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Science Section => Science General Discussion => Biology, Psychology & Medicine => Topic started by: Baruch on August 26, 2019, 10:39:27 AM

Title: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on August 26, 2019, 10:39:27 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcJm-y7UnLY

You are programmed.  By nature, by upbringing.  This is why advertising and ideology work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8JdkfZdhe8

Much of your programming is negative messages from your caregivers.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Cavebear on August 27, 2019, 12:20:49 AM
Quote from: Baruch on August 26, 2019, 10:39:27 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcJm-y7UnLY

You are programmed.  By nature, by upbringing.  This is why advertising and ideology work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8JdkfZdhe8

Much of your programming is negative messages from your caregivers.

There is much of our brain and nervous system that responds to immediate threats without conscious thought.  If something suddenly approaches you like a rock or a club, you react by avoiding it first and considering the threat consciously split-seconds later.  But when something is further away, you have time to evaluate beforehand and that is conscious thought.

Ducking a tiger in your face is sub-conscious; considering a tiger 20' away is conscious.  Not that it might matter, but you do get to think about the tiger 20' away. 
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on August 27, 2019, 02:04:01 AM
But not so much ... rationality, except rationalizing.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Cavebear on August 27, 2019, 03:12:25 AM
Quote from: Baruch on August 27, 2019, 02:04:01 AM
But not so much ... rationality, except rationalizing.

You miss the point, as usual.  A sudden object in your face will trigger a non-concious reaction of avoidance. 
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on August 27, 2019, 08:07:37 AM
Quote from: Cavebear on August 27, 2019, 03:12:25 AM
You miss the point, as usual.  A sudden object in your face will trigger a non-concious reaction of avoidance.

Relevance?  You simply can't accept you aren't a Vulcan.  None of us are.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Cavebear on August 28, 2019, 12:02:08 AM
Quote from: Baruch on August 27, 2019, 08:07:37 AM
Relevance?  You simply can't accept you aren't a Vulcan.  None of us are.

I am not, nor would I want to be, a "Vulcan".  Suppressing emotion in favor of extreme rationality (or the opposite) would not solve most of our problems.  On the other hand, a little more logic in the world wouldn't hurt.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 09:57:26 AM
 Is consciousness a secretion of the brain?
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on October 02, 2019, 10:03:08 AM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 09:57:26 AM
Is consciousness a secretion of the brain?

No.  Not only is that view materialist (in ancient times thought was thought of a kind of gas), but it is insulting to humankind.  Usually "secretion" has a negative connotation.

Please make an intro in the intro section.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Blackleaf on October 02, 2019, 12:10:57 PM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 09:57:26 AM
Is consciousness a secretion of the brain?

It's a product of the brain, but I wouldn't call it a secretion. There's a concept called emergence, where multiple things come together to become something different. One ant is just an ant, but if you get a whole bunch of them together, then you have a colony where different ants serve different functions, and they work together for the greater good.

People mistakenly believe that the consciousness is magical because they can't understand it, but just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it is supernatural. Imagine how a caveman would react if it saw our current technology. He'd think it was all witchcraft.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 01:01:44 PM
 Without awareness, without responsibility for our actions?
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on October 02, 2019, 01:12:31 PM
Quote from: Blackleaf on October 02, 2019, 12:10:57 PM
It's a product of the brain, but I wouldn't call it a secretion. There's a concept called emergence, where multiple things come together to become something different. One ant is just an ant, but if you get a whole bunch of them together, then you have a colony where different ants serve different functions, and they work together for the greater good.

People mistakenly believe that the consciousness is magical because they can't understand it, but just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it is supernatural. Imagine how a caveman would react if it saw our current technology. He'd think it was all witchcraft.

Correct language ... per epiphenomenalism.  Part of the notion that if you have enough sand on a beach, enough complexity, it can become sentient ;-)

Science is sorcery.  Where is that Spanish Inquisition?  You never expect the Spanish Inquisition!
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Blackleaf on October 02, 2019, 01:14:39 PM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 01:01:44 PM
Without awareness, without responsibility for our actions?

No. That's a false dichotomy. You don't need free will to be responsible for your actions. If you're an adult with a normal, functional brain, you are responsible for what you do.

Also, since you're new, please make a thread/topic to tell us about yourself here: http://atheistforums.com/index.php?board=2.0
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on October 02, 2019, 01:20:18 PM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 01:01:44 PM
Without awareness, without responsibility for our actions?

Awareness is a matter of degree.  Typically in Eastern systems the highest level of awareness is key.  They don't deny the unconscious, they want to minimizes its control over you (memory is karma).  Responsibility depends on the validity of cause/effect and free will.  No free will, no responsibility.  No cause/effect then assigning blame is a crap shoot.  In Saudi Arabia, if you have a fender bender, both drivers are charged and jailed.

"Altered state of consciousness" actually applies to normal cognition and dreaming.  We live in an ever changing neural state.  Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, that happens spontaneously all the time.  Depends on the openness to suggestion your sub-conscious is having.  So "altered" is a poor adjective.  A more abnormal state is if you are on drugs.  In the law, in that case, you are vulnerable to charges, or are considered not responsible for your actions, depending.

There are no normal functional brains.  Human psychology is iffy all the time.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 02:37:11 PM
 Is consciousness immortal?
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on October 02, 2019, 03:08:56 PM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 02:37:11 PM
Is consciousness immortal?

Like the questions "What is free will?" and "What is cause/effect?" ... "What is immortality?" is a metaphysical/philosophical question, not a physical/scientific one.  "Consciousness", what it is, is a "hard question".  There is a huge gap in scientific understanding between neurology/neurochemistry and psychology.  This impacts the reality/unreality of AI as well.  Basically the human mind/experience is a hugely wild and interesting subject, unlike Newtonian physics which is all cut and dried 150 years ago.  IMHO .. the basis for evaluating all human thought, has to start with some model of human psychology.  Discussions of this, frequently devolve into arguments about "semantics" aka what do words mean.

I have my own semantics, developed over a long time, as to what "Consciousness" means and what "Immortal" means.  Short of that, a person would have a hard time answering your question.  In my own semantics the answer is "consciousness is immortal" but that begs the question as to what those words mean to me.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Blackleaf on October 02, 2019, 04:34:16 PM
Quote from: Ricardo on October 02, 2019, 02:37:11 PM
Is consciousness immortal?

No. The consciousness comes from the brain. When the brain is influenced, the consciousness is affected. Logically, then, no brain means no consciousness. The idea of an immortal soul is just silly. Apply Occam's Razor and cut out the fat. The soul isn't necessary to understanding consciousness, it explains nothing, and it runs contrary to what we know.
Title: Re: Your unconscious is in charge ...
Post by: Baruch on October 02, 2019, 07:11:13 PM
Quote from: Blackleaf on October 02, 2019, 04:34:16 PM
No. The consciousness comes from the brain. When the brain is influenced, the consciousness is affected. Logically, then, no brain means no consciousness. The idea of an immortal soul is just silly. Apply Occam's Razor and cut out the fat. The soul isn't necessary to understanding consciousness, it explains nothing, and it runs contrary to what we know.

Correct, from the materialist POV.  There is nothing called metaphysics for them.  I could reduce my hypotheses to a minimum also, assume that people aren't conscious.  Behaviorism (old psych theory) had that POV for years in US medical practice.  For Behaviorists, if you can't see it, then it doesn't exist.  Nobody can see a thought, so ... but currently we have better scanners, sensors etc ... we can now see various physical things going on in your head.  But how they connect to particular thoughts (other than subjectively) is unknown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism

B F Skinner from the 1950s was the most famous regarding this stimulus-response theory, and mice in a maze.  Some still believe this, we had a management book at work called "Who Stole My Cheese" that reuses that meme.  The current fad in American psychology is ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology

Behaviorism was inspired by mid-19th century ideas about reflexes.  Cognitive Psychology was inspired by mid-20th century ideas about systems engineering.  Any system so far, is incapable of dealing with all aspects of human behavior, but may be useful for some kinds.

The broader field of cognitive science tries to include more than just human psychology but classic AI.  What do problem solving systems both biological and non-biological have in common?  Unfortunately this has lead to crashing Teslas on auto-pilot ;-(

In general, reductionism means, make enough assumptions to trivialize the system (in particular any part-to-part interactions) so it is tractable.  Then try to scale up to more realistic models.  Like ... start with atoms, then try to design an earthworm from the bottom up.  The complexity of that is COMPLEXITY.