I didn't say it was a textbook. But in fact it was being used as an
introductory text for neuroscience at my local medical school. And it did focus on the neural architecture of automatic and attentional processing.

Why be such a dick?

Why be such a dick? — Apokrisis

To demonstrate that you also do not explain neurophysiology, except by metaphor (which has no scientific or philosophical value). Similar to your pansemiosis monologues, it's reductionist pseudo-science-philosophy, colloquially known as woo, hand waving, fact free waffle, etc.

If you want to know what a good book on neuroscience is like, read Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, by Bennett and Hacker.

For those who wish to get a very in-depth understanding of neuroscience's explanations of the brain, I invite you to watch the TV show Superhuman, in which the neuroscientist each week gives an explanation for all of the explainable human abilities, in a manner that goes something along the lines like this:

Well, humans have a whole bunch of neurons that think very fast like a computer, and well, he or she is doing it very, very fast, in parallel, and well it's definitely superhuman, and very complicated.

And so it happens.

And in humans, both would have then have the extra feature of being linguistically structured. — apokrisis

I don't see how the unconscious could be linguistically structured. Emotions and feelings arise from the unconscious which we cannot put words to. Trying to understand these inner feelings is where words fail us. Furthermore, when we think using words it is always a conscious effort. If we try to put words to the subconscious, in an effort to structure it, we must bring it into the conscious mind, so that it is no longer the subconscious which is being structured.

Well, humans have a whole bunch of neurons that think very fast like a computer, and well, he or she is doing it very, very fast, in parallel, and well it's definitely superhuman, and very complicated. — Rich

Humans are superhuman? Isn't that contradictory?

Humans are superhuman? Isn't that contradictory? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not according to this famous neuroscientist. It's "complicated" but they are most definitely "superhuman".

Basically, all neuroscience is doing is anthropomorphizing neurons. He talks about neurons as if they are little humans. They can do this, and they can do that, and they are amazing! - but complicated.

Is the unconscious a myth? Or a real and potent component of the psyche where words and memories are stored waiting to invade waking life?

Per Freud and Lacan, word similarity is something the unconscious plays with. Do you pay attention to Freudian slips as a window on the depths of the psyche?

Not a myth, more like a fantasy, Lacan, unlike Freud, thought the unconscious is linguistic but not like a structured grammatical language. A sea of referents, which are connected but not directly with each other rather by puns, anagrams, metaphors, desires, memories, history...

Slips are important in talk therapy. The conversations between analyst and analysand tend to brings out slips, which a trained therapist can use to help direct the therapy. The skill of the therapist is to make the right connections to direct the conversation.

Is the unconscious a myth? — Mongrel

Like the myth of Oedipus? Or Narcissus?

I think the unconscious is an unknown known, and one neurologist's woo is as flakey as his brother's. Religion is rather better at psychology than science is, so regarding the unconscious as myth is probably a good idea, if only to keep the worst of the meddlers out our heads.

There is the myth of the cup that is in the cupboard, or is not there, when one does not look, and the unconscious is like that; it's behind you. It's the bits of lego left over from the grand construction of the narrative self, the out of character fellow that takes over when competence is not enough.

A rational man's unconscious is irrational, an emotional man's unconscious is calculating. And of course they are both women! ;)

A rational man's unconscious is irrational, an emotional man's unconscious is calculating. And of course they are both women! — unenlightened

The anima is just like the wife in the Grimm's fairytale, The Fisherman and His Wife.

Stepmothers are exceptionally cruel calculators.

In the Grimms' version of the tale, the woodcutter's wife is the children's biological mother and the blame for abandoning them is shared between both her and the woodcutter himself. In later editions, some slight revisions were made: the wife became the children's stepmother, the woodcutter opposes her scheme to abandon the children and religious references are made. The sequence where the swan helps them across the river is also an addition to later editions.[3] — Wikipedia: Hansel and Gretel

Best to pass blame onto to others whenever possible and to unconsciously adapt stories (narratives) to demonstrate our own intelligence and moral excellence.

Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty are all similar to the myth of Psyche and Eros (Eros' mother Venus is the wicked queen/evil stepmother/malevolent fairy.)

I don't see how the unconscious could be linguistically structured. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was talking about using the attention~habit distinction instead of the conscious~unconscious one. And then - as we mostly study the neuro-architecture of that by jabbing electrodes into the skulls of laboratory animals - I added the rider that humans would of course have the usual linguistically structured overlay over both of those levels of processing.

Emotions and feelings arise from the unconscious which we cannot put words to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Huh? People are always talking about feeling scared, happy, hungry, whatever.

But yes, "emotional" valuation does take place at a rapid and instinctual level of genetically-formed habit. It is automatic and so "arises".

Yet it is also true that the evolution of the higher brain sees all the lower level habitual responding getting mapped to places in the prefrontal and cingular cortex so that they can enter into attentional level responding, become part of working memory planning. Feelings of pain, for instance, are mapped down in the brainstem. But then re-mapped in the anterior cingulate where they can then be either amplified or over-ridden, depending on the broader choices a smart animal has to make.

The higher brain can remember the pain - make it a nagging anxiety. Or it can shut down the feelings of pain if the animal is in a fight or flight situation and has to focus on executing some more complex plan of action.

So feelings can be "conscious" or "unconscious". Sometimes we can be feeling things - like that dull pain in your back while sat in your chair - without really being aware of them. We have a habitual level response but it isn't deemed significant enough to be allowed to break through ... until someone mentions it and you go looking to see if it's there. Then vice versa, a bee stings your toe and that breaks through your concentration, suppressing whatever other thoughts of urgent business that you had at that moment.

This is the sophisticated way brains are organised. They are designed to divide their effort two ways - either to deal with as much as possible with the least effort and analysis, or decide something is so significant that it needs full attentional analysis. And all day they do both things at the same time.

Saying some aspect of mentality is unconscious, semi-conscious, or whatever, explains nothing. It is saying well whatever consciousness is, there is this other stuff I rely on that isn't consciousness.

But attention and habit makes sense as two poles of a dichotomous brain organisation. We can talk about what exactly the brain is doing with each, and also why that seems the logical way for brains to navigate the dynamic complexity of the world.

Furthermore, when we think using words it is always a conscious effort. If we try to put words to the subconscious, in an effort to structure it, we must bring it into the conscious mind, so that it is no longer the subconscious which is being structured. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or rather it is like an iceberg. The whole brain is involved and the effort is divided between habit and attention. Attention forms a generalised intent (that being the novel part), habit puts that into words (that being routine skill), and then attention can sign off on the final utterance - or at least come up with hasty self-correction having spotted something wrong with the way the words just came out.

You are thinking of conscious and unconscious as two walled off kinds of mind. I am stressing their active interconnection as two complementary modes of processing - one doing the most work for the least effort, the other putting in the most effort only where it is really necessary.

The whole brain is involved and the effort is divided between habit and attention. Attention forms a generalised intent (that being the novel part), habit puts that into words (that being routine skill), and then attention can sign off on the final utterance - or at least come up with hasty self-correction having spotted something wrong with the way the words just came out. — apokrisis

When you refer to "the effort" which the brain is involved in, isn't this intentional effort? If so, then attention could not form intent, because attention is already subsumed under "the effort" which is itself intentional. If you don't mean intentional effort, what other type of effort could there possibly be?

You are making a category error in trying to make attention the efficient cause of a final cause.

I agree, it is hard to avoid talking like this. But I am trying to argue the more subtle systems view where what I mean by attention is precisely the development of some fleeting brain-wide state of constraint.

A clear intention comes to be in focus because all the background chatter of the brain is being suppressed or restrained. The intent thus pops into view as the efficient cause (supposedly) of the voluntary or controlled behaviour that ensues. And the effort being talked about is the effort of repressing all the possibilities that might have been to allow some particular "best fit" state of mind become fully actualised.

It makes no sense in the systems view to wear yourself out trying to isolate a first cause in such a model of neural action. If we say attention causes a state of intention, we don't mean that in a mechanical sense of there being an agent that has to pick a choice.

Instead, arriving at a state of attentional focus is a process of evolving development. It begins with the vague potential of the many different attentional outcomes that could be the case, and then arrives eventually - half a second later - at the outcome, the state of intentionality, which appears to have the best fit for whatever are the challenges or opportunities of the moment.

So as I say, you are analysing this mechanically - A leads to B leads to C. I am talking about an organic logic where a heap of potential self-organises through competition to arrive at a best adapted outcome. And in information processing terms, much of that effort goes into inhibiting or constraining all the possible neural activity that would otherwise muddy the water.

One striking finding was that if you measure the electrophysiological activity in the limbs of expert athletes, there is very little noise. Actions are being controlled with the least effort, the most efficient set of commands to the muscles. While a novice by contrast is sending a confused blast of often contrary messages to those same muscles - a reason why their motion is choppy and inaccurate.

So to control interactions with the world, we do have to learn what to do. But mostly that becomes learning to suppress the randomness of all the things we shouldn't do.

And this is the organic constraints-based model. A system is some collection of degrees of freedom which can be organised by limiting those degrees of freedom. The result is not complete suppression of error (as reflected in the OP's concern about Freudian slips), but instead its minimisation to an average that is tolerable - pragmatically good enough to serve a purpose.

The point of the OP was this suspicion that every action has a cause and so Freudian slips have to be secretly intentional. But an organic or Aristotelean view of causality says slips can be just slips. Accidents are also still part of the game. In a sense, you are always thinking about many other things at once, its just that you are also for the minute trying to suppress them so as to be left thinking about just the one thing.

Having a mind that rambles associatively comes for free. That is the brain's accumulated degrees of freedom expressing themselves. You can call it the unconscious if you like. But it is more about what we are putting an effort into suppressing just for an instant so as to be matchingly attentive to whatever wins out as that part of current experience we can least afford to restrict to an automatic response.

Agree with Apokrisis. If you take a broader view some or much of what is described as 'unconscious' is not really so, it's more like 'pre-verbal' or beneath the threshold of discursive thought. A lot of what we do, and know, resides on that level, but what we think we know is what we can consciously bring to mind, or discuss (hence, 'discursive'). But many types of skilled activities rely on training the normally unconscious parts of the mind so as to incorporate them into actions (if that is, in fact, what Apokrisis is arguing - hope so ;-) )

The conscious is what comes to mind or eye, and the unconscious is like the cause of that. So to simplify to the extreme, when we're hungry, we may have fantasies of our food, or begin searching for food. Notice people eating more and things of that nature. The idea that dreams are wishes, or even more complex, that desires or needs may conflict, so that they can not fully disclose themselves to consciousness, but must be masked in some way or sense. A lot of fantasy, myth an allegory can be thought of as taking this form. Elements are embellished, and others erased.

Then there is a kind of hiarchy of importance, so that some needs are met, and others suppressed or put off. Then there are strategies, actions and reactions aimed towards the fulfillment of impulses that bleed out, as it were, and used in unsure circumstances.

Consciousness is like unitary, there isn't a such thing as multitasking, there is just quickly moving ones attention back and forth. Kind of like the focus point of the eye, where only the thing being looked directly at is clear, and in consciousness, whereas the rest melds into the periphery. When it comes to drives, emotions, qualia, they are of this sort. One is not separate, or distinct from them, but are them. One is not hungry, one is hunger. One is not angry, one is anger. Etc. The unconscious is like the complete "self", only this itself is not complete, but open ended, and itself in flux as a totality, and not simply the individual unitary part that makes up consciousness in this moment.

Something like that maybe. Who knows?

You are making a category error in trying to make attention the efficient cause of a final cause. — apokrisis

I wouldn't be so quick to make that claim. Efficient causes commonly come into existence as a result of a final cause, this is the nature of freely willed actions. Also, it is a fact that we consciously direct our attention toward things which interest us. Being attentive is the capacity to direct ones attention without be distracted by things which tend to create a sub-conscious, reflex action of the attention, toward other things. Being able to consciously direct one's attention is essential to learning. We cannot learn without this capacity to direct our attention.

A clear intention comes to be in focus because all the background chatter of the brain is being suppressed or restrained. The intent thus pops into view as the efficient cause (supposedly) of the voluntary or controlled behaviour that ensues. And the effort being talked about is the effort of repressing all the possibilities that might have been to allow some particular "best fit" state of mind become fully actualised. — apokrisis

So this is clearly backwards. Intention is what focuses the attention, suppressing the background chatter. You are assuming some sort of "effort" by the brain, to focus attention, which allows intention to pop up, when it's quite obvious that this effort is intention itself, already in action. What else would you assume this effort to consist of, when we clearly have so many examples of intention focusing the attention?

You seem to have taken this faulty materialist, determinist premise, that intention is subservient to attention, and you've run all over living behaviour with it.

So to control interactions with the world, we do have to learn what to do. But mostly that becomes learning to suppress the randomness of all the things we shouldn't do. — apokrisis

Do you think that intentional acts only come into existence through learning? In actuality, intention is required for learning, as that which focuses the attention. The ability to control interactions with the world is innate, it is not learned. That is what it means to be alive. What is learned is which things to control.

I wonder if one can influence the unconscious. Suggest things to yourself?

Do you believe in a collective unconscious?

I think the unconscious is an unknown known, and one neurologist's woo is as flakey as his brother's. — unenlightened

I agree that the unconscious is an unknown known.

The remit of the scientist is to resolve empirical questions (i.e., to establish fact by means of empirical investigation) and provide reliable explanations. The remit of the philosopher is to resolve conceptual questions (i.e., to determine whether or not a concept makes sense by means of logical investigation) and provide coherent models. These are complementary tasks.

Cognitive Neuroscience is concerned with the neurophysiological processes which are associated with psychological functions. It is only through an integrative analysis of the explanations each domain generates that a complete explanation and coherent model of consciousness can be provided.

Yes, we do it all the time. We don't just think in actualities, and concrete entities, but in possibilities which are not correlative, or even necessarily actionable. Funny thing about openness and creativity, is that creatives tend not to be great at implementation and non-creative people are great at it. As if they're opposed. Jordan Peterson says that he thinks this is because in order to do a lot of creative thinking, one has to be able to detach their abstractions from their actions. Otherwise they would act out everything that they thought. Kind of like how you're put into paralysis while you're sleeping. Reminiscent of Kierkegaard's ideas of angst being caused by freedom, and infinite possibility. Without definite boundaries between categories, constraints, and strong belief in the reality of one's world view, ideas become less actionable.

The highly abstract possibilities, which include with them all kinds of qualitative judgments, and associations greatly affect the unconscious, in the sense of telling you what's possible, what's good and things without any necessary experience directly with them, or even correlative to other experiences you've had. You can preconceive of things, and they can be pretty much anything, which will tell you in advance how to react to them, or accomplish something without training or experience with it, which you can implement.

I wonder if one can influence the unconscious. Suggest things to yourself? — Mongrel

You mean like hypnosis?

I'm just going to distill what has been already mentioned by apokrisis.

Namely, that there is a myth that the unconscious has a will of its own. This is a mistake to think of the mind competing in interests between the ID, ego, and super-ego. Intentionality resides wholly with the ego. The super-ego and ID, as I understand it, don't have a will of their own in regards to decision making; but, are just components of the mind searching for the most agreeable outcome to some decision making process.

A question worth bringing up is to ask, why is it that we think that the ID or super-ego would have a sort of will of their own?

Intentionality resides wholly with the ego. — Posty McPostface

This is the mistake which I explain above. You create an incoherent model by restricting intentionality this way. Intentionality is required for learning, in order to focus the attention. Intentionality is behind all the desires which arise from the non-conscious aspects of being. If a desire inspires an action which is carried out for a purpose, it must be consider to be an intentional act.

For the record, you are just misrepresenting my position.

Talk about attention is talk about a general faculty. Talk about intentions is talk about particular states.

Now I am trying to get away from such a mundanely mechanical framing of the debate myself. But if we have to talk in those terms, then you can see how you are confusing apples and oranges. Or the general and the particular.

Intentions have to form via attentional mechanism. And then having formed as particular states of attention, they can act as constraints on further attentional acts.

But also, this attentional machinery is design to allow those intended acts of attention to be interrupted. You might be intending to open the door and noticing odd noises coming from behind, be rapidly caused to halt and form some new state of intention.

So you've got yourself into some pointless spiral in trying to prove attentional machinery is under voluntary control and never subject to involuntary trigger. But that machinery obviously has to switch efficiently between two modes of attending - either pursuing a plan or getting a new plan started.

Inasmuch as attention has an intentional (voluntary, noticeable, controllable, conscious) aspect, and an unintentional (involuntary, unnoticeable, uncontrollable, semi-conscious) aspect, it is unsuitable even as a metaphor for consciousness. It could just as easily serve as a metaphor for semi-consciousness.

Also, does the OP ask about intransitive or transitive unconsciousness, or both? Probably both if condition determines function (especially if that function fluctuates between two conditions).

Talk about attention is talk about a general faculty. Talk about intentions is talk about particular states.

Now I am trying to get away from such a mundanely mechanical framing of the debate myself. But if we have to talk in those terms, then you can see how you are confusing apples and oranges. Or the general and the particular. — apokrisis

In case you didn't notice, I'm talking about the general thing, intention, not particular intentions.

Intention in its basic form is general, and not a particular intention. This is why we often do things without being able to state the particular intention involved with the act, when the act is nevertheless intentional.

Intentions have to form via attentional mechanism. And then having formed as particular states of attention, they can act as constraints on further attentional acts. — apokrisis

In the formation of particular intentions, one's attention must be directed inward. towards one's inner self, at the general intention which is within. So if I'm feeling uncomfortable, I direct my attention inward and form the particular intention to eat, or to urinate, or whatever I see as required to relieve this uncomfortable feeling. From there I move to the even more specific, what I will eat, or where I will go. So directing my attention is a process of determining the particulars of a general intention. This "directing my attention" must be intentional, or else there could be no "directing". It is not a particular intention, because it considers many possible intentions so it must be general..

Of course I cannot really name the general intention from which the particulars are derived, or else it would no longer be general, it would be something specific, named. But I can describe them in general ways, like the feelings of anxiety, anticipation, discomfort, etc., which all seem to exist in forms which attract my attention.

So you've got yourself into some pointless spiral in trying to prove attentional machinery is under voluntary control and never subject to involuntary trigger. But that machinery obviously has to switch efficiently between two modes of attending - either pursuing a plan or getting a new plan started. — apokrisis

"Intention" does not mean "voluntary control", that is a misrepresentation. To have intention means to have purpose, it does not mean to have control. So involuntary acts are still intentional acts according to the fact that they are purposeful. The conscious agent may not always be consciously aware of the purpose for all the acts which one is carrying out, but this does not make these acts unintentional.

Inasmuch as attention has an intentional (voluntary, noticeable, controllable, conscious) aspect, and an unintentional (involuntary, unnoticeable, uncontrollable, semi-conscious) aspect, it is unsuitable even as a metaphor for consciousness. It could just as easily serve as a metaphor for semi-consciousness. — Galuchat

It is a mistake to class the intentional as necessarily voluntary. All voluntary acts are intentional, but not all intentional acts are voluntary.

Inasmuch as attention has an intentional (voluntary, noticeable, controllable, conscious) aspect, and an unintentional (involuntary, unnoticeable, uncontrollable, semi-conscious) aspect, it is unsuitable even as a metaphor for consciousness. It could just as easily serve as a metaphor for semi-consciousness. — Galuchat

Good thing that's just your misrepresentation then. I have stressed the complementary way that habit level and attentional level processing support each other.

Habit is there to do everything that needs to done without demanding thought. If you have already learnt the right responses (learning being what attention is for) then you can just act quickly with minimal need for analysis.

Attention is then where things get escalated because more thought and focus is needed.

So the fact that there has to be switching machinery that either gates or promotes events to the higher level is what you would expect. Your brain would not be much use if it couldn't flip between the need to keep focused on its own internal plans in the face of distractions, yet also then stop to focus on distractions when they might actually matter.

It's funny to hear you bringing up semi consciousness again as if it is a term with any relevance here. But maybe you can explain what you mean in neuro terms rather than as some handwaving metaphor, like a volume button being turned down low or something.

In case you didn't notice, I'm talking about the general thing, intention, not particular intentions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes but I was talking about intentions. And it was my usage you were attacking. If you want to talk about intentionality, then that is a different subject. Making the point that life and mind are characterised by intentionality is just making the point that they are telic being. And that is explained by a systems understanding.

In regards to habit or attention, they are both intentional or goal directed in a general sense. One is just intentions learnt and fixed while the other is the forming and particularisation of intentions.

Of course I cannot really name the general intention from which the particulars are derived, or else it would no longer be general, it would be something specific, named. But I can describe them in general ways, like the feelings of anxiety, anticipation, discomfort, etc., which all seem to exist in forms which attract my attention. — Metaphysician Undercover

So something vague like a discomfort leads to the intention to look closer. And yet something vague like a discomfort attracts your attention so that you might develop a suitable intention.

Hmm. See your problem?

Obviously my point is that brains do have the general intent of focusing on what needs attention. That is why some very complicated machinery exists to make that switch if your thoughts need interrupting.

And then shifting the spotlight - to use the popular metaphor - allows the nagging discomfort to develop into some fully consider intention. An act or action plan that would be the right response. You find your arse itches and so you scratch.

So the facts you think significant are ones that are already accommodated.

It's funny to hear you bringing up semi consciousness again as if it is a term with any relevance here. But maybe you can explain what you mean in neuro terms rather than as some handwaving metaphor, like a volume button being turned down low or something. — Apokrisis

By empirical investigation, it is easy to establish the fact that conscious, semi-conscious, and non-conscious mind-body conditions exist: simply observe that people can be awake, asleep, or in a coma.

If, having a background in neuroscience, you wish to have PET, fMRI, MEG, NIRS, or some other type of data correlated with these conditions, that might be useful in classifying psychological functions such as attention (and intention), but how would it be relevant to the OP?

We can add it this the states of day dreaming, meditation or quiet contemplation, focused concentration, etc. all of which are experiential in nature and cannot be explained by neuroscience. Qualia is an impenetrable barrier for the neuron model of the mind. Neurons appear throughout the body and are all manifestations of an underlying mind of qualia.

I agree. Lower levels of explanation (neurophysiology in this case) always underdetermine higher levels (cognitive psychology in this case).