KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (12/03/86)
From: rutgers!princeton!mind!harnad@titan.arc.nasa.gov (Stevan Harnad) Lambert Meertens (lambert@boring.uucp) of CWI, Amsterdam, writes: > Sometimes we are conscious of certain sensations. Do these > sensations disappear if we are not conscious of them? Or do they > go on on a subconscious level? ... The following point is crucial to a coherent discussion of the mind/body problem: The notion of an unconscious sensation (or, more generally, an unconscious experience) is a contradiction in terms! [Test it in the form: "unexperienced experience." Whatever might that mean? Don't answer. The Viennese delegation (as Nabokov used to call it) has already made almost a century's worth of hermeneutic hay with the myth of the "subconscious" -- a manifest nonsolution to the mind/body problem that simply consisted of multiplying the mystery by two. There is plenty of evidence for the subconscious, i.e. something that acts like a person but which one is not conscious of the thoughts or actions of. One explanation is that the subconscious is a seperate consciousness. Split brain experiments give convincing evidence that there can be at least two seperate consciousnesses in one individual. Does the brain splitting operation create a new consciousness? Or were there always two? ...Keith