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-- Consciousness
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Originally posted by Magnetonium Remember a famous saying that only about 2% of our brain is used up in our lifetime ;-) imagine what the rest is used for, and how we havent unlocked our brain which holds many more amazing powers and abilities. Ok, you can laugh at me if you want, but its not only my belief.

http://timekiller.tv/2007/09/12/chewbacca-lives

Sorry to burst your bubble

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Originally posted by venomX Seriously Mag, this is exactly what Subey has being arguing for all along. Well more or less in any case. And no, some processes are definitely subconscious. There is no way in hell you can reassign colors to wave frequencies for example. You will never 'see' red when getting the frequency that is currently assigned for green.

Interesting that you say this, because when I was younger I got sick which resulted, as you put, in "reassigning" the way my mind recognized information in the world. To be specific, when I close my eyes I can see sound in colors, which appear to be coded by the frequency of the sound (cymbals - yellow white, bass - black brown, etc) as well as the spatial location of the sound. Maybe this is why I love trance and electronic so much, LOL. They're kind of like fields of sorts, which play like a movie. When I hear doppler effects it's a pretty wild sensation, since it doesn't exactly occupy the same space as the optical visual imagining input.

The medical term is synaesthesia, which can also be triggered by some drugs (leading me to believe it is latent in our evolutionary past or future), and I'm fairly certain that many different forms of it can potentially be like "upgrades" of sorts to the sensory perceptions we are accustomed to experiencing. Perhaps I even underestimate the role it plays in my conscious and subconscious processing of information. Mind you, I can also see it being a detriment if it took particularly instrusive forms that over-rode the senses we need to survive in this particular world we live in and have created for ourselves.

But... why NOT view the world in 10 ways instead of 5 if we could? Obviously (to me, at least) the "technology" is already in us, in our brain 'hardware'... so the question becomes why (too many centuries of alcohol use?) and when (has it already happened and been supressed? will it happen in the future? is it happening right now?) and how (sight and sound? space and touch? all at once?) it will show itself.

And to the OP: Yes, I'd say the word and idea of "thinking" is just a placeholder for whatever it is this organ we know of as consciousness actually is. Just by being the part of us that "thinks", our consciousness immediately removes itself from the capability of many experimental answers... introspection is our only avenue to better understand ourselves personally, and perhaps one day someone will come along who can link the right instrospections to the collective network within which we exist.

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Originally posted by Sunsnail http://timekiller.tv/2007/09/12/chewbacca-lives Sorry to burst your bubble

Sorry, I dont get it since I've never seen any shows or movies from whatever the character that makes that weird sound. Your chance to have some fun out of my post is wasted

Dont forget, I dont like TV!

So guys, what's in your id? If you know, then your super-ego is weak. Sigmund Frued was one sick doctor, but hey, psychoanalysis actually works, so I guess all the incest thoughts and pent up sexual desires and unconscioussness are true. THere are some weird weird thing about our psychology...

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Originally posted by Krypton So guys, what's in your id? If you know, then your super-ego is weak. Sigmund Frued was one sick doctor, but hey, psychoanalysis actually works, so I guess all the incest thoughts and pent up sexual desires and unconscioussness are true. THere are some weird weird thing about our psychology...

Does psychoanalysis "work"?

Or... is it just intuitive people who understand people doing just that, and offering advice thereafter (constructed from their own experiences, etc)?

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Does psychoanalysis "work"? Or... is it just intuitive people who understand people doing just that, and offering advice thereafter (constructed from their own experiences, etc)?

Ahhh, I dunno. But the guy was a genious to think of those theories by himself.

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Originally posted by venomX Seriously Mag, this is exactly what Subey has being arguing for all along. Well more or less in any case. And no, some processes are definitely subconscious. There is no way in hell you can reassign colors to wave frequencies for example. You will never 'see' red when getting the frequency that is currently assigned for green.

Well for clarification purposes I'm not interested in walking and breathing and what not. I'm specifically focused on all the higher thinking that people naturally give all the credit to their conscious thought.

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Originally posted by venomX I agree mostly with your arguments. I think it is a pretty accurate description of how subconscious processes work. Also, for me, the relationship between the conscious mind and that 'third eye' is mostly as you stated. I would tend to agree that most processing is done by that third eye.

Just to append to the 'third eye' in re-reading it, perhaps the model should be evolved to something like a 'beholder' in the sense that it can invoke multiple instances of the 'third eye' to look at things simultaneously, and process those cohesively.



So using that picture as a reference. The smaller eyes would be instances that might be looking at a tower in the Capitalism Castle, another eye might be looking at the moat of the Communism Castle.

And the largest central eye is the one that has the cohesive view of it all (a vantage point that sees both castles, and the tower and the moat)

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Originally posted by venomX Even though you may hold in your conscious the words or structures that that your 'third eye' has fed it, you don't just type it out right away. You take the words and then you consciously evaluate the validity of them in the broader context.

But aren't you really arguing for the third eye here?

Being able to evaluate things in the 'broader context' sounds like third eye work to me

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Originally posted by Subey *** The most important question in this field of inquiry that I can think of is, "What does my conscious mind see when it interacts with the subconscious?" I've queried my brain many times about this question, and it has come up with the following analogy, which can be summed up as, "Thought Architecture" which I will now explain. *** We start with the following analogy. A Castle = A complex idea/concept and in terms of the example that follows it will represent specifically 'Capitalism'. And the lens that I perceive this castle with we will call the 'third eye'. This will be explained in a moment. Now let's say I want to talk to you about the castle. My third eye can view the castle from any angle, and from any level of magnification. So my conscious mind thinks, 'capitalism is stupid', and I say to you, 'capitalism is stupid'. All my conscious mind contains when I thought that was really is just a word. Simultaneously to this thought my third eye is looking at the castle from a high vantage point so that the entire structure can be seen, and the entire structure has a definite form that conveys specific meaning (i.e. I can see towers, a courtyard, a moat, a portcullis etc.) If you ask me what is stupid about it. I then respond, 'it results in an unequal distribution of wealth and I think that is evil'. What happened simultaneously was my third eye zoomed in on a tower of the castle, and that tower conveyed the that specific information. My third eye knows that tower, and where it is located relative to all the other parts of the castle. In other words it doesn't get lost exploring the castle. *** To flip this analogy. Let's say I am sharing with you a concept you are unfamiliar with. I speak a sentence to you, and your conscious mind again can only hold a few sentences at a time in its mental context, but it takes each sentence and uses them as bricks to build a castle that your third eye sees. As you ask me questions your third eye is seeing that the castle you are building is missing a tower, so you want clarification to know what kind of tower to build there. In effect you don't have to consciously 'hold' what I said in the first paragraph of this post in your consciousness, because your 'third eye' is 'holding' it, because it is overseeing the construction of the castle. *** This "Thought Architecture" model seems accurate because it models how through the exchange of only a few words in the conscious mind and in speech that we can manage to manipulate and use complex ideas without much difficulty. The question for me then what does this model tell us about the nature of conscious thought? And to me the crux of that question is, what's is my conscious mind's relationship with the 'third eye' that sees in this "thought architecture" environment? It seems to me that the "thought architecture" realm is where the real thought is occurring because that is the only place where 'capitalism' has enough form as a cohesive entity to be thought about. And that my conscious mind is the reflection of the 'third eye' that thinks there. That's my argument... though I would not be surprised if I didn't communicate it well

I think I understand your castle analogy. I use a similar type of model to envision individual intelegence. The difference is that I use cities with buildings instead of a castle with towers. Either works if you can see the connection.

The reason I'd used buildings in a city is as a way of describing how some people are briliant while being dumb. Take the professor who's "Calculus" building is over a hundred stories high but who's "Whatch out for that lamp post in front of you" building is maybe only one or two stories high.

To bring this over to cognition as you've described it might be explained as people having a "Capitalist" castle in thier memory which contains towers such as "Ethics of", "Theory of", "Math Behind", and "Atrocities associated with".

This leads to one of my biggest sticking points with your analysis. It fails to mention memory, or seems to use contiousness in a vaugly interchangable way with memory.

My view of "sub contious" is processing things that you are not actively aware of, picking over long term memory without taking up the resources of short term memory.

Short term memory, by contrast, is almost all contiousness.

It's almost as if the contiousness has acess to most of the short term memory and a little bit of long term memory and sub-contious is the other way around.

On analogy I've come up with to describe sub-contious is the idea of trains steaming along, based on a "train of thought". Every person differes in the number of tracks the have (a one track mind for instance), the number of engines they have, and the amount of power that each engine has.

For example, some people apear to be very good at focusing on a single task, they could be thought of to have a single very powerful train engine. Others can work on processing three or four things with thier sub-contious at the same time. These people would have three or four trains running at the same time.

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I have thought of city models, but I leaned towards a castle because its individual parts and their relationships to each other are more clear as a single entity.

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Originally posted by atbell This leads to one of my biggest sticking points with your analysis. It fails to mention memory, or seems to use contiousness in a vaugly interchangable way with memory.

If the 'third eye' is manipulating a brick that it retrieved from a 10 year old memory or something it received a minute ago in a forum post seemed a dimension that would make my point unnecessarily complicated. And I didn't trust that I would be able to transmit my model at all as it was

At the same time I don't think the age of the memory plays that important a role in the sense that the capitalism castle is made up of memories that you've had all your life. If you answer the question, 'What do you think of a free market economy' then your answer will be a cohesive thing whose parts are formed from experiences you've had all throughout your life. It will include the 5 min. old memory you have of buying a chocolate bar to driving through the poor part of town when you were 5. So to me memory isn't a component that I really separate from the castle model, it's integrated into its very structure - and as importantly you don't have to consciously recall either event for them to have an impact in the architecture of your capitalism castle.

[tangetial aside: I know that the reason why an employee named Israel at my local Quickie doesn't work there anymore... he got full time hours at a parking lot where he also worked. I didn't have to consciously add this information to my capitalism castle. It was naturally integrated into the structure because it belongs in that structure. It is also stored in other structures as well, as presumably when I acquired the information it was stored on its own for its own memory sake, and evaluated and placed in other structures where it would have an appropriate contribution - Perhaps though when I am consciously thinking of capitalism is a time when my third eye renovates the castle]

quote:

Originally posted by atbell On analogy I've come up with to describe sub-contious is the idea of trains steaming along, based on a "train of thought". Every person differes in the number of tracks the have (a one track mind for instance), the number of engines they have, and the amount of power that each engine has. For example, some people apear to be very good at focusing on a single task, they could be thought of to have a single very powerful train engine. Others can work on processing three or four things with thier sub-contious at the same time. These people would have three or four trains running at the same time.

Using your analogies, I'm arguing that the subconscious layed down a set of track through the capitalism city, and that the conscious mind's stream of thought, is it looking out the window on the train.

It isn't 'thinking', but it appears to be as it describes each location that the subconscious has mapped out on its journey.

The route has been mapped to a logical structure, i.e. you start at introduction square, now on your right you see the body of the argument plaza, and our journey ends at the conclusion airport.

Evidence to be evaluated...

Bob is a Creationist. Bob is also a well respected Lawyer.

We pour over one of Bob's cases, and are impressed with it. It's logical/rational and well presented. We understand why he is a respected lawyer.



Now we present Bob with a Fossil. He conscious mind responds with a moronic creationist argument to dismiss the fossil. What light does this shed on the 'Third Eye' vs 'Conscious Mind' relationship?

All the general evidence about Bob's 'Third Eye' suggests that it can process data in a logical way. Therefore his 'Creationism Castle' should be reduced to rubble when the fossil is introduced.

***

The crux of the issue is, is it destroyed, and the conscious mind is lied to? Or when the 'third eye' evaluates a conflict between a 'cultural' conclusion and a 'logical' one, that the 'cultural' one has trump?

Even if the second case is true vs the first, does it not suggest that the answer is decided upon by the 'third eye' and then *delivered* to the conscious mind?



In other words, at no point does Bob consciously think, 'the fossil destroys my model of creationism, but I will go with my cultural truth', by the time the thoughts are conscious, he's spewing out his inane defense of creationism.

halfway through this thread my brain exploded.

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Originally posted by Subey Using your analogies, I'm arguing that the subconscious layed down a set of track through the capitalism city, and that the conscious mind's stream of thought, is it looking out the window on the train.

I'd never put the cities and trains together, this changes things significantly. I'm going to have to sleep on it.

I'm also caught on the idea that blocks of the capitalisim castle are part of other castles too. This is clearly an important element of contiousness / memory that should be considered.

I'm currious about you're theoretical third eye and how it gets around. Would it be like a disembodied movie camera just flying all over the place? Does it move randomly or is there some pattern in the path it chooses to take? Could it be possible that the factors defining how a persons third eye move are leared or possibly genetic?

I view our conscious simply as the conscious mind, pre-conscious mind, and sub-conscious mind. Like an iceberg, our conscious mind is the tip that sticks out of the water. It is our pre-conscious mind that acts as our memory storage, a database we can access anytime. Our sub-conscious, if we return to the iceberg analogy is all the memories we suppress because they are dirty, filthy, depressing, incestuous, traumatic, or just plain sick. We do a very good job at it..

Unless your a psychotic maniac who cannot suppress ones own sub-conscious (id), and acts out with conscious thought, such as a serial killer might do..

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Originally posted by atbell I'd never put the cities and trains together, this changes things significantly. I'm going to have to sleep on it. I'm also caught on the idea that blocks of the capitalisim castle are part of other castles too. This is clearly an important element of contiousness / memory that should be considered. I'm currious about you're theoretical third eye and how it gets around. Would it be like a disembodied movie camera just flying all over the place? Does it move randomly or is there some pattern in the path it chooses to take? Could it be possible that the factors defining how a persons third eye move are leared or possibly genetic?

Some clarifications...

The Castle model is limited.

It's analogical purpose was to convey the idea that whatever thinking is, that it has to involve some perspective of whatever is being thought about that is broad (i.e. can actively see all the variables involved simultaneously in order to work with them effectively). (hence Castles and 'third eyes')

And that in Contrast consciousness is not broad at all, and therefore I can not attribute thinking to it.

To combine these two distinctions in a unified field imagine being at a Grand Prix Car Race. Your consciousness is sitting in the stands, and your 'third eye' is watching the race from the Goodyear blimp. Your conscious thoughts then are akin to an announcer in the blimp giving you a summary of the race, but its just a summary, it sees where all the cars are on the track regardless of what it is telling you, 'and at the big turn Car #81 takes the lead'.



Neither of these models handle/incorporate the actual act of thinking in terms of the manipulation of the objects that it sees because the purpose of the Castle analogy was to illustrate a fundamental requirement of thinking that consciousness did not have, and *not* to be the end all model of how thinking works.

An end all model of how thinking works using 'third eyes and castles' isn't great, because an eye is a relatively passive object that one doesn't associate with the active manipulation of things. We tend towards 'hands' as being the ideal object. Such an end all model might involve a rubik's cube?



Just as an aside, if it takes 10 different analogies to represent all the dimensions of thinking reasonably well, then I have no problem reconciling that in my brain... I just invoke 10 'third eyes' to unite them Or inversely, perhaps it takes 10 analogies to describe the complexity of the workshop where thinking takes place.

I see the use of multiple analogies to explain a single thing as akin to saying that light exists simultaneously on a colour spectrum and a colour wheel, each of which denotes different yet true relationships.

*NOTE: The following is constructed poorly... I may rework it later but I'm feeling sleepy


A clarification about consciousness...

It may seem that I am demoting it to some passive task, in saying that I don't think it thinks. I should clarify its role as I perceive it...

I think the 2 dominant raison d'etres of consciousness are first as the Avatar of the 'third eye'. The thinking it appears to do, is part of its role as the representative of our subconscious in the sense that it allows us to communicate the thoughts that the 'third eye' is having, and as Avatar to experience having those thoughts.


THe other raison d'etre is this idea of being the experiencer. That which experiences. Experience is more about emotions and feelings than it is about thinking. Feelings can dominate thought... if I am angry then my thinking is greatly affected.


While I hate to fall back on the age old model of the 'head and the heart', I see the head as the 'third eye thinking part ourselves' that resides in our subconscious, and the 'heart' as the feeling part resides in our consciousness. And that the two are unified in the term 'soul' for lack of a better word.

As a bit of 'experiencer' proof I would note that how I will 'feel' 5 minutes from now is beyond me to predict. I may be sad, or happy. Who knows. How I feel is less about a broader context (though in the same way anger can change thought, broader context can change feelings) like how I think is. Thus it is a realm that is ideally suited to the realm of my consciousness.

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Originally posted by Subey But aren't you really arguing for the third eye here? Being able to evaluate things in the 'broader context' sounds like third eye work to me

Then I would have to say that there would be a third and fourth eye. One that is automatic, autonomic, fast and parallel (subconscious processes) and one that is serial, slow, and deliberate (conscious processes). In my opinion you are over attributing things to the the third eye. I really would like to hear your take on the points I made in my last argument though, specifically on the two processes I described the conscious mind does.

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Originally posted by venomX Then I would have to say that there would be a third and fourth eye. One that is automatic, autonomic, fast and parallel (subconscious processes) and one that is serial, slow, and deliberate (conscious processes). In my opinion you are over attributing things to the the third eye.

To clarify the players then with some terms that are getting less and less useful as the thread develops.

Sleeping Eye: Deals with things like breathing and heart rate
Trained Eye: Deals with things like walking, playing the drums
Third Eye: Manipulates complex concepts
Conscious Eye: Emotes and Experiences

I'll use a new analogy to clarify my weighting of the third eye. I apologize if it is seen as unnecessary repetition.

If I think, 'a forum is a useful method of exchanging information', then I have just exchanged information with you. And it has taken you no time to process that. But I've invoked a number of ideas, and relationships, that if I asked you to explain fully would take a large essay.

So using an essay analogy this is the relationship I see between the Third eye and the conscious mind. The complexity of most sentences is such that they invoke a nexus of multiple concepts and relationships between those concepts such that even a relatively simple sentence, yet alone one that involves the manipulation of complex ideas is so great that the amount of active thinking that must be done to make sense of it to me is let's say a 30 page essay.

derived from that essay an author will include 2 things. A title, and maybe a 1 page summary or abstract.

Conscious thought to me is that derived information. Except I would also mention that I doubt 'words' are likely involved in any real form in the 'thought workshop' where the third eye does its thinking. I think the 'asbtract/summary' is a translation into words after the fact. In the same way a 'wall' is composed of bricks and not the word 'brick'. Thinking only appears to involve words, because it gets translated into them when the 'third eye' creates the abstract/summary for the conscious mind of what it has been thinking.

If I were to now ask you, do you understand my new analogy? (not necessarily that you agree with it) you would probably say "Yes".

What do you feel in your conscious mind about this concept? You feel you understand it. But it isn't 'anywhere' in your conscious mind really, your conscious mind isn't holding the concept.

To explain this, the most reasonable explanation to me again, is that your third eye is now visualizing the entire 'essay analogy' castle, and it just sends your conscious mind the signal, 'valid castle', and this gets translated to your consciousness as, 'I Get it' or something to that effect.

***

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Originally posted by venomX I really would like to hear your take on the points I made in my last argument though, specifically on the two processes I described the conscious mind does. The conscious mind for me has 2 types of functioning. One is the learning process, which I already argued before.

Using your drum example with the essay analogy.


So my drum teacher says, hit the rim like this. And then I try and hit the rim like that a second later. In that time consciously, I've only thought a few words, such that I would still conclude that those words were derived from some larger essay of thought the 'third eye' had.

Once my 'third eye' is finished learning the mechanics, at that point I will 'lean' towards the feeling nature of your conscious self becoming the driver and feeling out rhythms and the like.

However, I don't think there is a need for any distinction between the 'trained eye' and the 'third eye'. I think the third eye is still operating the same way it always does, it is just that your conscious is busy 'feeling' rather than relaying any information about what is happening in the 'thinking workshop'.

***

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Originally posted by venomX The second one is to filter, adjust and decide.

I think that is reasonable from my perspective that the consciousness is the part that 'feels'. That something can feel right or wrong, and on that basis be rejected or modified.

To use a restaurant analogy. The 'third eye' delivers to me a meal of thought. As my conscious mind experiences the thought, it feels/tastes it. I might then reject it as being too spicy, or not spicy enough. It then gets sent back to the kitchen (aka the third eye's workshop) re-spiced and sent back to the conscious mind to be experienced again.


The preceeding took me three hours to write, note how each section got shorter

P.S.
The simplest (which only retains 1 dimension but an important one) analogy yet... just for TA

'Thought text' is a mono 24kps mp3 created from the third eye's orchestra of the mind

quote:

Originally posted by Subey Evidence to be evaluated... Bob is a Creationist. Bob is also a well respected Lawyer. We pour over one of Bob's cases, and are impressed with it. It's logical/rational and well presented. We understand why he is a respected lawyer. Now we present Bob with a Fossil. He conscious mind responds with a moronic creationist argument to dismiss the fossil. What light does this shed on the 'Third Eye' vs 'Conscious Mind' relationship? All the general evidence about Bob's 'Third Eye' suggests that it can process data in a logical way. Therefore his 'Creationism Castle' should be reduced to rubble when the fossil is introduced. *** The crux of the issue is, is it destroyed, and the conscious mind is lied to? Or when the 'third eye' evaluates a conflict between a 'cultural' conclusion and a 'logical' one, that the 'cultural' one has trump? Even if the second case is true vs the first, does it not suggest that the answer is decided upon by the 'third eye' and then *delivered* to the conscious mind? In other words, at no point does Bob consciously think, 'the fossil destroys my model of creationism, but I will go with my cultural truth', by the time the thoughts are conscious, he's spewing out his inane defense of creationism.

People lie to themselves in order to defend this notion: routine.

It is not usually conscious: it is a subconscious action. The lying, that is. It is not to be confused with the inability to piece together two pieces of information.

By creating routine in a universe of unknowns, we give ourselves a safety net of sorts against chaos.

As for me, I'm a big fan of organized chaos.

PS: Nice thread.

All great things teeter on the border of ridiculousness and awesomeness.

R&A baby, R&A. lol

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby People lie to themselves in order to defend this notion: routine. It is not usually conscious: it is a subconscious action. The lying, that is. It is not to be confused with the inability to piece together two pieces of information. By creating routine in a universe of unknowns, we give ourselves a safety net of sorts against chaos. As for me, I'm a big fan of organized chaos.

I'll disagree fervently in the morning

Just something I was thinking while in bed as more circumstantial evidence.


It's commonly accepted that a giant run-on sentence is more difficult to understand than 3 shorter sentences that convey the same idea.

If thinking was located in consciousness, then I think a giant run-on sentence would be easier to understand since that is more akin to the experience of consciousness.

In contrast. A sentence, with its period at the end implies a break. The conscious mind is now on consuming a new sentence, the previous one has left the stream. Therefore 3 Separate sentences that form a single idea should be more difficult then for the conscious mind to cement together.

But a 'third eye' model, that builds structures, receiving 3 separate parts would be easier to assemble. Like receiving 3 separate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. With its perspective that can see all 3 pieces simultaneously, figuring out how they go together is a snap.


***

Here's a related question re-energizing my piston/axle evidence.

Three parts of a car. The Piston... the Drive Shaft and the Axle.
I can consciously only hold the Drive Shaft in my mind's eye. And I understand it. But in order to understand it, can I without also simultaneously seeing the context of the piston and the axle? Doesn't it seem that like reading 3 separate sentences that only a 'third eye' model can understand it, because sees all three parts as three parts of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together as a single thing? That understanding just 'the driveshaft' is logically impossible.

Therefore when I consciously think "I understand just the driveshaft" because that's all that I can hold in my consciousness that I'm really *borrowing* or *echoing* an understanding that the third eye has?



P.S. Using my 'restaurant' model, I do note that the meals my 'third eye' sends to my table are often undercooked . If this post is undercooked, send your complaints to the management

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby People lie to themselves in order to defend this notion: routine. It is not usually conscious: it is a subconscious action. The lying, that is. It is not to be confused with the inability to piece together two pieces of information. By creating routine in a universe of unknowns, we give ourselves a safety net of sorts against chaos. As for me, I'm a big fan of organized chaos.

While I understand what you are saying, and I think it applies to certain situations, I do not believe this is one, so I'll make a mistake here by giving this answer in response...


Fossil is to someone who believes in Creationism
as
Irreducible complexity is to someone who believes in Evolution

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Originally posted by Subey While I understand what you are saying, and I think it applies to certain situations, I do not believe this is one, so I'll make a mistake here by giving this answer in response... Fossil is to someone who believes in Creationism as Irreducible complexity is to someone who believes in Evolution

I was breaking down the idea of why people solidify certain bits of information in their minds which do not correspond properly to other information they inherit.

That is to say, a creationist believes what he believes because (besides the natural survival element of fear) he learned it at a young age through repetition and follows the routine in order to achieve a sense of comfort regarding the unknown. Scientists do this as well, filling in the bits of reality that simply do not make sense with placeholders of sorts, which over time become less than placeholders and more of "obvious" fact.

It occupies the lower fields of one's consciousness, spawning near the survival sectors of one's vital requirements.

Now, I'm not sure exactly what you think I was saying or referring to, or if you're even being 100% serious, but that's what communication is, so elucidate for me if necessary as I've done here. I don't think a person can ever truly understand someone else's thoughts and mental images exactly, but we can come close through precise descriptions. It's a natural limitation of language.

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Originally posted by Subey Just as an aside, if it takes 10 different analogies to represent all the dimensions of thinking reasonably well, then I have no problem reconciling that in my brain... I just invoke 10 'third eyes' to unite them Or inversely, perhaps it takes 10 analogies to describe the complexity of the workshop where thinking takes place. I see the use of multiple analogies to explain a single thing as akin to saying that light exists simultaneously on a colour spectrum and a colour wheel, each of which denotes different yet true relationships.

I'm familiar with using different models to describe the same complex operation. I find that it can be useful because different analogies can be usefull for describing the same thing to different people.

I've been wondering about the aplicability of a computer to a model of contiousness. I think it works realatively well when thinking about human memory.

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Originally posted by Subey It's commonly accepted that a giant run-on sentence is more difficult to understand than 3 shorter sentences that convey the same idea. If thinking was located in consciousness, then I think a giant run-on sentence would be easier to understand since that is more akin to the experience of consciousness. In contrast. A sentence, with its period at the end implies a break. The conscious mind is now on consuming a new sentence, the previous one has left the stream. Therefore 3 Separate sentences that form a single idea should be more difficult then for the conscious mind to cement together. But a 'third eye' model, that builds structures, receiving 3 separate parts would be easier to assemble. Like receiving 3 separate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. With its perspective that can see all 3 pieces simultaneously, figuring out how they go together is a snap.

This analogy seems to lead to thoughts about different contious capacities. In the past sentances were much longer, paragraphs were longer, chapters were longer, and (I think) books may have even been longer. Is this because people had a larger capacity to take information in thier contiousness?

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Originally posted by Subey *** Here's a related question re-energizing my piston/axle evidence. Three parts of a car. The Piston... the Drive Shaft and the Axle. I can consciously only hold the Drive Shaft in my mind's eye. And I understand it. But in order to understand it, can I without also simultaneously seeing the context of the piston and the axle? Doesn't it seem that like reading 3 separate sentences that only a 'third eye' model can understand it, because sees all three parts as three parts of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together as a single thing? That understanding just 'the driveshaft' is logically impossible. Therefore when I consciously think "I understand just the driveshaft" because that's all that I can hold in my consciousness that I'm really *borrowing* or *echoing* an understanding that the third eye has?

I don't like this model. The reason I take issue with it is because I've done schooling on the design and analysis of machinery which means that hearing "piston, drive shaft, and axle" sparks all kinds of thoughts.

Essentially my sub-contious goes nuts. The first thoughts are visual, what do these things look like, how big are they. Then I think of thier motion, do they spin, do they translate. Then there are material considerations, what they are connected to, the forces that are working on them, etc...

The most strinking thing about the way I react to "piston, drive shaft, axle" is that I am able to think of them independantly, having each one alone in my contiousness, or as a single entity. I know that the reason I can choose which way I conceive of these things as three seperate objects or a single object is because sometimes in analysis it is useful to treat a system as a single item.

But this is a trained response. It took a few years to develope with some rather intense schooling.

This leads me to beleive that it's possible that the subcontious can be trained.

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