> From: "Johnson, Richard" <RICH92@psy.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 17:03:22 GMT
>
> [if] all phenonema are conscious - its just that some are available
> only at a very low, degraded level, so appear unconscious. This seems
> to imply that if something appears to be unconscious, it is just that
> you aren't looking hard enough for the conscious element.
> Surely this violates Popper's notion of falsifiability:
Yes, it does, and the authors who do that come close to admitting it:
Why don't they apologise for this circularity? Because they know they
have a huge supporting population: All of us! We all know (don't we?)
that just about everything we do we do consciously. It's the rare
experience we have in which we feel we are doing something because we
are IMPELLED somehow, to do it (or are doing it by chance). Even the
neurological patients hold dearly to the notion that they are in the
driver's seat and aware of what's going on at all times.
This, if you think about it, is the ultimate form of hermeneutics: We
interpret everything that happens in our mental lives AS IF we were the
agents, and aware of all the goings-on. Whenever there is the hint that
something might be happening any other way, the brain's integrative
tendency -- its tendency to "fill in" any gaps -- kicks in and
convinces us that we are in control and missing nothing.
Imagine, for a minute, what it would be like if our brains DIDN'T
maintain their iron grips on that hermeneutic fantasy: What would it be
like to feel as if you were being buffeted about by Darwinian and
unconscious forces, doing things for reasons other than your choosing
to, and reacting to things you didn't hear or see coherently,
acting as if you were understanding things that you knew you did not
understand?
We're tempted to say that we'd just relax then, and go along for the
ride, rather than worrying about running the show. But would we? What
kind of a ride would it be if I felt I were not in control, or even
aware of most of what was going on?
So that potential chaos might be a reason for our brain's dogged
hermeneutic tendency to portray us as aware and in control of everything
-- given that we are aware of SOMETHING, sometimes. But then why would
Darwin even bother with THAT, since all he cared about was that we
should be able to survive and reproduce. There's nothing about
evolutionary adaptation that implies that living, surviving, reproducing
creatures should have any mental lives at all...
Here, for those who haven't seen them, are the abstract of the four
papers I discussed today. -- SH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Campion, John; Latto, Richard; Smith, Y. M. Is blindsight an effect of
scattered light, spared cortex, and near-threshold vision?
Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 1983 Sep, v6 (n3):423-486.
<b>ABSTRACT:</b> "Blindsight" describes visually guided behavior
elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused
by a lesion of the striate cortex. It is concluded from a review of the
literature that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for
nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and
partly because of difficulties in defining blindsight. Five experiments
with 8 Subjects investigated the extent to which Subjects would exhibit
performance similar to blindsight when using scattered light as a cue.
This was done with 3 hemianopic Subjects (aged 24, 29, and 62 yrs) by
manipulating the amount of scattered and direct light coming from a
stimulus and with 5 normal Subjects by presenting targets within their
blind spots. Results reveal good blindsight performance when only
scattered light was available as a cue. It is concluded that an
adequate case for blindsight has not been made and that it is probably
impossible to demonstrate the existence of blindsight on purely
behavioral grounds. It is suggested that what is required is the
establishment of relationships between visual function and independent
anatomical evidence. 22 peer commentaries and the present author's
response to them are included.
Holender, Daniel. Semantic activation without conscious identification
in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey
and appraisal. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 1986 Mar, v9 (n1):1-66.
<b>ABSTRACT:</b> Analysis of 3 new lines of evidence for semantic
activation wit hout conscious identification--dichotic listening,
parafoveal vision, and visual masking studies--leads to the following
conclusions: (1) Dichotic listening cannot provide the conditions
needed to demonstrate the phenomenon. These conditions are better
fulfilled in parafoveal vision and are realized ideally in pattern
masking. (2) Evidence for the phenomenon is scant for parafoveal
vision, but several tentative demonstrations have been reported for a
pattern masking. It can be shown, however, that none of these studies
had included the requisite controls to ensure that semantic activation
was not accompanied by conscious identification of the stimulus at the
time of presentation. (3) Based on current evidence, it is most likely
that these stimuli were consciously identified.
Velmans, Max. Consciousness, causality and complementarity.
Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 1993 Jun, v16 (n2):409-416.
<b>ABSTRACT:</b> Replies to the comments of J. Glicksohn (see PA, Vol
81:4399), A. Habibi and M. S. Bendele (see PA, Vol 81:4401), D. Navon
(see PA, Vol 81:4404), W. T. Neill (see PA, Vol 81:4405), and R. R. Rao
(see PA, Vol 81:4407) on the work of M. Velmans (see PA, Vol 79:26222).
The following topics are addressed: focal attention replacing
consciousness as a causal agent in processing, dissociating
consciousness from human information processing, disputes about
definitions, observer-relativity and the theory of relativity in
physics, whether consciousness is causal, and psychological
complementarity.
Shanks , David R. & St. John, Mark F.
CHARACTERISTICS OF DISSOCIABLE HUMAN LEARNING SYSTEMS
BBS 17(3) 1994 (September)
<b>ABSTRACT:</b> The proposal that there exist independent explicit and
implicit learning systems is based on two further distinctions: (i)
learning that takes place with versus without concurrent awareness, and
(ii) learning that involves the encoding of instances (or fragments)
versus the induction of abstract rules or hypotheses. Implicit learning
is assumed to involve unconscious rule learning. We examine the
implicit learning evidence from subliminal learning, conditioning,
artificial grammar learning, instrumental learning, and reaction times
in sequence learning. Unconscious learning has not been satisfactorily
established in any of these areas. The assumption that learning in some
of these tasks (e.g., artificial grammar learning) is predominantly
based on rule abstraction is questionable. When subjects cannot report
the "implicitly learned" rules that govern stimulus selection, this is
often because their knowledge consists of instances or fragments of the
training stimuli rather than rules. In contrast to the distinction
between conscious and unconscious learning, the distinction between
instance and rule learning is a sound and meaningful way of
taxonomizing human learning. We discuss various computational models of
these two forms of learning.
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