Your consciousness contains the things you need to be able to reflect on in order to function properly. That seems like a much more basic way of delineating the conscious mind than the proposed signalling theory.
Yes: consciousness sometimes excludes things that it is undesirable to signal—but surely that is more of a footnote to the theory than its main feature. Quite a bit of that work is actually done by selective forgetting—which is a feature with better targeting capabilities than the filters of consciousness.
If you want the answer to involve signalling, then the ego seems like a more suitable thing to examine.
It sounds like our two theories make different predictions.
Yours suggests (if I understand right) that the function of the conscious mind is to reflect upon things. If reflecting on things is evolutionary necessary, then the conscious mind’s reflections ought to be used to make decisions or something. So you predict that when a person gives reasons for eir decisions, those reasons should always be correct. It also predicts that our decisions will usually be those that would be arrived at by logical reflection.
Mine predicts that the conscious mind’s reflections should be only loosely correlated with actual decisions, and more likely to be ex post facto justifications, and that even though we may have logical-sounding reasons for our decisions, on closer inspection they will look less like logic and more like the sorts of things an unconscious selfish heuristic process would arrive at.
Is that fair, or am I doing that thing where I fit the evidence to say what I want it to again?
So you predict that when a person gives reasons for [th]eir decisions, those
reasons should always be correct.
No way! I am not saying that the brain has NO PR department. Just that consciousness is more like the business park where the PR department has its HQ—where a whole bunch of other stuff also happens.
For example, when you focus on one thing (say reading a book) you generally filter out other things (background noise). This is to concentrate resources and avoid distraction—and does not have much to do with social signalling. There are a large number of other examples, illustrating applications of filtering sensory inputs away from consciousness for purposes which have little to do with social signalling.
I mentioned “selective forgetting”. If the ego can’t reconcile actions or events with self-image, it can tell the department of records to erase the evidence before any broadcasts are made. Such material can make its way into consciousness—but after examination it gets rejected and there then follows a cover-up operation—which can sometimes look a bit like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
One advantage of this is that more sophisticated methods can be used to determine what gets rejected. One disadvantage is that the forgetting process can be imperfect.
So you predict that when a person gives reasons for eir decisions, those reasons should always be correct. It also predicts that our decisions will usually be those that would be arrived at by logical reflection.
Stating your opponent’s argument in absolutist terms and then rejecting it in support of your theory is not a good method ;). Did you read the “Good and Real” description of the C function? It’s not really to “think logically” but being a selectively active supervisor process IIRC. The override might be seldom, but important.
Almost unquestionably there is a lot of rationalization and self deception going on, this is crystal clear from famous split-brain experiment. It’s just not obvious that this is the raison d’etre for consciousness, esp. in light of lacking a plausible evolutionary path for this as was pointed out by several people.
|It’s just not obvious that this is the raison d’etre for consciousness, esp. in light of lacking a plausible evolutionary path for this|
The debating tactic you highlight would fit a public-relations function for the unconscious nd . And a public relations facility; explaining to others one self’s unconscious-driven behaviour could be of survival value among humans, yes?
If you look at what happens under hallucinogens—most of which act so as to make what is usually unconscious conscious—then it seems as though consciousness is a filter—which selectively eliminates the least important things. Attention is a form of selective consciousness.
Humans function less effectively if their consciousness is continually flooded with sensory inputs that are usually unconscious—since then the important and the unimportant are muddled together.
We are conscious of as little as we are partly because consciousness is a kind of meta-analysis—and is a relatively expensive feature. For systems with limited computational resources, sensory overload can be a big problem—and the filtering done by consciousness represents a large part of the solution.
No, no! I would say that other primates have broadly similar reflection capabilities, though smaller minds. Cetaceans too, probably. All mammals probably have some basic reflection capabilities—though it may be difficult to detect experimentally.
Your consciousness contains the things you need to be able to reflect on in order to function properly. That seems like a much more basic way of delineating the conscious mind than the proposed signalling theory.
Yes: consciousness sometimes excludes things that it is undesirable to signal—but surely that is more of a footnote to the theory than its main feature. Quite a bit of that work is actually done by selective forgetting—which is a feature with better targeting capabilities than the filters of consciousness.
If you want the answer to involve signalling, then the ego seems like a more suitable thing to examine.
It sounds like our two theories make different predictions.
Yours suggests (if I understand right) that the function of the conscious mind is to reflect upon things. If reflecting on things is evolutionary necessary, then the conscious mind’s reflections ought to be used to make decisions or something. So you predict that when a person gives reasons for eir decisions, those reasons should always be correct. It also predicts that our decisions will usually be those that would be arrived at by logical reflection.
Mine predicts that the conscious mind’s reflections should be only loosely correlated with actual decisions, and more likely to be ex post facto justifications, and that even though we may have logical-sounding reasons for our decisions, on closer inspection they will look less like logic and more like the sorts of things an unconscious selfish heuristic process would arrive at.
Is that fair, or am I doing that thing where I fit the evidence to say what I want it to again?
No way! I am not saying that the brain has NO PR department. Just that consciousness is more like the business park where the PR department has its HQ—where a whole bunch of other stuff also happens.
For example, when you focus on one thing (say reading a book) you generally filter out other things (background noise). This is to concentrate resources and avoid distraction—and does not have much to do with social signalling. There are a large number of other examples, illustrating applications of filtering sensory inputs away from consciousness for purposes which have little to do with social signalling.
I mentioned “selective forgetting”. If the ego can’t reconcile actions or events with self-image, it can tell the department of records to erase the evidence before any broadcasts are made. Such material can make its way into consciousness—but after examination it gets rejected and there then follows a cover-up operation—which can sometimes look a bit like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
One advantage of this is that more sophisticated methods can be used to determine what gets rejected. One disadvantage is that the forgetting process can be imperfect.
Stating your opponent’s argument in absolutist terms and then rejecting it in support of your theory is not a good method ;). Did you read the “Good and Real” description of the C function? It’s not really to “think logically” but being a selectively active supervisor process IIRC. The override might be seldom, but important.
Almost unquestionably there is a lot of rationalization and self deception going on, this is crystal clear from famous split-brain experiment. It’s just not obvious that this is the raison d’etre for consciousness, esp. in light of lacking a plausible evolutionary path for this as was pointed out by several people.
|It’s just not obvious that this is the raison d’etre for consciousness, esp. in light of lacking a plausible evolutionary path for this|
The debating tactic you highlight would fit a public-relations function for the unconscious nd . And a public relations facility; explaining to others one self’s unconscious-driven behaviour could be of survival value among humans, yes?
If you look at what happens under hallucinogens—most of which act so as to make what is usually unconscious conscious—then it seems as though consciousness is a filter—which selectively eliminates the least important things. Attention is a form of selective consciousness.
Humans function less effectively if their consciousness is continually flooded with sensory inputs that are usually unconscious—since then the important and the unimportant are muddled together.
We are conscious of as little as we are partly because consciousness is a kind of meta-analysis—and is a relatively expensive feature. For systems with limited computational resources, sensory overload can be a big problem—and the filtering done by consciousness represents a large part of the solution.
What sorts of things does one “need to reflect on in order to function properly”?
As far as I can tell all non-human animals “function properly” without any reflection whatsoever.
No, no! I would say that other primates have broadly similar reflection capabilities, though smaller minds. Cetaceans too, probably. All mammals probably have some basic reflection capabilities—though it may be difficult to detect experimentally.
Some literal reflection:
“Who’s That Strange Monkey in the Mirror?”
http://www.primates.com/misc/mirror-self.html