality,the car is our body and the driver is our conscious mind who suddenly stops to consider what makes it do what it is doing, is it the car in itself inviting us what to do next or are we not alone in the car?

[Ken]

This thread has its roots in biotheology and telepathy if you feel like hunting them threads up.

Hi all!

 

First a word to the Administrators: There is a very promising newly emerged Science called "Neurology" or something such, it seeks to find the areas of the brain involved in ,say, cognition.

 

I find its eventual results of the highest importance and suggests the administrators open a forum for them poor admirable things... Thanx in advance!

 

...snip...

 

 

I'm sure you meant something else. Neurology is a medical science dealing with the Nervous System and disorders that affect it.

[sigurdV]

I'm sure you meant something else. Neurology is a medical science dealing with the Nervous System and disorders that affect it.

 

Heh! The newly emerged science of studying the connections between mind and brain is so new so its name slipped out of my mind... Hmmm, ill find the something else unless someone beats me to it :)

[CraigD]

Heh! The newly emerged science of studying the connections between mind and brain is so new so its name slipped out of my mind... Hmmm, ill find the something else unless someone beats me to it :)

The usual term for a combination of the study of the mind and behavior – psychology – and the study of physical nerve tissue, chemistry, and structure – neurology – is (rather uncreatively ;)) neuropsychology.

 

It’s a pretty old field, though – I know people who’ve had the title on their doors since the early 1980s, and believe its origins as a specialized discipline distinct from general medicine or psychology dates back to about 1905, coming out of learning in brain surgery from the Russo-Japanese War.

 

In my experience, most neuropsychologists are MDs, either completely researched-focused, or with practices specializing in treating brain injuries – that is, clinical neuropsychologists.

 

Some of the most fun I ever had programming computers came in the mid 1980s, when I wrote a collection of video games and a system to manage their use in treating brain injuries, under the direction of a team of neuropsychologists.

 

In the late 1970s through 1980s, inspired in large part, I think, by the writing of “consciousness theorists” like Marvin Minsky, Douglas Hofstadter, and Daniel Dennett, some new academic specialties seemed to emerge, called such things as cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and, among the more unusual, synthetic psychology. Many of these disciplines involved either creating simplified mathematical and computer simulated models of nervous systems, or didn’t concern themselves with real biological nervous systems at all. They tended to be closely associated with the artificial intelligence branch of computer science, with cross-disciplinary ties to traditional philosophy – Minsky and Hofstadter, for example, are considered computer scientists, while Dennett is considered a philosopher.

 

I met a graduate student ca. 1980 who described his degree program as being in “cognitive science”, but am not sure what he actually graduate in.

 

The popularity of these programs seem to me to have faded after an initial surge in the early ‘80s. I believe this is because of disappointment over failure to meet optimistic near-term expectations for technologies from AI to increased human intelligence (nootropics) – in short, because the challenges in these fields have proven harder than many anticipated.

 

In summary, I’m not aware of any kind of neuropsychology or cognitive science that’s especially new. The enabling technologies for neuropsychology are from fairly old – fMRI, for example, was first achieved around 1990, and commonly available in commercial systems by the mid 1990s – to very old – electrodes, still the highest-resolution technology available, were used ca. 1900. Although these technologies are continuously improved, the improvements are incremental, while potential breakthrough technologies, such as antimatter beam imaging, remain unrealized speculation (for example, by Robert Forward ca. 1995).

 

This thread’s title question, “is there an unconscious mind”, is in my experience asked mostly in the personality theory branch of psychology, usually in the context of psychotherapy. It’s more of a metaphorical/practical philosophical question than a scientific one, as there’s not a sufficiently clear, objective definition of “conscious” and “unconscious” to ask such a question in a neuro-scientifically rigorous way.

[sigurdV]

1 The usual term for a combination of the study of the mind and behavior – psychology – and the study of physical nerve tissue, chemistry, and structure – neurology – is (rather uncreatively ;)) neuropsychology.

 

It’s a pretty old field, though – I know people who’ve had the title on their doors since the early 1980s, and believe its origins as a specialized discipline distinct from general medicine or psychology dates back to about 1905, coming out of learning in brain surgery from the Russo-Japanese War.

 

In my experience, most neuropsychologists are MDs, either completely researched-focused, or with practices specializing in treating brain injuries – that is, clinical neuropsychologists.

 

Some of the most fun I ever had programming computers came in the mid 1980s, when I wrote a collection of video games and a system to manage their use in treating brain injuries, under the direction of a team of neuropsychologists.

 

In the late 1970s through 1980s, inspired in large part, I think, by the writing of “consciousness theorists” like Marvin Minsky, Douglas Hofstadter, and Daniel Dennett, some new academic specialties seemed to emerge, called such things as cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and, among the more unusual, synthetic psychology. Many of these disciplines involved either creating simplified mathematical and computer simulated models of nervous systems, or didn’t concern themselves with real biological nervous systems at all. They tended to be closely associated with the artificial intelligence branch of computer science, with cross-disciplinary ties to traditional philosophy – Minsky and Hofstadter, for example, are considered computer scientists, while Dennett is considered a philosopher.

 

I met a graduate student ca. 1980 who described his degree program as being in “cognitive science”, but am not sure what he actually graduate in.

 

The popularity of these programs seem to me to have faded after an initial surge in the early ‘80s. I believe this is because of disappointment over failure to meet optimistic near-term expectations for technologies from AI to increased human intelligence (nootropics) – in short, because the challenges in these fields have proven harder than many anticipated.

 

In summary, I’m not aware of any kind of neuropsychology or cognitive science that’s especially new. The enabling technologies for neuropsychology are from fairly old – fMRI, for example, was first achieved around 1990, and commonly available in commercial systems by the mid 1990s – to very old – electrodes, still the highest-resolution technology available, were used ca. 1900. Although these technologies are continuously improved, the improvements are incremental, while potential breakthrough technologies, such as antimatter beam imaging, remain unrealized speculation (for example, by Robert Forward ca. 1995).

 

This thread’s title question, “is there an unconscious mind”, is in my experience asked mostly in the personality theory branch of psychology, usually in the context of psychotherapy. It’s more of a metaphorical/practical philosophical question than a scientific one, as there’s not a sufficiently clear, objective definition of “conscious” and “unconscious” to ask such a question in a neuro-scientifically rigorous way.

 

Hi there! I know in advance its a pleasure to assimilate each and every sentence of CraigD,

and to extend the pleasure i shall starve on a diet of at most one thought a day :wub:

 

1 Oh my... I would never EVER have guessed! Well I think no important work was done before the modern methods (whatever they are called) to look into the brain came into existence.

What younger leaves on the branches of the tree of science might there be?

 

I take it then that this very thread should be moved to the psychology forum if it isnt already to be found in there, where biased little sigurdV presupposes the proper definition of sanity is not found.

[sigurdV]

While possible readers

adjust their eyesight,

I will look backwards:

 

! We have the metaphor of the car.

2 Theres the Ouija Effect.

3 Theres sigurdV,

4 his selections of topics

5 and what can be found inn them

 

Exercise1

 

Make a guess! What IS going on?

[paigetheoracle]

I would say there is an unconscious state but not mind. Mind implies calculation and I believe the unconscious reacts to things but doesn't think about them. That's my take on it anyway.

[sigurdV]

I would say there is an unconscious state but not mind. Mind implies calculation and I believe the unconscious reacts to things but doesn't think about them. That's my take on it anyway.

 

Good thinking!

 

...Ahem... (Praise makes ppl lazy.)

 

I dont get it?

Whattya mean?

Howzo?

 

What evidence do u have anyway?

 

Yours Respectfully: The Oracle of Delphy.

 

PS I agree (without evidence) that the "unconscious state"

 

is not "self conscious"

 

( it is "conscious conscious").

 

It observse and reacts on the consciousness...(How?/When?/Why?)

 

But i fear it is only the intro. (to what?)

 

Where (and why) do thoughts (and night mares) come from?

[sigurdV]

The usual term for a combination of the study of the mind and behavior – psychology – and the study of physical nerve tissue, chemistry, and structure – neurology – is (rather uncreatively ;)) neuropsychology.

 

 

This thread’s title question, “is there an unconscious mind”, is in my experience asked mostly in the personality theory branch of psychology, usually in the context of psychotherapy. It’s more of a metaphorical/practical philosophical question than a scientific one, as there’s not a sufficiently clear, objective definition of “conscious” and “unconscious” to ask such a question in a neuro-scientifically rigorous way.

 

Good Thinking! ;)

 

PS Why IS there a, you know what?