Why do you assume that neuroscience has to account for things like the "subconscious mind?" The subconscious is not something that is truly and undeniably known to us from experience - it is a posit of some rather old-fashioned psychological theories. Other, more modern and more scientifically-oriented theories of mind may not even have a use for such a concept.

A simple question - what is the neurological basis for the subconscious or unconscious mind? — EnPassant

That's not a simple question. It's kind of like asking someone like me who's not a chip designer what the semiconductor basis is for the math my computer is performing. To even begin to answer the question I think we'd need to know the exact function of all 100 billion neurons in a human mind.

How do physical neurons divide the psyche in this way? — EnPassant

It sounds like your real interest is consciousness.

(It is questions like this that convince me that neurology is not going to explain what the mind is.) — EnPassant

Consciousness is not completely understood in any field.

Do you understand the neurological difference between attentional processes and habitual or automatic ones? Is there something further to be explained after those?

Do you understand the neurological difference between attentional processes and habitual or automatic ones? — apokrisis

I think I do. Those expressions seem self explanatory. But there seems to be a third category; emotional motivations that are not understood by the conscious mind. Sometimes people act without understanding their motivations. That seems to be a kind of unconscious mind.

But there seems to be a third category; emotional motivations that are not understood by the conscious mind. — EnPassant

True. So habits are the mid-brain doing its thing of automating responses so "you " don't have to think about them, or attend to them. That is one aspect of what people label the unconscious, or subconscious, or preconscious.

And as well as this "how" of unconscious, or rather non-attentive, behaviour, there is the "why" - the motivation or valuing that gets labelled as emotion, in opposition to "conscious reasoning".

So now the neurological basis of that is about the brainstem and limbic system - amygdala, hypothalmus, etc. And that is its own complex story.

But primarily, the emotions can be understood as perception of the internal state of your own body and physiology. Are you hungry, thirsty, excited, tired, in pain, etc. So it is hardly unconscious. Like all perception, the question is whether you are attending and so focused on how to respond to the signals.

I could just as well be staring out the window and not seeing what my eyes are seeing because my mind is far away concentrating on something else. But seeing isn't then part of the subconscious mind. It just means attention blocks out awareness for what doesn't currently matter.

All the sensations - internal or external - are "there". But attention acts as a filter that focuses on a foreground by blanking out a background. Whether some aspect of what is going on is conscious or unconscious is down to a dynamical balance of selection/repression.

But a second aspect of this emotion story is the habit/automatism one. Emotions do seem to break through unbidden because the brain does have to know when to jerk attention towards significant events. And as importantly, our physiological state has to start reacting as soon as possible to deal with whatever is about to happen.

So if we hear heavy footsteps coming up behind us on a dark night, we instinctively get all the right reactions starting up as soon as the possible significance of this is realised at an automatic level - heart beats faster, digestion slows to divert blood to the muscles, cold sweat begins, nor-adrenaline pumps in the brain to create an aroused alertness.

Conscious or attentive awareness of the world takes about half a second to develop. It takes that long to focus and work out what is going on in an intellectual fashion. But habits - as learnt response - can simply be emitted in reflexive fashion. We can react in a simple startled fashion in about a tenth of a second, and in quite a well-honed smart fashion - the kind of skilled moves involved in sport - in a fifth of a second.

So the brain is set up to respond fast in learnt habitual fashion - to generate an appropriate flood of emotional feelings - and then let lagging attention swing into place to check whatever it was that just gave us a surprise. We might either then start to calm down, or decide we really need some kind of conscious action plan.

Thus the key dynamic in neurobiology is the divide between attention and habit. Do we need to focus on something in a whole brain reasoning fashion, or do we basically understand exactly how to react from a lifetime of experience? The brain is set up so that everything first goes through the fifth of a second loop that pretty much equates to an unconscious level of processing. Then only if it matters does it break through to become the subject of slower reacting, but far more explorative and remembered, attentive processing.

Emotions, as perceptions of internal state, are just like perceptions of the external world in being new information filtered in this two-stage fashion.

And then emotions as orienting responses - or appropriate shifts in physiological state to match the level of challenge in the world - is about what happens down at a reflexive or habitual level of response without waiting for attention to catch up and say it is the proper thing to do.

So emotion becomes attached to the events of the world as judgements about how aroused or relaxed we need to be in the next moment or so. And emotions are also news about our physiological needs - hunger, thirst, lust, etc - that are drives that need satisfaction. If habit isn't already delivering and the need is growing, then time for attention to be interrupted and focus on the fact.

Sometimes people act without understanding their motivations. That seems to be a kind of unconscious mind. — EnPassant

Now we are into yet another different level of explanation - one that ain't strictly neurobiological but linguistic and socio-cultural.

Humans have narrative consciousness, or language-structured self-consciousness. A good way to direct attention is to speak to ourselves in our heads as if we are addressing a person - our self.

So this is another habit(!) we learn. We construct an integrated tale about who we are, what we are about. There is this whole life story about the reasons we would do this or that which is all part of the learnt apparatus of being a self-regulating member of a human society.

So we are meant to be able to explain the reasons for our behaviour to others at all times. It is just part of the routine. And yet the neurological truth is that much of the reason we do things are down to habits and instincts we have learnt as our reliable ways to deal with the world with minimal attentive effort.

The neurological level need is to be efficient and think as little as possible about life. If you know the right kinds of things to do, just do them without stopping to think and debate. Focusing attention on any skilled action - even climbing the stairs - and you can set up the kind of wrestle between two processes with different basic rates (a fifth of a second vs half a second) that causes you to stumble and misfire. When it comes to action or output, one or other level of processing has to be in charge for the moment.

So on the whole, as a general rule, neurobiology will be wanting to respond to everything at the most habitual and automatic level first. We get a big tick from our biological self if we are successfully "unconscious" when getting stuff done. That is what an efficient and well-adapted brain looks like.

But then we get a conflicting socio-cultural message as, at that level, we are meant to be self-conscious selves, completely in charge and attentively regulating every action that issues from us. We are held responsible. And we better be ready with articulated reasons for everything.

If we do stumble even on something so trivial as climbing a flight of steps, blame has to be assigned for the failure. Maybe a dog barked and distracted us. Maybe the step wobbled. Maybe - if we are really forced to confess our guilt - we were being "inattentive".

Society is built on this kind of expectation. We are all selves, and that entails a conscious level responsibility for every action that results. That in turn sets up this great social concern and mystery when it comes to "unconscious" behaviour or thought. We have this dangerous inner world with its own mind. Mostly it seems to go with the flow, obey our narrative about our motivations. But there is lurks, always ready to betray us.

Again, it all comes back to a natural division of labour - the dichotomy of attentive-level and habit-level processing. And neurology celebrates the efficient brain that learns to get by as inattentively as possible, while sociology demands the impossible thing of a brain that is attentively responsible for every single detail of its behaviour. The unconscious thus looms large and mysterious in the popular imagination.

neurology celebrates the efficient brain that learns to get by as inattentively as possible, — apokrisis

I don’t quite follow your meaning when you say that neurology celebrates the efficient brain. Do you essentially mean that this is optimal for health and function?

The neurological level need is to be efficient and think as little as possible about life. If you know the right kinds of things to do, just do them without stopping to think and debate. Focusing attention on any skilled action - even climbing the stairs - and you can set up the kind of wrestle between two processes with different basic rates (a fifth of a second vs half a second) that causes you to stumble and misfire. When it comes to action or output, one or other level of processing has to be in charge for the moment. — apokrisis

When working to improve our skills in some activity, such as stair climbing, we necessarily focus our attention on the activity and often to good effect, so it seems there must be more to the story.

Humans have narrative consciousness, or language-structured self-consciousness. A good way to direct attention is to speak to ourselves in our heads as if we are addressing a person - our self.

So this is another habit(!) we learn. We construct an integrated tale about who we are, what we are about. There is this whole life story about the reasons we would do this or that which is all part of the learnt apparatus of being a self-regulating member of a human society. — apokrisis

I understand this learned habit of self is neurologically located in the DMN (default mode network). So I’m wondering if perhaps it’s an overactive DMN that’s to blame for the stair stumbling previously mentioned rather than ‘focused attention’. If so, it would seem that neurology celebrates the efficient brain that learns to live as attentively as possible, without the burden of an overactive DMN.

My view is that much of what our brains do is not conscious. I'm not sure that there is even a place in the brain where consciousness exists. Rather, consciousness is a service of the unconscious mind.

By "unconscious" I'm not thinking in Freudian terms. Rather, most of what our brains do is not open to introspection and observation. We can only guess what it is doing (short of evidence, which we have some of).

My conscious mind is more the witness of what I am writing here than the author. I don't know where in my brain composition occurs, or how the ideas composed are sent to the motor area, so that my fingers type out what some other brain area has written. (fMRIs suggest that many broad areas of the brain operate to complete tasks.)

I don't mean to suggest that there is no person. We exist as actual, unique persons, alright, but much of our mental lives are "silent" as far as the conscious mind is concerned.

I don’t quite follow your meaning when you say that neurology celebrates the efficient brain. Do you essentially mean that this is optimal for health and function? — praxis

No. I was meaning informationally efficient. Predictively efficient.

Ideally the brain should be so good at predicting its world that it doesn't even need to waste time finding out what actually happened. The more the brain can afford to ignore in terms of the available information contained in its environment, the better it is doing its job.

This of course is counter-intuitive to ordinary views about consciousness. It seems that to be highly evolved is to have an ever greater span of conscious awareness. The larger your attentive bandwidth, the better.

Yet the opposite is the basic driver of the neurocognitive equation. Less is more. We have a very limited working memory, and an even more constricted spotlight of attention, by design. Humans have large brains and use them to discount even more of the world than other animals.

One finding - might be a bit old now - is that monkey primary visual cortex (V1) has a proportionately smaller central foveal representation. The visual cortex gives more weight to what's happening in the periphery of the field of vision.

But humans devote a lot of V1 to just the pin-point size fovea. Everything outside that tiny central spot gets much less attention by comparison. And the logic is that humans use all their extra smarts to be already knowing where they should be looking. Less is more. What we can predict, we can discount. And the result is that what doesn't get discounted has far more informational significance. It is already more meaningful as what we didn't expect.

When working to improve our skills in some activity, such as stair climbing, we necessarily focus our attention on the activity and often to good effect, so it seems there must be more to the story. — praxis

Of course. We have to attend and learn when any skill is new. And then as fast as practical, the skill is made a smoothly integrated automatic habit - a thing we can now do without deliberative thinking.

It is literally a story of short-circuiting our reactions. When we attend, everything is looping right up the brain hierarchy so that the prefrontal cortex and other highly plastic and unspecialised higher brain areas are involved in figuring out how to do things - like drive a car or climb the stairs.

Then as there starts to be some success at that, the mid-brain begins to short-circuit those long and slow loops. It begins to emit the same response in a speedy template fashion. It knits together the complex set of instructions that the higher brain has been helping forge into just a memory that can tell the motor centres exactly what to do.

That is why you can do really smart and skilled things in a fifth of a second when attention would still be fumbling about in its experimental fashion, trying to see which bit has to happen exactly when.

I understand this learned habit of self is neurologically located in the DMN (default mode network). — praxis

You would need to distinguish now between a biological sense of self and a social sense of self.

So yes, all animals need an embodied sense of self just so they can move and act. They need to know where their bodies end and the world starts. They need to know if they turn their heads sharply, it was not the world that suddenly lurched. So for sure there is a neurology which maps the embodied self in proprioceptive fashion.

But now I am talking about self-conscious as a social construct. And this is about seeing the self as "a self". It is the habit of stepping back from all that is going on in "your" head and seeing it at an objectifying remove as the thoughts, perceptions, memories and feelings running through the experience of a person.

So when you think of yourself in this fashion, that is going to be a habit of thought that also lights up the part of the brain that help make that effort of self-visualisation a vivid experience for you. But it is still a social habit and not a genetic faculty.

The brain did not evolve a biological self-consciousness. Although - being highly social creatures, like all the great apes - we did definitely evolve the kind of imaginative skills that help make it an easy narrative skill to master.

We were pre-adapted by having highly developed social modelling abilities - the ability to model our fellow hominids as social actors with thoughts and desires. So we did have a biological ability to read the minds and intentions of others - the famous theory of mind "module". But what I am saying is that the final touch - the ability to step outside our own heads to model ourselves in that fashion - couldn't happen until symbolic language came along and allowed society to create that as a new self-regulating habit of thought.

If so, it would seem that neurology celebrates the efficient brain that learns to live as attentively as possible, without the burden of an overactive DMN. — praxis

The DMN story was way overplayed in my view.

Animals don't get bothered by extraneous thinking. They just react as automatically as possible. Attention would keep its sticky mitts out of things without having to be told.

But humans are supposed to be always narratising. That's the irony. It becomes an ingrained habit of thought. We can't shut up. The inner voice has been trained to start making some comment about something during every conscious moment. Whatever catches our attention in any instance has to be treated as a possible departure point for some "intelligent" remark.

So attention can't be literally shut off. Even if what we are doing can be handled entirely automatically - like driving your car on a familiar journey - your narratising mind is going to want to wander. It will latch on to anything random and ruminate about that.

Even in deepest slow wave sleep your inner voice will be trying to say something meaningful out of blind habit.

So the DMN is rather a neurocognitive artifact.

A well drilled brain wants attention put in idle. It would otherwise just get in the way of smooth and rapid performance. Attention would always be trying to invent some nifty new experimental way of doing stuff, and causing the brain to balls up what it actually needs to be getting on with doing.

But humans have learnt this further habit of chattering away in the head in watchful self-regulatory fashion. It itself is now a habit that just runs automatically of its own accord. So sometimes the inner voice is getting called in because something needs to be figured out attentively. And a lot of the time it can be allowed to wander off in distracted reflective thought with no great purpose.

It is not in competition for resources as such. It isn't going to be overactive and a burden in a normal and well-adjusted person. But that is all part of the social training. It is why we get told off in class for daydreaming. And why some might demonise this DMN as something that endangers our modern standards of cultural self-regulation and responsibility bearing.

First they train us to narratise to the point it is an unstoppable habit. Then they tell us off when we let our minds narratise in automatic fashion. The demand is that we ought to be in attentive control of what the inner voice is pondering about an any instant, no matter how little actual demand there is for attentional control at that precise moment.

Society cuts self-regulation no slack in the modern world.

The brain has two centers of consciousness. The inner self is the center of the unconscious mind, while the ego is the center of the conscious mind. The inner self is the original center; primary, and came way before the conscious mind. It was dominate during the pre-human time in evolution; up to about 10,000 years ago.

The ego is relatively new in terms of evolution. It consolidated when civilization appeared. Lack of awareness of the two centers is the main source of confusion about consciousness. The modern ego has deluded itself into thinking it is all of consciousness. In reality, the inner self is the main frame, while the ego is like a terminal that is also a standalone computer, fed by the mainframe.

The inner self has a much higher data input awareness than the ego; subliminal data. The unconscious mind organizes this higher data density through firmware connected to natural instinct and natural human propensities. The ego has a much narrower bandwidth in terms of awareness and organizes this terminal data via habit, logic and theory. This difference can be demonstrated with hypnosis, where far more detail is possible if the unconscious mind is made conscious.

There are many layers between the ego and the inner self. Below the ego is the personal unconscious. This is not the same as the unconscious mind connected to the inner self. The personal unconscious is based on data that came into ego awareness, that is stored in terminal memory.

Below the personal unconscious is the shadow, which is the gateway to the unconscious mind and main frame. Freud called this the ID. Like a shadow in the sun, the unconscious shadow is always with the ego, and defines unconscious content that is slightly below normal conscious awareness; main frame to terminal signals.

The shadow, at one time may, have been the secondary; before the ego. In tradition, the shadow was originally called Lucifer and then Satan; morning star. The shadow splits and the ego appeared; added firmware reflection. The ego is an entropy generator for the brain needed overcome the propensity of neurons to lower entropy via ion pumping. Its contrary nature helps the second law.

Below the shadow, are the archetypes of the collective unconscious. These are the brain firmware that the inner self uses to organize data. Since the ego has control over conscious focus and collects data in parallel with the inner self, the ego can have an impact on the firmware. Natural instinct is not full nat home in civilization, therefore inner self adapts to the artificial environments.

There are many layers of firmware wth the lowest, closest to the ego, connected to male and female instinct. Below that are firmware that organize data in terms of relationship or how similar things relate; family, prestige, polarizations, etc. Below that and closest to the inner self are firmware of meaning; logic and wisdom.

First they train us to narratise to the point it is an unstoppable habit. Then they tell us off when we let our minds narratise in automatic fashion. — apokrisis

Yeah that's pretty messed up. :grin:

So attention can't be literally shut off. Even if what we are doing can be handled entirely automatically - like driving your car on a familiar journey - your narratising mind is going to want to wander. It will latch on to anything random and ruminate about that.

Even in deepest slow wave sleep your inner voice will be trying to say something meaningful out of blind habit.

So the DMN is rather a neurocognitive artifact. — apokrisis

For whatever reason I have a rather overactive DMN, I believe, so my interest is in methods of reducing it's activity. You mentioned your belief that the DMN story is overplayed but haven't said much in critique of it.

A major theme of the DMN story is that it's 'task negative', meaning that when our attention isn't absorbed in a task the DMN becomes more active, just as you've illustrated. When we are absorbed in a task that's sufficiently challenging the DMN is said to deactivate and we may enter a so called 'flow' state. So this is one method to deactivate the DMN. I know none of this is news but please bear with me.

Another method of reducing DMN activity that I've had success with of late is in meditation. It takes me at least 20 minutes to quiet down my mind, and the basic method of doing this is focusing attention combined with abdominal breathing. The effect is short lived however.

The question I want to ask is if you believe the DMN, or rather the ingrained habit of self-conscious, can be unlearned to a significant degree, say with the methods I've mentioned and perhaps a sustained mindful attention?

The question I want to ask is if you believe the DMN, or rather the ingrained habit of self-conscious, can be unlearned to a significant degree, say with the methods I've mentioned and perhaps a sustained mindful attention? — praxis

Again, I would highlight the two different ways of framing what is going on.

The overly biological view would be that good concentration is an evolved brain function. Some folk are naturals. Other people have some kind of weakness. We could diagnose them with a disorder like attention deficit even. Give them drugs.

Then the view I'm taking is that concentration is the human learnt habit of being able to attend to essentially boring things that the brain isn't naturally designed to be interested in. If you are a radar operator watching a screen where nothing much happens all day, then why wouldn't your mind wander? It is wired to do just that.

This is a fact of neurology down to the micro-scale. If you have an image stabilised on your retina, it fades within a second, no matter how hard you try to keep seeing it. The nervous system is designed to discount that which doesn't vary right from the first step in sensory processing. To stay aware of some constant visual stimulus, our eyes have to be kept dancing over it in micro-saccades. We must introduce motion to create some sense of interest down at the front-line of vision.

So to the degree there is ever a problem, it is down to a social demand about the ability to self-regulate. It is just part of our culture - a useful part of course - that we can pay attention to stuff that brains are not evolved to find exciting.

Concentration is thus itself a skill to be learnt, a habit to be developed. We have to learn little tricks to keep us on task. Having a strong awareness of the penalties for failure can become quite a motivating part of the deal. Finding ways to insert brief refreshing breaks is another way to keep the brain on task.

And some people do have a stronger or weaker biological ability to stay focused, just as we all vary in the precise balance of our neurology. Another feature of humans is that we are more highly lateralised and that the brain's attentional networks are lateralised so that left brain leads for endogenous focus - tunnel vision in pursuit of plans - and right brain is the mode we switch to for vigilant focus, or an open-minded alertness where we don't know what is about to happen, but are ready to catch whatever it is very fast. So some people may be just better at one than the other, or just better at switching clearly between one and the other.

The balancing act is reflected in neurotransmitter differences. Dopamine is part of maintaining endogenous or internally-directed focus. Nor-adrenaline is for jumpy alertness as it boosts signal-noise ratios. It makes neurons more likely to fire, and so both more sensitive to stimuli and more likely to produce false guesses.

So there is no simple story. But the simple story is that humans in general, especially in this modern age, live with this high expectation about being able to concentrate when the brain would naturally be bored. And then within this, individual humans would struggle with their own individual biological differences in how the balances of their nervous systems happen to have been set up during neuro-development.

Where does meditation fit in? Well it would train both the social and the biological aspects of concentration as much as they are trainable.

It is a skill you can learn to switch between a left brain and right brain style of attention. We learn to do it in simple fashion just by looking up and to the left when wanting to search our memory or imagination in vigilant brain manner. It wakes up the right brain enough to emphasise that style of processing.

So biofeedback training is also a thing. If we train hard enough, we can establish top-down voluntary control over what would be normally some very low level and automatic stuff - like our heart rate or attentional settings.

And as you say, if being self-conscious is a social self-regulatory habit we have learnt, a cultural overlay, then we can somewhat unlearn that as a further cultural habit - the kind meditation is meant to represent as a higher state of self-mastery and enlightenment.

As you likely know, the inner voice can't actually be shut off. But we can learn to just keep on ignoring it every time it catches our attention. We can get into the habit of letting every itching beginning of a speech act go the instant it begins to clearly form. We can even let the babbling go on somewhere at the back of our mind by keeping our senses focused on the blue patch on the wall or whatever - keep returning our attentional focus to some neutral and un-comment worthy point of focus so that the inner voice has as little to work off as possible.

I had some zen training as a kid and I must confess I found it very hokey for these reasons. It just seemed another obvious trick you had to learn to play with your own neurology. My approach to life was always to chase my curiosities rather than worry about controlling them in some culturally arbitrary fashion. So I was never a good fit with meditation as an approach to anything. But in terms of neuroscience and cultural anthropology, how it works does not seem a vast mystery, just a very complex story of balances and interplays.

As you likely know, the inner voice can't actually be shut off. But we can learn to just keep on ignoring it every time it catches our attention. — apokrisis

When aggitated it can feel particularly loud, but as I mentioned, I've had recent success in quieting the inner voice in meditation somewhat reliably, seeming to be practically silent for brief periods.

Anyway, I appreciate what you've shared.

I gained a worthwhile understanding of the nonconscious mind from "Hare brain, tortoise mind" by Guy Claxton.

But I wonder if a simpler observation might also be helpful: the nonconscious mind takes care of any/all mental activities that happen outside of awareness. Thus it is nonconscious by definition. Being such a catch-all term, the nonconscious mind contains lots of disparate parts. There is the hind-brain stuff, keeping you breathing and your heart beating. There is the bit that executes oft-repeated habitual acts. There is the bit that mulls over problems that you have/face, and sometimes presents you with a solution. And so on.

The oddest thing I have ever come across while discussing these matters is the concept that "My consciousness is me; any other part of my mind is a malevolent invader, and not part of me at all." This is a common attitude that's always puzzled me. :chin:

A simple question - what is the neurological basis for the subconscious or unconscious mind? — EnPassant

"Mind" conventionally refers to awareness or consciousness. Nonconscious "mind" (i.e. nonconscious consciousness) is at least semantically incoherent. Ontologically, I don't think there's any good reason to believe that conscious processes can also be nonconscious processes, although it's logically possible, although we have yet to discover empirical evidence of this.

Further, mental phenomena like beliefs and feelings aren't the same kind of things as non-mental phenomena (i.e. nonconscious processes). Non-mental phenomena can influence or be influenced by mental phenomena, however.

(It is questions like this that convince me that neurology is not going to explain what the mind is.) — EnPassant

I think we already have a very good understanding about what the mind is and some of its functions.

emotional motivations that are not understood by the conscious mind. Sometimes people act without understanding their motivations. That seems to be a kind of unconscious mind. — EnPassant

Emotional motivations are a mixture of nonconscious processes (autonomic nervous system processes) and conscious processes (somatic nervous system processes). "Emotional motivations that are not understood by the conscious mind" would come under automatic or habitual behaviour along with conscious awareness of immediate/non-immediate assessments/interpretations and (re)actions.

I also think that although people believe that they aren't aware of their habitual or emotional reactions or reasons for reacting emotionally in a particular situation, that they just haven't been able to coherently understand their role and their thought/behavioural patterns in (a) given situation(s). I think they are aware of why they're reacting in the moment that they are reacting, but the information is processed very quickly and often chaotically (disorganised), and they don't tend to reflect much on it consequently to help make sense of it. So it feels or seems like a subconscious system is operating under awareness, but I don't think that's the case.

I don't think that's something that's likely to have a special "neurological basis."

It seems like the brain just processes a whole bunch of stuff, and most of it is "rough working" that's below the threshold of consciousness; and sometimes urges and intuitions that come from deeper (archaic, perhaps) layers in the psyche crop up in consciousness out of the blue. But I don't think there's necessarily any special demarcation in the type of processing.

Dennett's model of consciousness as "fame in the brain" is pretty good - basically any bit of content in the brain (some change in "register" that gets its meaning from language and symbolism, both inner, private, and outer, public) can take the stage and take a bow (although Dennett would no doubt quibble with my use of a theatrical metaphor here :) - perhaps the analogy with viral videos would be even more apt).

The human personality is based on natural brain firmware. These firmware are genetic based, common to all humans and are empty at birth. At birth they are analogous to seeds that can grow into plants that bear fruit.

As an analogy, a tomato plant seed has the genetic potential to grow and develop into a full sized plant that makes tomatoes. It does not do this in a vacuum, but is dependent on the environment to provide water, sun and nutrients, while also being vulnerable to things like drought, too much rain, poor soil, pests, virus, etc.

The personality firmware start our as neural seeds that grow, via genetic potential, in terms of neuron branching, using our sensory input like the sun, water and food. It integrates these things into its develop. There are also hazards in the environment. The final form of the firmware will have commonality in terms of human nature, but also differences, sort of like we get between people who grow tomatos with a green or black thumb; nature and nurture.

The unconscious is not a random storehouse, but rather is well organized based on the natural developmental paths of the firmware. The ego does something similar but differently. We have a learning potential, like the seeds, but the final shape and organization is defined by culture. For example, traditional male and female roles in culture organized our experiences down paths that reinforce this cultural distinction. The two paths of natural organization and social organization can match or be in conflict.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150217-how-smart-is-your-subconscious
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626321-400-the-subconscious-mind-your-unsung-hero/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm
It goes without saying that most of our mental processing, assemblage and filtering of sense data is done below the level of conscious awareness. In fact the majority of mental activity is sub or un consciousness.
What surprises some is that higher level tasks like computation and creativity also may largely be the result of sub conscious mental processing.
Consciousness is at best the 10% of the iceberg that shows above the water (sub and unconscious mental processing).

It goes without saying that most of our mental processing, assemblage and filtering of sense data is done below the level of conscious awareness. — prothero

Yet also, every habit was once being learnt at a conscious - that is attentional - level.

So to use a bad computer analogy - computer analogies always being bad - the writing of the subconscious routines involve the full consciousness that allows their writing. But once written, they can be freely executed without that level of development and supervision.

So it is not that the conscious and subconscious are mysteriously divided - raising the question of how our automatic behaviour is so smart and aware. The neurocognitive story is about how consciousness (or attentional processing) is simply the front-end learning and development phase. The whole goal of the mind as a "processing system" is to turn the novel into the routine.

Again, this turns things on its head for most people where it is presumed that consciousness is the highest authority and ought to be in charge of all things.

No. It is the blundering baby level of cognition. The novice car driver. The newborn still discovering it has hands. :)

OK. A bit of an exaggeration. But the goal of the brain is streamlined action. The aim is to turn every action or decision into a thoughtless habit as far as possible. Clearing consciousness of all its responsibilities is the architectural task.

So understood in terms of brain function, it is not at all surprising that consciousness barely seems involved in running the show. But of course, understood in more usual folk psychology terms - especially because humans have the social demand for being consciously responsible for their behaviour - it does come as a neuroscientific surprise that reportable awareness is the blundering about, still searching for an answer, level of mental operation.

Do you understand the neurological difference between attentional processes and habitual or automatic ones? Is there something further to be explained after those? — apokrisis

I think the discussion has always been whether or not the subconscious mind/ habitual/ the autonomic has intentional mental content in competition or subduing with the conscious/attentional mind. The whole brain is a living thing so it's not like the habitual processes are in anyway static like computer functions. I've read Baars and others and think the actual answer is something more complicated than that.
The best example I have of a sort of competition is that in dreams the subconscious mind (whatever you want to call it) subjects the attentional mind to weird experiences it isn't requesting. There are also tricks in dreams as if one part of the brain is anticipating the other.

I think the discussion has always been whether or not the subconscious mind/ habitual/ the autonomic has intentional mental content in competition or subduing with the conscious/attentional mind. — JupiterJess

You mean Freud played on Romanticism to turn it into a "scientific" theory?

The Romantic movement did dramatise a conflict between self and society - how the needs of the one suppresses the desires of the other.

And then late 18th century psychology began to reveal the difference between habitual and attentional processes. The mind more generally was shown to be the result of twitching nerve fibres.

Freud then packaged these various influences in his tripartite model of superego, ego and id. The idea that we live a life of deeply repressed animal urges - which coincidentally happens to be also the source of our wild creative inspirations, the spiritual best of us - was an easy one to sell.

But it was always bad science. The brain didn't evolve to be basically split. It is divided into attentional and habitual level processing so as to benefit from that clear division of labour. And the benefit comes from the two then working together in an accord that "flows".

The best example I have of a sort of competition is that in dreams the subconscious mind (whatever you want to call it) subjects the attentional mind to weird experiences it isn't requesting. — JupiterJess

The problem with sleep is you can't actually turn the brain off. If neurons stop firing, they would be dead. And so they fire all night, even though there is nothing to do except rest and repair, consolidate memories and newly acquired habits.

So the attentional aspect of the brain is still on. But it can't function normally as there is a general desynchronisation of activity. It is turned off as much as is possible.

In dreaming sleep, the brain is aroused to waking levels, but still has no external stimulation. Both sensory input and motor output is gated at the brainstem. So the brain is awake in a state of complete sensory deprivation. And that causes it to generate anticipatory imagery - randomly associative hypnagogic images. Conscious scenes that replace each other every half second of so like a series of disconnected movie frames.

Our narrative self - our habit of trying to pursue the events of life in terms of a coherent thread - is then left trying to catch up with this random phantasmagoria.

So yes. There is then a disconnection. The perceptual brain is awake enough to be doing its thing - striving to anticipate what the world ought to look like in the next instant. But that perceptual habit is not connected to the actual world, so just throws up a meaningless succession of wild guesses.

And then our narrative self is also awake enough to be doing its thing of trying to tell a coherent story about what it is experiencing. Which is difficult when no two images have anything more than a tenuous associative connection.

So it is not hard to explain the phenomenology of dreams in terms of how the brain would normally hang together during normal waking. You get exactly what you would expect when the brain as a whole is unplugged from the world, yet still continues to try to fill in for a world that has gone missing.

You mean Freud played on Romanticism to turn it into a "scientific" theory? — apokrisis

Thanks.

Yes, much of it can be attributed to Freud but as said the unconscious mind contribution has stuck. Why Freud Still Matters, When He Was Wrong About Almost Everything
https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-freud-still-matters-when-he-was-wrong-about-almost-1055800815

"Okay, sure, Freud’s got some problems. But he also nailed a few things.
For example, Freud was startlingly correct in his assertion that we are not masters of our own mind. He showed that human experience, thought, and deeds are determined not by our conscious rationality, but by irrational forces outside our conscious awareness and control ...
Today, very few would argue against the idea of the unconscious mind."

You often see the statements: “on a subconscious level X believes” and then mental content usually applied to the conscious mind is applied to that level.

To be explicit on what I mean by intentional mental content take these statements.

Kevin robs a bank because he consciously wants to go to prison.

Kevin robs a bank, consciously he is doing it for the money but unbeknownst to him he is institutionalised and subconsciously he wants to return to prison.

Does the attention-habit model eliminate this dilemma? A person needs to know their own intent to be morally responsible in a legal sense after all.

This is probably why there are tons of Libet threads here and other philosophy forums because the experiment has the implication that the subconscious mind is making the decisions and the conscious mind is being fed lies/illusions. People already believe in the subconscious mind and things like this second pop-science article affirm it.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5975778/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will

So then the conversation becomes “does intentionality as we understand it really exist” is “consciousness epiphenomenal to action” and then the neo-dualist views from Libet himself and others.

And that causes it to generate anticipatory imagery - randomly associative hypnagogic images. — apokrisis

But hypnagogia is the process from wakefulness to sleep. A quick quote from the wiki page:

Individual images are typically fleeting and given to very rapid changes. They are said to differ from dreams proper in that hypnagogic imagery is usually static and lacking in narrative content.

Most people report that dreams are not static and usually there is a clear story to it. Freud's dream interpretation was more or less what was written in the Bible where dreams are symbols and have to be decoded by a conscious mind. This is probably false but it is evident there is some level of preparation for the dream scenarios with the attentional mind lagging behind.
See also, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/psychoanalytic-excavation/200911/the-meaning-dreams-and-do-dreams-have-meaning

Kevin robs a bank, consciously he is doing it for the money but unbeknownst to him he is institutionalised and subconsciously he wants to return to prison. — JupiterJess

Or Kevin robs a bank because that is his usual way to support himself - it is a habit that makes sense to him at some level - and also because if it results in returning to prison, he wouldn't mind. He is such a screw-up that having all his choices made for him in an institution seems better in some ways.

So even if I buy your scenario, we are talking about a spectacularly bad example of life choices. Not a typical person. And even then, it just reflects a conflict that isn't sufficiently conflicting for the person. Steal money to live or live in prison. Both probably have there upsides and downsides. This dude simply isn't figuring out a better path in life. He is just lapsing back into his habitual alternatives and isn't using his attention and planning to work himself towards some better choice of habits.

A person needs to know their own intent to be morally responsible in a legal sense after all. — JupiterJess

Sure. It takes critical thinking skills to construct an acceptable self-narrative. But of course people can also "fool themselves". If you are trained from an early age to have to give an account of your actions, then you also learn the game of saying the right things and covering up the bits that might be shameful or unacceptable.

So what you tell the world also tends to be what you come to believe yourself. Especially if you are being cornered on the truth of your story. In reality, our decision making is more impulsive and haphazard much of the time. Life itself is not a clear-cut thing. But the nature of the moral game is that we are expected to be able to tell a tale of self-justification. It doesn't have to be actually true, just believed. And it is at its most convincing if we come to believe it ourselves.

This is probably why there are tons of Libet threads here and other philosophy forums because the experiment has the implication that the subconscious mind is making the decisions and the conscious mind is being fed lies/illusions. — JupiterJess

Sure. His work seems to slot neatly into that myth. But it just simply takes time to assemble a clear attentional state of thought. So the early stages are going to be unconscious. All the bits are still falling into place. Every time you launch into your next sentence, you have a general sense of intent, a point to make, and then the fully formed words start to spill out of your mouth.

So attention and habits go together in integrated fashion. What is attentional is the novel bit of your next speech act - some briefly glued together point of view or orientation. Some angle on life or an argument has just caught your mind. You want to comment on that. And from there, your habits of speech take over and flesh the vague impulse out, turning it into an articulate flow of words.

The first time what you actually are going to say becomes consciously reportable - themselves a possible focus of your attentional processes - is as your brain broadcasts the actual motor image involved.

If you are going to say "Libet" next, your whole brain has to know to expect that to be a vocal action. The feeling that your lips will purse in a particular way, a certain noise will be heard, all has to be communicated across the brain so that you won't be weirded out to find this stuff happening. It won't feel like an alien has taken over your body. You will know that it was "you" who made a decision to speak. It's called reafference or forward modelling. You can tell what's "you" and what's "world" because you are expecting every sensation that is the result of something you are in the process of ordering.

So all this talk of conscious vs subconsious is just a very crude way to describe the hierarchical complexity of a working brain. Once you get under the covers, every action we take has to brew up over time and also involves both attentional and habitual processing. And because we are so good at forward modelling - operating on an anticipatory basis - we don't really notice any temporal gaps.

We think we experience things exactly as they happen. Which is impossible. It takes a tenth of a second just for a nerve message to travel from the eye or ear to the brain. It takes half a second to integrate a state of attentional focus across the whole brain.

But hypnagogia is the process from wakefulness to sleep. — JupiterJess

Right. But look closely at your dreams. They are exactly those kinds of images. They seem to be full of movement, and yet in fact they are just frozen snapshots. We have a sense of panning and swirling - a sense of normal flow. But the image isn't actually in motion.

When we fall asleep, and the brainstem gates all sensation, we have hypnagogic imagery because an anticipation-based brain tries to fill in for the missing world. Standard sensory deprivation. But because we are falling asleep, these first images have no narrative. They are really random.

Later at night, as we are roused by REM state, now we try to do the habitual thing of understanding these images as a running story. And that chase after meaning does start to drive the narrative. One image does connect to the next in a rough associative fashion. We are jogging the story along in trying to create one.

But it is still just hypnagogic imagery. Look close and you will see it has that same character.

Freud's dream interpretation was more or less what was written in the Bible where dreams are symbols and have to be decoded by a conscious mind. — JupiterJess

Freud was such a con. Of course if the story is that every dream has a hidden meaning, then you can find a hidden meaning in every dream. Who could prove you wrong? If I dream of standing on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier, or going down a maze of stairs, I must be fantasising about screwing my mother, or father, or whatever. The fact I am bloody certain that I am not is all the evidence Freud needs to prove that I am.

So looking for secret meaning in dreams is a mug's game. It is just scrambled brain activity being prodded along by a narrative self, hoping to make sense of a state of sensory deprivation.

Again, you have to ask why we have come to frame our mental activities in this particular fashion - as some fraught drama of a consciously responsible self living alongside a wayward or subversive unconscious self?

Clearly it is a mythology that serves a useful social purpose. If we can teach people anything - in the effort to make them "civilised members of society" - it is that they know what they should do, but at any moment, without constant vigilance, they could let themselves down by letting their subconscious get out of hand.

It is the means of control. It is a habit of framing we learn. But it ain't good neuroscience. Or even good psychology.

A simple question - what is the neurological basis for the subconscious or unconscious mind? — EnPassant

To grasp nonconsciousness we need to define consciousness first:

Consciousness is quite narrow - 7±2 items at the time. Nonconsciousness is everything else. And that includes mostly habitual thoughts, feelings, images acts etc. etc.

Consciousness and nonconsciousness are both active during our awake hours. And that explains the discrepancy between what psychologists consider to be conscious and what philosophers consider to be conscious.

Nonconsciousness is also active during the sleep - especially during REM (Rapid Eyes Movement) phases of our dreaming.

Nonconsciousness also includes instinctive thoughts, feelings, images, acts etc. etc.

A neuronal base is not well described yet - but fMRI (functions Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technique has given some insights. For example, what we are thinking about while our brain is being scanned.

Also. It is better to use nonconsciousness than un/sub-consciousness.

Enjoy the day,