Rob has been given the credit for saying something like “Memory is proof that the conscious exists” in our last meeting.
John Palme goes on say something like, “Memory is synonymous with consciousness. If you had no memory, do you lose consciousness? The feeling of having the memory is the feeling of consciousness.”
I would like to follow these thought a little bit.
What if memory is our conscious existence?
Let me put forward this scenario.
1. Stimula come in through one of our senses.
2. The brain matches the stimula up with a stabilized symbolic image.
3. This strengthens the stabilized symbol and increases a consistency to existence.
4. It is the consistency to symbolic existence that is consciousness.
What do you think of them apples?
I'm not disagreeing, but I'd be interested in some clarification:
ReplyDeleteOur senses process a lot of data that doesn't seem to have symbolic content (we might even be able to imagine responding to stimula without being conscious of it).
Would the non-symbolic part of sensation/reaction be simply out-of-scope here, or are you arguing that all sense is sybolized?
Actually, I was saying the opposite: I was saying that memory is proof that we have a subconsciousness. Put another way, mind could (very) roughly be divided into consciousness and memory. Memory is simply the easiest example of a part of the mind of which we are typically not conscious.
ReplyDeleteI would offer you a counter-scenario.
1. Stimuli come in through one of our senses.
2. The stimuli activate a dynamic symbolic image.
3. The symbolic image is shaped by the nature of that particular percept. (Each red thing I see shapes/expands/refines my general sense of "redness.")
4. The general coherency of our symbolism is what makes communication possible.
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ReplyDeleteLet me clarify my concept of what a personal symbol is. (I do this only to define what I mean by personal symbol)
ReplyDeleteLet me use the color “blue” to illustrate the two parts, which are the personal symbol and the social symbol. When I say to someone, “pick out the blue things in this room.” They would use their personal knowledge of the color spectrum to complete the task. If I were to ask them to, “pick out the #99FFFF HTML color on a webpage” they would have no personal knowledge of that color in the color spectrum and would not be able to complete the task even if they had the color right in front of them. Once they were taught the correlation between the color and the code, they would be able to pick out the color. The more one learns about color and increases their symbolic vocabulary for different colors the more one can identify and isolate the colors using their personal symbolic vocabulary of colors.
All senses can be turned into personal symbolic language which then can be translated into social symbolic language. Of course, the process starts out the other way around. We are first taught social symbolic language and encouraged to apply the personal symbolic language. “Billy, this is the color blue. Can you see the color blue anywhere else in this room?” If we are never taught symbolic language we will never have the sense of consciousness. Consciousness, personal and social symbolic language, is a trained behavior.
All senses can be turned into personal symbolic language. If a sense has not been incorporated into a beings symbolic language, that sensation can only be responded to in a non-symbolic (stimulus response) action and will not be recallable.
We are not conscious of how the brain activates the hand to scratch a certain part of our body. That does not mean that there is anything other than the electrochemical mechanism at play in the process. There is no need for there to be a subconscious mind to scratch an itch. When a stimuli comes in through the senses, it does not take a mind or subconscious to process the trained behavior of evaluating whether it fits into our vocabulary or not. Memory could be a electrochemical mechanism, alone. Even when we tried to remember something we use different stimuli to activate the memory response. “Where did I leave my keys? While the last time I saw them I was on the couch. But wait a minute, didn't Ralph come in the room and say something about the house being on fire? And then I…”
I didn't mean to keep this short, sorry.
What is the difference between the subconscious and the unconscious?
ReplyDelete