speidel%cod@NOSC.ARPA (Steven L. Speidel) (01/09/87)
I would say that if one is "conscious" of an event, then the features/schema of that event are available to his goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and vice-versa ). -------
Mandel%pco@HI-MULTICS.ARPA.UUCP (01/13/87)
> I would say that if one is "conscious" of an event, then > the features/schema of that event are available to his > goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior ( and > vice-versa ). This is true, but its (in this context) implied converse is not. Clinical psychology furnishes ample examples of goalsetting/planning that is not accessible to the person's conscious awareness in the usual ways. Q: "Why did you walk into that restaurant?" A: "No particular reason, I just suddenly felt like having a cup of coffee." Further probing by the therapist brings forth the awareness that certain circumstances of weather, recent experience, and hearing a song on the radio, all associated with an emotion-packed memory of a dead friend, had "caused" the person to attempt to reproduce an occasion on which he had met with that friend. The example is wholly fictitious, but this sort of hidden cause comes up all the time in therapy. Evidently some process in the person planned to meet the friend by going into the restaurant, although the person was not consciously aware of the plan or the conditions that had produced it; if he had been, he would certainly have recognized the impossibility of meeting someone who is dead. And if we say that he was aware of the conditions and planned consciously, but immediately forgot the entire operation, how do we explain (except by special pleading) his failure to recognize the unreality of the plan? The only solution is to accept unconscious planning. So we cannot use "subject has access to event X for purposes of planning" as a criterion for "subject is conscious of event X."
speidel%trout@NOSC.ARPA.UUCP (01/21/87)
Original statement of hypothesis:
If one is "conscious" of an event, then
the features/schema of that event are available to his
goal-setter/planner for planning of future behavior
( and vice-versa ).
Further discussion:
This is true, but its ( in this context ) implied converse is not.
Clinical psychology furnishes ample examples of goalsetting/planning
that is not accessable to the person's conscious awareness in the
usual ways...
So we cannot use "subject has access to event X for purposes of
planning" as a criterion for "subject is conscious of event X."
Suppose we were to say that the therapist's evaluations of the subjects
consciousness was based on the subjects ability or inability to present
the pertinent material to the therapist. Perhaps the function of
communication resides elsewhere in the brain (or requires additional
connections) than mere consciousness and involves another process
which the subject may or may not have performed as yet, though he is
nevertheless "conscious" of the material on a low level. Once the
subject of therapy is prompted to "express" the material in communicable
form and that process is completed (or in progress) it is the therapists
subjective evaluation that the person has become "conscious" of it.
In this case, the hypothesis of interest would apply to the low-level
consciousness associated with an individual as opposed to an "expressed
consciousness" which may be shared with other individuals.
Following this tack a little further, one would associate the label
"unconscious" with things like reflex, control of peristalsis,
some kinds of sensory processing, etc.
As an aside, the concept of shared consciousness is an intriguing
one, isn't it? It could make it easier to explain how man accomplishes
what he does.
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