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"Subconscious" is not a well defined technical term in psychology anymore, and hasn't been used since the days of Freud when nothing was well-defined anyway. An

"Subconscious" is not a well defined technical term in psychology anymore, and hasn't been used since the days of Freud when nothing was well-defined anyway. And even Freud regretted his use of the term: "If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious." The "unconscious" is not understood as being a "hidden consciousness" with its own agency. It's simply understood as the collection of processes in the brain that you are not consciously aware of. All sorts of sensory processing and integration. Things like balance, the syncing of visual and auditory inputs. It's like the brain's standard library. There's very little support for the idea of some sort of dialogue between conscious and unconscious.

Jensson 4y ago
The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. Any assumption that such a process doesn't exist is therefore disproven immediately, we know that none of those can be true. So, since we know that such a process exists, it asking us questions just like we ask it questions seems like a very useful property to have to handle all sorts of bookkeeping and learning. It is a very obvious mechanic in a brain containing two intelligent systems interacting so tightly as these two does.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  The name matters a lot if you want to clearly communicate your ideas. Your use of terminology leaves so many possible interpretations that it's hard to know exactly what you're trying to communicate. Which makes meaningful discussion nigh-on impossible.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    What name would you use instead? Subconsciousness is the only name I know that describes the computations in the brain that we aren't consciously aware of.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      This is pretty funny. Maybe actually read my original reply. It's in there.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        "hidden consciousness" and similar implies that these computations are conscious, that is an assumption we don't have to make here. All that is required is that the process has some reason to invoke the consciousness to get back some data about some scenario. The fact that the process is smart doesn't mean that it has to be conscious, that is just something you made up here, it is a much weaker statement than what I made.
        mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        It's not something I just made up. It's an extremely common misconception about what the *UNCONSCIOUS* is. Moreover, the way you imprecisely use ill-defined phrases like "subconsciousness", "asking questions", etc gives a very strong impression that you're talking about some outdated, pseudoscientific conception of the unconscious mind as a conscious, distinct entity. You can't be so imprecise and just expect people to understand what you mean. Especially if you don't even read the replies.
        Jensson 4y ago
        "UNCONSCIOUS" would imply that it isn't conscious. I wouldn't rule that out either. Would I really have to go through and refute every single point, I think that just communicating the general idea should make you understand why the rest doesn't work. Edit: And "asking questions" is just a more natural language way to say "invoking a function to get a result". It wants to compute something that the consciousness is good at computing, like where to go or what to do in scenarios. Exactly why etc, that is very hard to answer for such an intelligent process, we don't even know why it decides to turn the wheel at exact moments etc, trying to answer why it asks specific questions is even harder than that. So, the way these psychologists approach it, trying to think of it as a simple function with simple rules, will never ever work.
- finnh 4y ago
  You might enjoy The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.
- dazc 4y ago
  'They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home.' Every weekend I do a 12 mile walk, mostly rural roadside with little traffic. At one crossing point, a week ago, a couple in a vehicle stopped me and asked if I realized that I had just wandered across the road without looking and they had almost run me other. I explained that I was totally oblivious, had not heard their vehicle approaching and thanked them for them their concern. Today, halfway across the road, I just realized that I was doing the exact same thing at more or less the exact same point. I wonder now if my subconscious is trying to kill me?
- narag 4y ago
  The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. Let me point that "we don't control" and "in your brain" is a contradiction somehow. If it's in your brain, it's you. I'd simply say "you are your brain" and call it a day. A programmer metaphor: you start a thread that acts more or less on its own and never really dumps result to the main thread or registers its course in the memory, but it doesn't mean that it's "another you" in the brain. Sometimes you wake up at night and then never remember that moment, it doesn't settle in the memory, unless something happens that keeps you awaken, the you do remember the moment. My point is that what surfaces and gets recalled it's not you and then there's "another intelligent system" with different rules, just a subsystem that most of the time is unattended.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > If it's in your brain, it's you. So you can fall asleep whenever you want? You never spend minutes lying in bed trying to sleep but being unable to? Otherwise no, you aren't in control of your brain, your brain is in control of you. It decides when you get to compute and experience things, you don't get to, if it wants you to work you work, if it wants you to sleep you sleep, you aren't in control.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Your mistake is considering "you" as just the part that consciously decides. There's no brain and you, there's just you (or just the brain, it's the same thing). You and your brain is one thing, not two. In other words, I can fall asleep whenever I want. But "I" (and my brain) is not just my conscious/speaking layer. The whole layer stack needs to want it and put it to practice. It's the same with any other activity, just that for most there's less disagreement between parts of the layer stack. E.g. we can usually speak anytime "we" want. But an autistic person going non-verbal finds that they can't speak, even if their (what-you-call "I") thinking/top-layer wants it.
      - Jensson 4y ago
        So people who say "I couldn't fall asleep" are misleading? What they should have said is "I didn't want to fall asleep", is that what you mean? To me that seems to be very different from how most people think and reason about this. To most people "I" are the parts they control, the rest they talk about as if it was something else.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. What makes you think this points to "intelligent processes" (in the sense of processes having intelligence)? It just points to some processing being done in the background, and some processing reaching the top layer ("conscious"). But "thinking "is the totality of it, not just the top layer.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    It is intelligent enough to learn how to operate a car and navigate complex environments with other actors in it. To me that is enough to call it intelligent, how much intelligence do you want to see in a process before you start calling it intelligent?
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Well, my DSP chip is "intelligent" enough to decode video then...
      - Jensson 4y ago
        Did the chip learn to decode videos based on trial and error, or seeing examples? Otherwise I don't see how what you said is relevant here. Our genes don't know how to drive cars, but our subconsciousness still can do it with practice, driving cars isn't coded into humans, it is emergent behaviour.
        coldtea 4y ago
        Well, the subconsciouss didn't learn it by itself either, we taught ourselves how to drive by conscious learning (like, you know, getting driving lessons and passing our licesnse exams). Then we can use that learned behavior on autopilot, but that's another thing.
    - 4y ago

Jensson 4y ago

The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. Any assumption that such a process doesn't exist is therefore disproven immediately, we know that none of those can be true. So, since we know that such a process exists, it asking us questions just like we ask it questions seems like a very useful property to have to handle all sorts of bookkeeping and learning. It is a very obvious mechanic in a brain containing two intelligent systems interacting so tightly as these two does.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
The name matters a lot if you want to clearly communicate your ideas. Your use of terminology leaves so many possible interpretations that it's hard to know exactly what you're trying to communicate. Which makes meaningful discussion nigh-on impossible.
- Jensson 4y ago
  What name would you use instead? Subconsciousness is the only name I know that describes the computations in the brain that we aren't consciously aware of.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    This is pretty funny. Maybe actually read my original reply. It's in there.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      "hidden consciousness" and similar implies that these computations are conscious, that is an assumption we don't have to make here. All that is required is that the process has some reason to invoke the consciousness to get back some data about some scenario. The fact that the process is smart doesn't mean that it has to be conscious, that is just something you made up here, it is a much weaker statement than what I made.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
        It's not something I just made up. It's an extremely common misconception about what the *UNCONSCIOUS* is. Moreover, the way you imprecisely use ill-defined phrases like "subconsciousness", "asking questions", etc gives a very strong impression that you're talking about some outdated, pseudoscientific conception of the unconscious mind as a conscious, distinct entity. You can't be so imprecise and just expect people to understand what you mean. Especially if you don't even read the replies.
        Jensson 4y ago
        "UNCONSCIOUS" would imply that it isn't conscious. I wouldn't rule that out either. Would I really have to go through and refute every single point, I think that just communicating the general idea should make you understand why the rest doesn't work. Edit: And "asking questions" is just a more natural language way to say "invoking a function to get a result". It wants to compute something that the consciousness is good at computing, like where to go or what to do in scenarios. Exactly why etc, that is very hard to answer for such an intelligent process, we don't even know why it decides to turn the wheel at exact moments etc, trying to answer why it asks specific questions is even harder than that. So, the way these psychologists approach it, trying to think of it as a simple function with simple rules, will never ever work.
finnh 4y ago
You might enjoy The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.
dazc 4y ago
'They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home.' Every weekend I do a 12 mile walk, mostly rural roadside with little traffic. At one crossing point, a week ago, a couple in a vehicle stopped me and asked if I realized that I had just wandered across the road without looking and they had almost run me other. I explained that I was totally oblivious, had not heard their vehicle approaching and thanked them for them their concern. Today, halfway across the road, I just realized that I was doing the exact same thing at more or less the exact same point. I wonder now if my subconscious is trying to kill me?
narag 4y ago
The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. Let me point that "we don't control" and "in your brain" is a contradiction somehow. If it's in your brain, it's you. I'd simply say "you are your brain" and call it a day. A programmer metaphor: you start a thread that acts more or less on its own and never really dumps result to the main thread or registers its course in the memory, but it doesn't mean that it's "another you" in the brain. Sometimes you wake up at night and then never remember that moment, it doesn't settle in the memory, unless something happens that keeps you awaken, the you do remember the moment. My point is that what surfaces and gets recalled it's not you and then there's "another intelligent system" with different rules, just a subsystem that most of the time is unattended.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > If it's in your brain, it's you. So you can fall asleep whenever you want? You never spend minutes lying in bed trying to sleep but being unable to? Otherwise no, you aren't in control of your brain, your brain is in control of you. It decides when you get to compute and experience things, you don't get to, if it wants you to work you work, if it wants you to sleep you sleep, you aren't in control.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Your mistake is considering "you" as just the part that consciously decides. There's no brain and you, there's just you (or just the brain, it's the same thing). You and your brain is one thing, not two. In other words, I can fall asleep whenever I want. But "I" (and my brain) is not just my conscious/speaking layer. The whole layer stack needs to want it and put it to practice. It's the same with any other activity, just that for most there's less disagreement between parts of the layer stack. E.g. we can usually speak anytime "we" want. But an autistic person going non-verbal finds that they can't speak, even if their (what-you-call "I") thinking/top-layer wants it.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      So people who say "I couldn't fall asleep" are misleading? What they should have said is "I didn't want to fall asleep", is that what you mean? To me that seems to be very different from how most people think and reason about this. To most people "I" are the parts they control, the rest they talk about as if it was something else.
coldtea 4y ago
>The name doesn't matter, but it is a fact that there are processes that we don't control that are very intelligent in our brain. They can find their way home, or drive your car etc, without you having to think about driving or where to go, you just zone out and before you realize it you are home. What makes you think this points to "intelligent processes" (in the sense of processes having intelligence)? It just points to some processing being done in the background, and some processing reaching the top layer ("conscious"). But "thinking "is the totality of it, not just the top layer.
- Jensson 4y ago
  It is intelligent enough to learn how to operate a car and navigate complex environments with other actors in it. To me that is enough to call it intelligent, how much intelligence do you want to see in a process before you start calling it intelligent?
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Well, my DSP chip is "intelligent" enough to decode video then...
    - Jensson 4y ago
      Did the chip learn to decode videos based on trial and error, or seeing examples? Otherwise I don't see how what you said is relevant here. Our genes don't know how to drive cars, but our subconsciousness still can do it with practice, driving cars isn't coded into humans, it is emergent behaviour.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Well, the subconsciouss didn't learn it by itself either, we taught ourselves how to drive by conscious learning (like, you know, getting driving lessons and passing our licesnse exams). Then we can use that learned behavior on autopilot, but that's another thing.
  - 4y ago