BK on the unconscious.

[findingblanks]

"I do not concur that one would be subliminally aware of being curious about what they're saying (#10), or subliminally aware of being worried about that (#11), since that would involve paying attention to the whispering."

Ah, interesting. So I agree with Bernardo that you could be focused on one thing with your meta-consciousness but there could be an experience of being curious about what is being said around you that is impinging on your current meta-experience. I disagree with Bernardo that these phenomenal dissociations exist 'as themselves' so to speak, as segmented, differentiated experiences. This is what I'm asking about.

I'd love to know why you think Bernardo (and I guess me) is wrong with regard to certain phenomenal experiences. You say that we'd have to be paying attention to the whispering to feel curious about it. But why? If I'm focused on reading a book and then somebody draws my attention to the adorable chatter of the kids playing in the corner, I could easily go, "Oh, yeah that explains why my experience of reading shifted a little while ago. I hadn't realized I was also enjoying those kids." Or I could suddenly put down my book realizing that I'm very curious about about the whispering. Or I suddenly realize that I've been feeling so odd because I dreamt that Albert Einstein was explaining something very complicated to me in an angry tone. That experience of the dream or the curiosity is what Bernardo says is impinging upon my current meta-consciousness.

And as Bernardo points out, you can be focused on writing a work email but a specific annoying idea that somebody said to you earlier in the day is still bothering you. The nature of the 'bother' is completely dependent on the nature of the idea. Sure when you heard it earlier in the day it was part of your meta-consciousness but now it impinges on your state as you write the email.

But you do agree with some of the dissociated experiences, and you do not want to call them alters (I agree). So then how do you think of them as each being dissociated from your ego-meta-awareness and from each other? Bernardo clearly thinks they are just that. I would say that if that is the case than there is an experiencer in each of them, one hearing the siren, one seeing the thread sway in the background, one feeling the nostril...

Well, I concur that one can be aware of suppressed endogenous emotions at a subliminal level, while being metacognitively focused on a task at hand, and as such one's actions are to some degree influenced by those subliminal feelings. However, addressing the list above, while I can concur that while being metacogintively involved in some daydream about an upcoming vacation, one can also be subliminally aware of the percept of some coworkers' whispering in the background (#9), I do not concur that one would be subliminally aware of being curious about what they're saying (#10), or subliminally aware of being worried about that (#11), since that would involve paying attention to the whispering, rather than to the daydream, and also imposing some metacognitive overlay onto it—i.e. thinking about what they are thinking, and thus no longer just subliminal. This seems to be significantly different from being subliminally aware of repressed endogenous emotions.

[findingblanks]

I'm trying to think clearly about this....

I think's Bernardo's view must mean that each phenomenal experience that impinges on meta-consciousness is its own unit - so to speak- and is therefore being experienced even though the ego isn't aware of it.

I would use Eugene Gendlin's observations and model to say that our current meta-consciousness is being shaped by countless experiences functioning implicitly in its formation. But rather than conceptualizing these implicitly functioning experiences as separated units, we need to see that they are actually occurring IN the specific quality of one's current meta-consciusness. In the next moment they implicitly function in some other way. But to think of them as distinctly separate experiences in the same way that we think of my ongoing experience right now being distinct from the guy at the person's at the table across from me seems to be a mistake. We are having different experiences. But I am not having thousands of distinct experiences that are impinging on the one I am conscious of right now. If that is the claim being made, I think it deserves the same kind of astonishment that Bernardo typically reserves for those who subscribe to the multi-verse. Why postulate something so inflationary when

1) It does not conform to our experience.
2) We can explain it more simply.

It almost seems like Bernardo's conception of us having countless separated phenomena experiences only being meta-conscious of whatever we are focused right now opens the door to some kind of pan-experientialism.

Just as there are no actual physical atoms to push consciousness down into (like some pan-psychists do), I don't think there are actual distinct experiential buckets in which to place countless separated phenomenal experiences that are happening simultaneously.

If we can keep it simpler and more grounded in actual experience without losing the intricacy, I say we go do so.

[findingblanks]

This line of thought started when I kept hearing Bernardo explain things like, "Ten minutes ago you were feeling the warmth in your nose as you breathe, the movement of your stomach in and out, the sounds of the birds, etc.,"

I knew I agreed with him in some way, but I realized that he literally means that there is a dissociated experience of each of those very distinct sensations, perceptions, emotional, and thoughts and that they each impinge upon meta-consciousness.

Maybe my view could be boiled down to the following:

Just as there is no physical mountain out there when I'm not looking at it, there isn't a distinct experience of my breathing or the sad emotion from earlier in the day. However, just as the entirety of the inanimate world is functioning as a whole even when not being actualized by an observer, so is the entirety of my phenomenal experience. Just as distinct physical properties are real once an observer actualizes them and is attending to them, so are our distinct experiences. Before they are actualized, they function implicitly as a whole. This is one place that I think Gendlin's phenomenology of experiencing can be good friends with Bernardo's model of the unconscious by giving it a new way to conceptualize how experience emerges.

So this would mean that my breathing was an aspect of how my meta-consciousness was forming before I explictly paid attention to my breathing. But my breathing was an aspect of my experience not as itself but as how it was changed (and changing) the whole field of my non-meta phenomenality. Then, like when we look at the mountain, we will explicate some aspect of what whole field of phenomenal experience. It is a mistake to then take that explication as if it is a picture of what was there but hidden before. That is like how physicalists think their perception of the mountain is basically capturing the contours of what is really 'out there' when they aren't looking.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Again, I'm not privy to BK making all of the specific claims you are alluding to in the above list, which seem to me to be an unfounded extrapolation, categorically different from being subliminally influenced by some suppressed endogenous emotion held over from some past annoyance. So I can't disagree with Bernardo making these claims until I've actually heard him making such claims, with some follow up discussion with him. But I can speculate that it's possible, even likely, that the subliminal experience of the background chatter of neighbourhood children could be informing a metacognitive daydream one may be having about playing with one's grandchild at the beach, in sync with the synchronicity of a video about The Little Prince popping up in the youtube feed, while the song God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday is playing on Spotify ... all very Jungian. Not sure though why this would require a discrete experiencer of each of those events.

[Ben Iscatus]

It seems to me that if breathing is classed by Analytic Idealism as phenomenal consciousness (until one focuses on it and becomes metaconscious of it), then there is no real need to explore sleep states to try to disprove complete unconsciousness. Surely breathing in deep sleep is enough to show that there is never unconsciousness (not to mention digestion, blood flow etc - all images of mental function).

[findingblanks]

I know you've heard him say that we are aware of the details of our breathing outside of meta-consciousness. I know you just read one quotation in which he said explicitly that there are distinct experiences that are 'dissociated' from meta-consciousness ('ego awareness'). Anyway, I'm not against going very slow and finding quotes, but I do find it curious and very heartening that you sound a bit suspicious that Bernardo's model would lend him to saying these things. And I respect that you want to find his comments on your own and in your own amount. Maybe start with his recent video and then read a few sections in The Idea Of The World. Thanks again. I am confident you'll see I'm not distorting his claims, especially the way in which he doesn't limit these dissociated impinging experiences to simple sensory ones but includes highly intricate emotions and thoughts. Thanks.

Again, I'm not privy to BK making all of the specific claims you are alluding to in the above list, which seem to me to be an unfounded extrapolation, categorically different from being subliminally influenced by some suppressed endogenous emotion held over from some past annoyance. So I can't disagree with Bernardo making these claims until I've actually heard him making such claims, with some follow up discussion with him. But I can speculate that it's possible, even likely, that the subliminal experience of the background chatter of neighbourhood children could be informing a metacognitive daydream one may be having about playing with one's grandchild at the beach, in sync with the synchronicity of a video about The Little Prince popping up in the youtube feed, while the song God Bless The Child by Billie Holiday is playing on Spotify ... all very Jungian. Not sure though why this would require a discrete experiencer of each of those events.

[findingblanks]

Hi Ben,

Yeah, I hear your point. I think Bernardo and others realize they can't simply disprove the notion that we do not experience anything at all for some periods during sleep. But I think he finds it useful to find all the various ways that basic intuition is knocked down by direct evidence.

In BK's model, you are certainly experiencing your breathing all the time regardless of if you shine meta-consciousness onto it.

I'd prefer to say that the experiencing of your breathing, as it is changed by being united with the entire field of your phenomenal experience, actually occurs in the shaping of the quality of your current meta-consciousness. It is actively 'in' your meta-consciousness which is why you might suddenly pay attention to it. However, just as the physical mountain isn't there as a physical unit when you look away, the experience of your breathing is there (as such) when you aren't noticing it. It isn't there. But it is 'in' and active. Thanks for chiming in.

It seems to me that if breathing is classed by Analytic Idealism as phenomenal consciousness (until one focuses on it and becomes metaconscious of it), then there is no real need to explore sleep states to try to disprove complete unconsciousness. Surely breathing in deep sleep is enough to show that there is never unconsciousness (not to mention digestion, blood flow etc - all images of mental function).

[Soul_of_Shu]

I know you've heard him say that we are aware of the details of our breathing outside of meta-consciousness. I know you just read one quotation in which he said explicitly that there are distinct experiences that are 'dissociated' from meta-consciousness ('ego awareness'). Anyway, I'm not against going very slow and finding quotes, but I do find it curious and very heartening that you sound a bit suspicious that Bernardo's model would lend him to saying these things. And I respect that you want to find his comments on your own and in your own amount. Maybe start with his recent video and then read a few sections in The Idea Of The World. Thanks again. I am confident you'll see I'm not distorting his claims, especially the way in which he doesn't limit these dissociated impinging experiences to simple sensory ones but includes highly intricate emotions and thoughts. Thanks.

I think we just have quite different interpretations of what BK is claiming when he says that one is always being influenced/informed by subliminal prehension of events that have been obfuscated by one's dissociated, metacognitive focus on whatever event we are paying direct attention to—with which I agree entirely. However, that BK would claim that the experience of 'curiosity' or 'worry' about what someone is whispering in the background would be included in the prehension/obfuscated category seems highly dubious, and I would argue that this would be a function of metacognition. Nonetheless, I'll peruse the video you reference to find such a claim, and if so, how exactly he justifies it beyond just idle speculation.

[Soul_of_Shu]

OK, assuming the video below is the one referenced as being an example of BK making and supporting all the claims alluded to in the above list, he only restates the same case he has made elsewhere in other presentations or papers, with which I have no issue, wherein I can find him making no explicit reference to the examples offered in the list, which again seem like unfounded extrapolations of his base claims. And in the absence of him being here to argue for or against the examples in the list, we're left with arguing over our own respective take on those examples. So unless anyone can make a compelling case for how those examples jibe with BK's explication in the video below, as opposed to being questionable extrapolations, I remain unconvinced that BK would disagree with the point I've made in my previous post. Nonetheless, I remain open to being convinced otherwise, by further elaboration.

[findingblanks]

You say my example's are dubious. But you read Bernardo's words giving the example of how an arguement (highly cognitive) can impinge on meta-consciousness. It does seem a bit like you are avoiding simply taking him at his word. Hopefully you'll read Idea Of World or watch one of his videos. He covers this territory quite a bit.

All I ask is that once you see that I am fairly characterizing his view, you'll enjoy unpacking why you originally doubted that he'd claim such a thing. I bet it's because you share my concern and interest to some degree. We'll see! Happy reading.