Combinations and dissociations of consciousness

[j.joerg@posteo.de]

I have heard BK (Idealism) discussing with Philip Goff (Panpsychism). I enjoyed the conversation but I felt pitty with Goff. However. It came down to an argument, that dissociation of consciousness is known as a psychiatric disorder, whereas Panpsychism is facing the combination problem. If you go into the details of that argument, it can not be held up.
The dissociative identity disorder (where the complete personality gets split up and shifting personalities take shifts and do not know of each other) only occurs when severe traumatizations happen before the age of 3. If one gets traumatized later, only milder forms of dissociative disorders occur. The reason therefor is, that only if one gets traumatized under the age of 3, certain parts of the brain do not develope connections and therefore do not get informed of each other. If traumatization happens later, the brain areas are connected already and therefore can not stay strictly seperate. So in sum this seems to be a better argument for Panpsychism than for Idealism.
Appart from that dissociative disorders can be treated and healed trough therapy. Dissociated parts of the personality can combine to a single state of consciousness. Even in severe forms of dissociative identity disorder the different personalities can learn to talk to each other and inform each other and thus not remain strictly separated.

Under this light it seems just as plausible or even more plausible, that the human experience of a single mind is a composition of simpler states of consciousness. Experiential information seems to having been connected and combined before it can be dissociated again. Yet the conscious perspective of a human mind is always a combinational phenomenon and never one of parts. What do you think about that?

[Eugene I]

There is a branch of modern psychology called "modular psychology" that views the processes in human minds pretty much the way you described.

The DID in the BK's model is only a descriptive analogy and does not imply that the MAL "suffers" from a any kind of dissociative "disorder". The dissociation for the MAL is a normal way to develop and explore itself and its cognitive capacities and to accumulate a large variety of experiences from many different and unique subjective perspectives.