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Conscious And Subconscious Mind


Chewbalka

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Before my brother moved away we had quite the conversation on this topic at first I was positive I was in full control. As the topic at hand carried on I found myself doubting my original position. Things as simple as hunger, In a sense its not my mind telling me I am hungry its my subconscious telling me its time to eat. How many other possible ways is this true? Do you disagree or agree? Does it stem further then we think? Any ideas? Lets hear your views!

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Guest MacPhee

Before my brother moved away we had quite the conversation on this topic at first I was positive I was in full control. As the topic at hand carried on I found myself doubting my original position. Things as simple as hunger, In a sense its not my mind telling me I am hungry its my subconscious telling me its time to eat. How many other possible ways is this true? Do you disagree or agree? Does it stem further then we think? Any ideas? Lets hear your views!

 

Perhaps the "subconscious" mind signals the physical urgings of our body. Whereas our "conscious" mind, represents a valiant effort by our brain to subdue and control these rampant bodily urges.

 

If so, we might theorise thus:

 

1. As our body grows older, the wild "subconscious" impulses generated by it, will weaken.

2. They will then be more controllable - by our now relatively stronger, sane, cool and rational "conscious" brain.

 

If this is a true theory, then the older we get, the wiser we get. Haven't we all found this to be so - who can look back at their life without thinking - what a fool I was in those days!

 

Isn't it because in those days we weren't really conscious?

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I like it! Sounds plausible. Although in some cases i have met rather dumb elderly people... And i mean that in a nice way as in nice people but can't hold a decent convo lol i remember reading somewhere can't put my finger on it right now that we can only make decisions if our subconscious mind is in agreement.

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I've been doing a lot of research on this the past few months. You're talking about the manifestation of agency and there's a ton of books and papers about this in the fields of philosophy, sociology, psychology and consciousness science.

 

I think it may have been you asking similar questions that I replied to yesterday, but if not, I'll say the same thing and recommend you try and get hold of 'The Illusion of Conscious Will' by Daniel M Wegner - it's a brilliant, thought-provoking book. Plus if you have a New Scientist subscription read a fantastic acticle from 1998 called 'The Zombie Within' - it first got me thinking about the myth of consciousness and it's a 'must read' for anyone interested.

 

You're right that the majority of our actions are 'unconscious' and automatic; very little of what we do requires our conscious planning and direction - even when we do think that we orchestrate a particular action it's likely that we're deceiving ourselves about the facts of the matter.

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  • 1 month later...

I once thought I was in charge of my life and mind. I got into a psychology forum and came to find out I was not in charge of my life or mind. After some deep thinking I discovered my ego was in charge of my life and mind, (I equate my ego with my personality and my history of growing up and not vice versa) plus created a illusionary lie that I believed because of my dysfunctional family and suffering from it while growing up, my ego controlled me. I understand the basics about how the brain works but the mind is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I grew up with low self esteem and was always in a emotional state. I now analyse any negative emotion.

 

I now see all children should be taught about there emotions and how they effect them every day from birth to understanding. Opinions please. pljames

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Before my brother moved away we had quite the conversation on this topic at first I was positive I was in full control. As the topic at hand carried on I found myself doubting my original position. Things as simple as hunger, In a sense its not my mind telling me I am hungry its my subconscious telling me its time to eat. How many other possible ways is this true? Do you disagree or agree? Does it stem further then we think? Any ideas? Lets hear your views!

 

 

The human body has about several internal clocks, one of those is attributed to being hungry. So it does kind of have something loosely related to the subconscious. It's really our body's way of telling us we need something.

 

''Circadian rhythmicity is present in the sleeping and feeding patterns of animals, including human beings.''

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

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Its not done! We cant measure consciousness yet!

We can tell if somebody is awake or asleep but thats about all we can do.

 

 

Not quite true... I think I know what you are saying... rather we know we can measure consciousness but we cannot measure directly within the brain structure. No one can cut up the brain to find where consciousness lays, however, we can measure consciousness by saying

 

 

''I feel therefore I am.''

 

This is a tricky subject which needs more investigation to say the least.

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The following excerpt is from an article that may be of interest to this thread.

 

 

Probing the Unconscious Mind

Cognitive psychology is mapping the capabilities we are unaware we possess

 

By Christof Koch

 

 

 

Sigmund Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious, a sector of the mind that harbors thoughts and memories actively removed from conscious deliberation. Because this aspect of mind is, by definition, not accessible to introspection, it has proved difficult to investigate. Today the domain of the unconscious—described more generally in the realm of cognitive neuroscience as any processing that does not give rise to conscious awareness—is routinely studied in hundreds of laboratories using objective psychophysical techniques amenable to statistical analysis. Let me tell you about two experiments that reveal some of the capabilities of the unconscious mind. Both depend on “masking,” as it is called in the jargon, or hiding things from view. Subjects look but don’t see.

 

http://www.scientifi...nconscious-mind

 

This next link provides some interesting visual examples of how the subconscious mind influences our conscious mind.

 

http://www.huffingto...lide=more223730

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Before I got into heavy conscious and sub-consciousness I thought about my computer. It is non aware and is unconscious of itself. But I am not. I see it as my sub added consciousness. I am aware of all of it's parts and how they work. I am in control of them by me.Could not the same be applied to the conscious and sub-consciousness? (I do not recognize the unconscious) at all). There has to be something in the sub-conscious that informs the conscious it needs to speak to it. My question is what is the it in the sub-conscious? pljames

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