I think the answer is: the homunculus concept has a special property of being intrinsically attention-grabbing…. The homunculus is thus impossible to ignore—if the homunculus concept gets activated at all, it jumps to center stage in our minds.
I don’t fully understand this bit. I feel like I’m reading a mathematical proof where the author leaves out steps that are trivial to the author, but not to me.
After reading all the 2.6 and 3.3 sections again, I think the answer to why the homunculus is attention-grabbing is because it involves “continuous self-surprise” in the same way an animate object (mouse...) is. A surprise that is a present as a proprioceptive signal or felt sense. With PNSE, your brain has learned to predict the internal S(X) mental objects and this signal well enough that the remaining surprisingness of the mental processes would be more like the gears contraption from 3.3.2, where “the surprising feeling that I feel would be explained away by a different ingredient in my intuitive model of the situation—namely, my own unfamiliarity with all the gears inside the contraption and how they fit together.” And as such, it is easier to tune out: The mind is doing its usual thing. Process as usual.
I don’t fully understand this bit. I feel like I’m reading a mathematical proof where the author leaves out steps that are trivial to the author, but not to me.
After reading all the 2.6 and 3.3 sections again, I think the answer to why the homunculus is attention-grabbing is because it involves “continuous self-surprise” in the same way an animate object (mouse...) is. A surprise that is a present as a proprioceptive signal or felt sense. With PNSE, your brain has learned to predict the internal S(X) mental objects and this signal well enough that the remaining surprisingness of the mental processes would be more like the gears contraption from 3.3.2, where “the surprising feeling that I feel would be explained away by a different ingredient in my intuitive model of the situation—namely, my own unfamiliarity with all the gears inside the contraption and how they fit together.” And as such, it is easier to tune out: The mind is doing its usual thing. Process as usual.
Thanks!