Unconscious "Desires"

Marty

I have a question for you guys:

Is it meaningful to talk about intentions, beliefs and desires - which I find generally to be constitutive of having a consciousness - w.r.t to the unconsciousness? For it at least seems that part of what it means to have these intentions, beliefs and desires is that one directly realizes them.

We might say there are hidden activities (unconscious states) that in some way guide our beliefs, desires, and intentions, but how are we meant to meaningfully disentangle these and brain activities - in which we would ordinarily say that we do not see thoughts, intentions, beliefs, and desires in these activities given our general conceptualization of the ontology of material things? For it is only in virtue of having these experiences in our awareness is when they become meaningful. And the unconsciousness is never experienced, and therefore doesn't seem to have the properties of "immateriality".

If this follows it seems like beliefs, intentions, and desires are conscious processes only. But then when I consider things like the Libet Experiments - in which attempted to disprove free-will by postulating that brain-states fire before our actions in so far as we're aware of them - then how I generally approach this problem is by postulating that unconscious activities predominantly make most of our actions in the sense that they're the ones to motivate "our" desires, and that in accordance with that fact, that we are our unconscious motives and desires. So thus, the terminus of freedom does not end with consciousness, but unconsciousness. And as being my unconscious desires, I'm free.

But if our desires can only be meaningful in virtue of conscious experience, then how does it follow we can only meaningfully talk about the desires of our unconscious states as being ours?

I'm sure I'm just not seeing something intuitive here.

Wayfarer

↪Marty

What you're saying is true, but what it says to me is that 'the ego' is not in control of the show. I think that is why, for example, in Eastern disciplines, one is trained to see through the ego. But that's not a trivial undertaking by any means, especially in an individualist culture such as ours, where the ego is central. It requires a very different mind-set.

Marty

But control is also constitutive of agency. That requires intentions, beliefs, and desires - which are a part of the consciousness.

Wayfarer

↪Marty

Is that so? I had thought that this is the very thing which the Libet experiments cast doubt on.

When you study adult learning, you learn that gaining expertise in some skill progresses through stages, until the learner has 'unconscious competence' at the skill in question - be it driving a car or playing the piano. Part of the meaning of 'unconscious competence' is not having to consciously think about putting on your indicator, or how to form a chord, and so on. Those higher-level skills haven been absorbed into one's unconscious - become 'second nature', as it is sometimes said. But they're still part of your overall behavioral repertoire, even so. And then ask, to what extent does artistry of any kind, rely on the ability of an artist to utilise and express, and thereby invoke, recognition of qualities and attributes which are usually unconscious? Isn't that part of what art does?

BC

Is it meaningful to talk about intentions, beliefs and desires - which I find generally to be constitutive of having a consciousness - w.r.t to the unconsciousness? For it at least seems that part of what it means to have these intentions, beliefs and desires is that one directly realizes them. — Marty

Consciousness is one aspect of the brain's operation, but the brain does many things that we can not observe. There are many functions that are invisible to us. For instance, I ask you "Is Kraków a town in Spain?" What process did your brain follow to come up with whatever answer you arrived at? I'm pretty sure you have no idea. I don't either. We can't observe how the memory or cognition works.

"What did you have for lunch today?" How did you remember (or fail to remember) what you ate for lunch? Of course, we don't know how we did or did not remember; memory either delivers up responses to queries, or it doesn't. Further, we can't tell for sure that what it delivers up is right or wrong. If you can't remember, that doesn't mean you had nothing for lunch. If "Ham and cheese on rye", we can't be sure that is actually what we ate today. Maybe we ate it 3 days ago.

Wishes, resentments, desires, fears, and so forth are not always conscious. Sometimes they are, but often they recede into invisibility from the conscious mind (which is, remember, just one aspect of mind).

Marty

↪Bitter Crank

The notion was that these only make sense w.r.t consciousness. What does it mean for normative states - intentions, beliefs, and desires - to be unconscious? How do we know that the unconscious has desires? I've never experienced them (for that would mean for it to be conscious) to know how they are like. It's not like they're perceivable either.

Wayfarer

↪Marty

Have you ever done the 'blind spot' test? It's very simple - draw two dots on a piece of paper then move it towards your face - at a certain point one of the dots dissappears, because its position corresponds with the location where the optical nerve joins the cornea.

Now, that blind spot is always there, but of course you don't normally notice it because the brain automatically compensates for it.

That is a trivial example, but it's also quite a good allegory for some aspects of the unconscious.

The processes by which we see and make judgements are generally unconscious. They occur to us as what is obviously the case. Of course, sometimes such judgements will be perfectly sound. But other times, they might be the outcome of a pre-conceived notion, an emotional reaction, a disposition, and so on. And we can't see those things directly - hence, they're unconscious. But we can become self-aware by seeing ourselves as others see us, although there will always be many aspects of the totality of consciousness which can't be made subject to discursive analysis.

Marty

Wayfarer, that's fine. But how's that related? I'm not denying that the brain alternates perceptual structures in some form. I mean, Hering Illusions is also another example of that. So is the Mach Effect or whatever. But these aren't desires, intentions or beliefs. Of course I agree that we experience these.

ernestm

↪Marty

I think you mean to refer to 'subconscious states' really. Unconscious desires definitely exist in Jungian theory, which talks about the 'universal unconscious' and 'individual unconscious;' rather than the 'subconscious' you are describing. According to the Jungian theory, there are two main aspects of the individual: the mask, or persona (roughly equivalent to the ego in Freudian thought) and the shadow, or unconscious (roughly equivalent to the id). The acts of individuation, by each person, reinforces their individual personae. However, the stronger the persona, the more cognitive dissonance it creates with unresolved paradoxes, which the individual shoves down into the individual unconscious, or bag. But the problem is, no persona has any direct way of knowing what is in their own bag, and what is in someone else's; so the gross effect is the creation of a shared pool of unknown consciousness, thus referred to as universal.

The point of the theory is that an individual cannot see into their own bag, but can access the universal unconscious. That's why it is called unconsciousness, rather than subconsciousness, because scientifically, there is no way for any one person to know what in the unconscious is their own, and what is someone else's. And the reason for the theory is that the bag is the source of tension in the persona, which manifests as anger and frustration, or even psychosis.

Jungian therapy can enable the person to discover what is in their own bag by recognizing the anger and frustration attributed to others, usually via dream states, and thus pull knowledge of the universal unconscious into their own persona by deepening its reach into the shadow. That eliminates the cognitive conflict, reducing anger, frustration, and psychosis. .

Wayfarer

I mean, Hering Illusions is also another example of that. So is the Mach Effect or whatever. But these aren't desires, intentions or beliefs. — Marty

I think that such things as visual illusions and unconscious desires exist along a continuum. Desires, intentions and beliefs are intertwined with perceptions and judgments. Humans make judgments all the time, from the trivial to the highly consequential. Reflexes can be emotional (jealousy, lust) as much as physical.

I suppose what I'm driving at in all this is some kind of theoretical basis for the unconscious - what it actually is. Ernest mentions Freud and Jung above, but arguably the idea is much older than that. I think Kant and Schopenhauer anticipated Freud's 'discovery' of the unconscious.

ernestm

↪Wayfarer

Oh, I should add, of course Freud also uses the word 'unconscious,' but Freud was not particularly concerned with the philosophy of mind, and whether it can be known that something in the unconscious is part of the personal unconscious, or part of the universal unconscious. It was up to Jung to point that out later.

Wayfarer

↪ernestm

True. In fact I found Freud's theoretical schema of the mind completely inadequate - as did Jung, of course. But Jung is hardly studied in the Universities nowadays, and if he is, it's more likely to be in comparative religion than in either psychology or philosophy departments.

ernestm

↪Wayfarer

At the undergraduate level, you are right, but there is also a reason for that. Jungians hold that people cannot really understand Jung properly until they are sufficiently individuated to accept the theory without introducing their own unconscious bias, and they state, hermeneutically, that does not occur until after middle age, and any possible middle age crisis. So they don't want to teach it at lower levels.

Cavacava

↪Marty

Is it meaningful to talk about intentions, beliefs and desires - which I find generally to be constitutive of having a consciousness - w.r.t to the unconsciousness? For it at least seems that part of what it means to have these intentions, beliefs and desires is that one directly realizes them.

The person who has a neurotic issues such as undesirable compulsions, may not understand why they are compelled to act the way they act. Anorexia, bulimia, agoraphobia,.. are behaviours which are not under the complete conscious control of their victims. Freud and others thought that such compulsions express lacks; desires caused by some mistake in the structure of a persons fundamental development. The neurotic tends to repress the experiences which give rise to their compulsions, a defensive maneuver, an attempt to offset an imbalance. What they lack they make up for by fasting, purging them self, avoiding crowds and so on, a kind of transference.

I think Libet's experiment measured muscle memories ability react instinctively prior to thought, like the way muscles react instinctively for a person skiing moguls.

ernestm

The person who has a neurotic issues such as undesirable compulsions, may not understand why they are compelled to act the way they act. — Cavacava

Well that's a good start. When you speak of 'issues' you are really more speaking of the medical definition, and medically speaking, people with psychoses are also compelled to act 'undesirably,' From the medical perspective, 'undersitable' refers to actions which hurt the individual or others. If they don't hurt the individual or others, then the compulsions are considered harmless, and therefore not 'undesirable.' That applies to both neuroses and psychoses, with the simple distinction that neurotics don't have an 'undesirable' metaphysical belief, whereas psychotics cannot 'oerceive reality as it is.' So for example, one might have the belief that one was abducted by aliens, but if it causes no harm to the individual or others, then it is not considered psychotic. But if the belief does cause harm, then it IS considered psychotic. The point of the medical definition is that avoids issues with philosophical reality of beliefs, and whether consequential actions should be considered rational, or not. .

Wayfarer

So they don't want to teach [Jung] at lower levels. — ernestm

Jung was gnostic. So you don't study Jungian psychology, you're initiated into it.

I think Libet's experiment measured muscle memories ability react instinctively prior to thought, like the way muscles react instinctively for a person skiing moguls. — Cavacava

Agree - that's why I referred to the idea of 'unconscious competence'. But it also shows that ego/discursive thought is not as in charge as we like to nowadays think it is, which, I'm sure, is an important aspect of Western liberalism.

ernestm

↪Wayfarer

According to some, but not to others:

http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-jungian-archetypal-studies

It was a much better course than I expected.

Marty

↪Wayfarer

I think that such things as visual illusions and unconscious desires exist along a continuum.

In virute of what do you make this claim, though? It seems prima-facie binary: one is conscious -- we experience it -- and the other is unconscious -- we don't experience it.

Do you deny that you're experiencing illusions?

↪Cavacava

I agree with this, but I'm not sure how one can ascribe the terms "intentions, beliefs, and desires" meaningfully to the unconscious. Just that there seems to be a casual relationships between it and experiences. But there's also one between the mind and the brain, and we generally reject the idea that the brain has beliefs, desires, and intentions. That's why we say the mind is irreducible to the brain in virute of x, y, z.

↪ernestm

No, I mean unconscious. Subconscious, as far as I know, was not used in psychoanalytical writings, and both Freud and Jung postulated that the unconscious does have a will, purpose, desires, ideas, etc. But what I'm asking is how is it meaningful to say that they have these, and why is the unconscious and conscious a "continuum" anymore than a body and mind is a "continuum?"

Wayfarer

↪Marty

One point about optical illusions is that until they're pointed out, you don't know they're illusions. But there are also illusions which you know are illusory, but the eye can't help but be taken in by them anyway. So the efficacy of the illusion is due to the fact that it's subliminal, i.e. the effect relies on aspects of cognition which you can't consciously overcome.

But it's a very difficult subject - on the borderline between cognitive science, philosophy and psychology. All of this is. I don't think it is at all well understood by current science.

↪ernestm

Very interesting! Found a good blog post on there, also, about mythic heros and the unconscious.

ernestm

But what I'm asking is how is it meaningful to say that they have these, and why is the unconscious and conscious a "continuum" anymore than a body and mind is a "continuum?" — Marty

Ah, well according to Jung it is meaningful, but not to the individual. As well as the 'universal' there is the 'collective,' which can refer to groups. So for example, many have commented that when a plane slammed into the WTC, there was a collective desire to invade Iraq for no rational reason whatsoever.

But it isnt meaningful to the individual, because the individual cannot know what is in their own unconscious, rather than someone else's, even after discovering a shadow. A good example is nervous habits such as scratching the head or whatever. If a person is unaware of it entirely, sometimes these are mimics of other people they admire, and sometimes it is an unconscious behavior resulting from an individual's own internal state, but there is no way of knowing which.

Jung believes these kinds of things are a continuum, because we are continually acquiring them from the universal, and continually modifying our own persona, either by shoving new things into the shadow, or by pulling them out. But once we individualize any particular behavior into the persona, it doesn't go back into the shadow again, so the persona is continually growing. the things we shove into the shadow are new things that the persona rejects.

Marty

↪Wayfarer

The illusion is acknowledged to be not an illusion in virute of a belief that overcomes the prior experience. It's not that we don't experience the illusion, and then experience it, it's that we experience it differently in virute of a conceptual difference.

But any way, even if there is a relationship between the unconscious, this doesn't mean it has desires, intentions, and beliefs. These would just be mere causal dispositions?

unenlightened

But any way, even if there is a relationship between the unconscious, this doesn't mean it has desires, intentions, and beliefs. — Marty

Interesting language here; id is 'it' as distinct/opposed from/to ego 'I'. That is to say that the unconscious is other than myself - the self I am conscious of.

I want to lose weight, but it wants to eat. I want to be calm and reasonable, but it wants to bite babies... Have you ever found yourself in an internal conflict? (This is no form of argument, but an appeal to relate talk to experience.)

I think there has been some confusion in this thread between non-conscious and unconscious. Stuff you don't have to think about, and stuff you have no access to is not 'the' unconscious of Freud. He is talking about a division of awareness. 'It' is a foreigner disrupting your life and frustrating your ambitions. 'It' is the inner arsehole.

ernestm

Stuff you don't have to think about, and stuff you have no access to is not 'the' unconscious of Freud. He is talking about a division of awareness — unenlightened

I would be interested where you got that idea. The Freudian trichotomy is usually considered divisions of the 'self,' with the ego being the only part of which that the self can be aware, and superego and id being unconscious.

unenlightened

the ego being the only part of which that the self can be aware, — ernestm

The ego is the self that is aware of itself, sure. The self that the self that is aware of itself is not aware of is the unconscious, but the unconscious is not unaware; it responds to the environment - and part of its environment is the conscious self.

ernestm

↪unenlightened

oh. So you are saying unconscious is aware, but the self is not self aware of the awareness? lol

unenlightened

So you are saying it is aware, but the self is not self aware of the awareness? lol — ernestm

Not sure what you are claiming I'm saying that is so funny. But never mind. Freud claims that the 'unconscious' speaks and acts. It speaks in 'Freudian slips', for example. So yes, the unconscious is aware, but the conscious is unaware of it and unaware of its (the unconconscious') awareness. It has desires, it wills. This is the fundament of Freudian theory, that human awareness is divided.

ernestm

↪unenlightened

so the conscious is aware but the conscious is unware of the awareness.

I was just laughing because it sounded funny to me. Thanks for the explanation. I'll try to make a song about it )

Wayfarer

I think there has been some confusion in this thread between non-conscious and unconscious. — unenlightened

The confusion has mainly been due to me, and I think that yours is good distinction to make. But the reason I have pursued this line of argument, is because I believe it has some basis in fact.

In the Freudian approach, 'the unconscious' is generally seen in terms of the source of psychopathologies and neuroses from repressed memories and the like. So in that context 'the unconscious' has a kind of clinical definition and scope. I think that is what Marty's original question was about.

I muddied the waters, perhaps, by trying to broaden the notion of the unconscious to include what you have referred to as the 'non-conscious' elements of perception. The reason for that is that I think they're closely related - that Freud's definition is simply one aspect of a much larger subject, which is the influence or presence of unconscious or non-conscious factors in day to day awareness.

unenlightened

I muddied the waters, perhaps, by trying to broaden the notion of the unconscious to include what you have referred to as the 'non-conscious' elements of perception. The reason for that is that I think they're closely related - that Freud's definition is simply one aspect of a much larger subject, which is the influence or presence of unconscious or non-conscious factors in day to day awareness. — Wayfarer

I understand, it's an interesting topic. Quite a good example of the non-conscious is the automatic visual processing that an artist has to learn laboriously not to do in order to render what is presented to the eye rather than what is 'understood ' by the eye. This sort of learning as well as the reverse, of competences becoming unconscious that you mentioned, indicates that there is no fixed line between conscious and non-conscious, and I think the same applies to the unconscious.

But the op is very much about unconscious desires, and that is where it becomes seemingly impossible to make sense of things without positing a division of awareness. Here I have to openly acknowledge the inevitable circularity of explanation which must run along the lines of - ego resists the idea that it is incomplete, that it is influenced by desires of which it is unaware because it is dangerous to its own stability to be aware of them. And this too, ego is unaware of. But the claim is that this is not a psycho-pathological condition confined to the minority of lunatics of one sort or another, but rather the universal human condition, the enlightened excepted, possibly.

It is this circularity that later made Freud so discredited in academia, but to me it is a necessary feature of any sophisticated psychology that it applies itself to both its adherents and its opponents; that division mirroring the internal psychic division.

Metaphysician Undercover

If this follows it seems like beliefs, intentions, and desires are conscious processes only. But then when I consider things like the Libet Experiments - in which attempted to disprove free-will by postulating that brain-states fire before our actions in so far as we're aware of them - then how I generally approach this problem is by postulating that unconscious activities predominantly make most of our actions in the sense that they're the ones to motivate "our" desires, and that in accordance with that fact, that we are our unconscious motives and desires. So thus, the terminus of freedom does not end with consciousness, but unconsciousness. And as being my unconscious desires, I'm free. — Marty

It may be useful for you to distinguish between feelings like desires, and the will itself. It is most likely the case that most desires originate from some place other than the conscious mind, and they creep up on us, as the various appetites, but it is through the will that the conscious mind suppresses and controls these appetites.

With will, we suppress desires, allowing the conscious mind to deliberate, and make intelligent decisions. Then the will allows action according to these decisions. So for example, a feeling of hunger (desire) may creep up on you, and instead of eating the first thing in front of you which looks edible, you suppress the desire to eat, while you decide on what to have for dinner.

Following such decisions, we have "intentions" which are usually understood to be proper to the conscious mind. This refers to decisions made in advance, as to what is wanted, decisions made with a minimal amount of influence by desires and appetites. This is how we normally use "intention", to refer to these thought out goals, and that is why intention is associated with consciousness. But this way of comprehending "intention" requires that we separate intention from desire, or appetite, because the desires and appetites affect us prior to the will, and the will must act to suppress them, while intentions are formed through this action of the will. Intention then refers to what has been chosen by the conscious mind, as a goal, after the desires have been suppressed by the will.

Harry Hindu

Interesting language here; id is 'it' as distinct/opposed from/to ego 'I'. That is to say that the unconscious is other than myself - the self I am conscious of.

I want to lose weight, but it wants to eat. I want to be calm and reasonable, but it wants to bite babies... Have you ever found yourself in an internal conflict? (This is no form of argument, but an appeal to relate talk to experience.)

I think there has been some confusion in this thread between non-conscious and unconscious. Stuff you don't have to think about, and stuff you have no access to is not 'the' unconscious of Freud. He is talking about a division of awareness. 'It' is a foreigner disrupting your life and frustrating your ambitions. 'It' is the inner arsehole. — unenlightened

This sounds like evidence that you have a modular mind - one that has evolved separate parts to solve different problems. It sounds like you have these "animalistic" desires and these other desires to maintain your social standing in the complex social environment you find yourself in.

I don't see any distinction between "unconscious" and "non-conscious". They both mean the same thing. What I do see is a distinction in the level of attention I apply to certain aspects of my mental life. It seems as though I can attend several things at once, especially if I have experience doing those things, like driving to work everyday, but I can assure you that I don't drive to work unconsciously, or non-consciously. I can attend other things while driving to work, like thinking about my upcoming vacation, or remembering what happened last week, but I'm still attending driving to work. I'm just devoting less attention to driving because I have done it many times to where it doesn't require my full attention. My full attention is required when conditions change quickly, as in someone cuts in front of me.

Unconscious "Desires"

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