How to explain meta-consciousness of private thoughts?

[personn]

Since my last thread, I've looked into BK's work more deeply. I've read the book on Jung and am a little under halfway in The Idea of the World. I am much more on board now than I was when I created my last thread. However, one question that keeps coming up and which I haven't seen raised or addressed anywhere so far, is how do we model the meta-conscious experience of 'private thoughts'?

It seems that BK explains meta-conscious experience through the creation of an alter, which creates the possibility of Mind at Large experiencing itself from a dissociated perspective (perception etc.). However, 'my' private thoughts (sounds and images in my mind etc.) are also meta-consciously experienced by 'my' alter, even though they are within the borders so to speak of my alter. For instance, if I pay attention, I 'know' that I am thinking about what I have to do tomorrow.

How would analytical idealism account for this observation? Am I mistaken and are 'private thoughts' also viewed from across a dissociative border, somehow?

Thanks ahead for help with this matter.

[personn]

Anybody? Seems like an important hole in the model if there's no answer to this question.

[Ben Iscatus]

BK has referred often to the idea of being conscious that we are conscious - or layers of metacognition (I know that I know etc. that I am metaconscious). I seem to recall the metaphor of a light bouncing around inside a mirrored sphere, because the alter's thoughts are imprisoned inside his dissociated mind. The Transpersonal Mind's thoughts, of course, are unbounded and so naturally move out to create the World.

[Hedge90]

In BK's view, the capacity of metacognition is predicated upon your ability to reflect on something that you perceive to be outside you. For a metacognitive thought to be had, there has to be a subject and an object. For MAL, there is no subject and object, because there is only IT. Everything is IT.

But many, even on this forum, question this specific assumption of the model. I, for one, agree that MAL had to have begun its "career" incapable of metacognition, similarly to a newborn, but through the integration of all human sensory and thinking experience, I don't see why it couldn't have evolved the activity to metacognise.

[Eugene I]

For a metacognitive thought to be had, there has to be a subject and an object. For MAL, there is no subject and object, because there is only IT. Everything is IT.

Nope, there can be just a thought "sun is round" present in the private field of experience, and another thought in the same field reflecting the presence of the first thought: "a thought about round sun is present". No subject or object are necessary for such meta-cognition.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Nope, there can be just a thought "sun is round" present in the private field of experience, and another thought in the same field reflecting the presence of the first thought: "a thought about round sun is present". No subject or object are necessary for such meta-cognition.

Actually, isn't the thought 'sun is round' dependent upon a subjectified self having at some time experienced an objectified phenomenon of a sun and its roundness, otherwise, that thought would not arise to be metacognitively reflected upon ... No?

[Hedge90]

For a metacognitive thought to be had, there has to be a subject and an object. For MAL, there is no subject and object, because there is only IT. Everything is IT.

Nope, there can be just a thought "sun is round" present in the private field of experience, and another thought in the same field reflecting the presence of the first thought: "a thought about round sun is present". No subject or object are necessary for such meta-cognition.

Can you metacognise when you dream? Normally, you can't, you just go with the events unfolding, without rational critique of them. That is, unless you learn lucid dreaming, in which case, you take your ego with you within the dream - but that ego had to be formed in a reality that is ontologically above the dream.
Now, as I said, I don't preclude that MAL could has gained some mesure of metacognition from all our experience, but it couldn't have been there in the beginning.

[Eugene I]

Actually, isn't the thought 'sun is round' dependent upon a subjectified self having at some time experienced an objectified phenomenon of a sun and its roundness, otherwise, that thought would not arise to be metacognitively reflected upon ... No?

Right, it's just that historically in the early childhood the concepts of "roundness" have developed within our personalized consciousness together with the concepts of object-subject, but essentially they are not contingent upon each other. On a more advanced level of cognition some concepts (such as subject-object) can be recognized as irrelevant and useless and dropped, while other concepts ( such as roundness etc) can be recognized as practically useful and can be retained.

[Justathought]

...are 'private thoughts' also viewed from across a dissociative border, somehow?

I would say No, based on what BK says in the recent youtube course. He refers to these thoughts as endogenous. Before dissociation, the MAL has only endogenous thoughts.

What about thoughts that are triggered by sensory input (impingement from across the boundary). I would venture that such thoughts are endogenous, since they do not originate from the sensory stream.

[Justathought]

What about thoughts that are triggered by sensory input (impingement from across the boundary). I would venture that such thoughts are endogenous, since they do not originate from the sensory stream.

Actually, I'm not sure about this last part. When I see an apple, the initial thought of "apple" that the mind constructs is exogenous, I suppose. But subsequent thoughts about picking it up, eating it, etc. are endogenous.