
There Is No Such Thing as Unconscious Thought - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/there-is-no-such-thing-as-unconscious-thought
======
vinceguidry
I think the conclusions the author makes are way too broad.

What generates consciousness, appears to me to be a function of what the
neurons are all 'doing'. The brain has two features that are devoted to
linguistic processing, and you have to activate them in order to find words
for the things you think.

Thoughts that 'bubble up' all the way to linguistic representation in the mind
are definitely conscious, while it's also possible to make some sense out of
brain activity that doesn't quite find words. For example, playing ping pong
or some other sport would be exceedingly difficult if you had to use the
linguistic part of your brain in order to make sense of what you're doing.

If you meditate, you can focus on that 'line' between when thoughts become
linguistic and when they don't, and if you do trance work, you can block out
the sensory world and so generate experiences using 'only' the mind. From
here, you can work out that brain activity becomes conscious at some point.

Also, obviously there is brain activity that does not reach consciousness, the
brain for example needs to do things like regulate heartbeat, and certain
aspects of our experience we're only dimly conscious of much of the time.
Consciousness is a continuum, not a binary.

So our brains can be doing a lot that we're not aware of.

~~~
dlwdlw
In the book “The Elephant in the Brain”, the author makes the argument that
our consciousness is entirely the PR department of the brain, making
explanations for the “company” but not truly knowing what’s really going on.

That is, all our thoughts are post-event justifications to make us feel good.

There’s this famous experiment where they show two different things to each
eye of a brain divided patient. The patient would then follow instructions
from 1 eye, but provide a justification based on what the other eye saw. Like
a PR rep having to do the job but with email and communication being down.

The PR rep has to interpret things in a way that is in harmony to the external
environment. Making the self seem self-less or hardworking or moral, etc...

Where it gets interesting is that the resulting PR effects affect the
environment which then trigger new behaviors resulting in new PR spin. The PR
rep has a degree of control over the system yet at the core of it, the PR rep
is installed by language/culture/society and is somewhat of an outsider. Like
an overly idealistic justice warrior sent to whitewash some corrupt company
and being frustrated by the job.

~~~
crazygringo
This is similar to the thesis of Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error", which
argues that all our decisions are ultimately taken by an unconscious emotional
part of the brain, and that the conscious reasoning part is merely one of many
inputs to the unconscious decision-making part.

Which means we literally can never explain the "why" behind any decision we
make, because we _never_ know it -- yet that is our true "self", our free will
if you choose to interpret it that way.

It's why we can have every rational reason to _not_ eat the cookie, and zero
rational reason _to_ eat it (we're not hungry and we rationally know it's in
our best interest to lose weight)... and then we eat it anyways. We can't give
any rational explanation for why we ate it... it just comes down to, in the
end, I wanted to due to emotional factors I can only hypothesize in hindsight.

It's a pretty powerful thesis.

~~~
projektir
> It's why we can have every rational reason to not eat the cookie, and zero
> rational reason to eat it (we're not hungry and we rationally know it's in
> our best interest to lose weight)... and then we eat it anyways. We can't
> give any rational explanation for why we ate it... it just comes down to, in
> the end, I wanted to due to emotional factors I can only hypothesize in
> hindsight.

I don't really think this is as a convincing example as a lot of people think.
It has less to do with people having no control and more with people not
understanding what "rational" is.

You eat the cookie because you do not, in reality, think eating the cookie is
that much of a problem. The issue is that you likely have 5 other layers
sitting trying to convince you that you don't want the cookie, because you're
trying to fit in with society or whatever.

If you _really_ didn't want to eat the cookie, you wouldn't.

The problem is that the average reason a person has for not eating a cookie is
very unconvincing. It's often something along the lines of "well, people,
somewhere, think I shouldn't eat too many cookies". "Cookies are unhealthy"
also doesn't register, it's too broad. If someone told you the cookie was
poisoned with cyanide, trust me, you wouldn't eat it.

It really doesn't have /that/ much to do with raw emotion, except in so far as
emotion is composed from values, and your values don't care about eating
cookies that much at the end of the day.

------
pmichaud
> Suppose, instead, that while focusing our conscious minds on generating
> foods, unconscious mental search processes can work away, in the background,
> unearthing a string of countries. Then, when we switch to countries, we
> should be able rapidly to download these—they would not need to be found
> afresh, because unconscious search would have identified them already. ...

The author seems to have a model of "unconscious" as being deliberate or task-
oriented or focused, just like conscious thought, except sequestered somehow
from the conscious section of our minds.

Obviously it's not like that, and I don't think anyone thinks it is like that.
So the article can be perhaps summarized as "man has obviously wrong idea of
how phenomenon works, tests his hypothesis, finds that it can't work that way,
declares the phenomenon must not exist at all."

------
dgreensp
There are plenty of times in the day or night where we may be "thinking" about
things but not attending to our thoughts very much or at all, such as while
dreaming or zoning out while driving. Actually, driving itself is a great
example of a complex activity that requires very little conscious oversight.
While driving, you can suddenly realize you have no recollection of the last
ten minutes. If your brain can drive "unconsciously," surely it can work on a
problem unconsciously; after all, you've been thinking longer than you've been
driving. Moreover, you can be driving home from work after a hard day, and
your brain can switch back and forth between emotional processing of your day
and keeping an eye on the road, and you can still have that feeling where you
can't remember the last ten minutes.

None of this contradicts the idea that your brain can only work on one problem
at a time, but the overall thesis of the essay only works by blurring
different concepts together under the terms "thought" and "consciousness."

Let's distinguish between these different brain/mind functions:

1) Parallel, perceptual work (like recognizing an image)

2) Serial, conceptual work (problem-solving, "thought")

3) Verbal, narrative mental occurrences ("thoughts")

4) Conscious awareness

Cognitive behavioral therapy demonstrates that (3) doesn't imply (4) as much
as you'd think; you can have a verbal thought very rapidly that you are at
most dimly aware of and immediately forget. Rather than implicating
consciousness awareness in a wide range of mental activities extending all the
way to problem-solving (2), I would say that most things the brain can do with
awareness it can also do without awareness.

Those of us familiar with non-verbal "thinking" as we solve a problem know
that (2) doesn't imply (3), either. Meanwhile, the thesis of the essay seems
to require that (2) implies (4), which is quite a stretch.

~~~
crazygringo
> _If your brain can drive "unconsciously," surely it can work on a problem
> unconsciously; after all, you've been thinking longer than you've been
> driving._

I don't think that follows -- driving is a habitually developed skill which we
know can be done unconsciously, while "working on a problem" has nothing to do
with habits or skills, and it's hard to argue that kind of symbolic
manipulation can be done unconsciously.

In your framework of 1-4, I agree that (3) doesn't always imply (4) because we
can produce language out of habit/instinct rather than thought (yelling a
curse word involuntarily).

But I find it hard to believe how (2) wouldn't always imply (4). But perhaps
this is semantics -- from my understanding, (2) and (4) are merely different
terms for the same thing, each implies the other. We're almost always solving
some problem at each point during the day and therefore consciously aware --
and when occasionally we're not, that's when we daydream or space out and lose
conscious awareness.

~~~
dgreensp
Brains don’t solve problems by manipulating symbols. None of these layers are
intended to be synonymous. Meditation is basically 4 and 1, with 2 and 3
coming and going. Driving is intended to be an example of just 1 and 2. Saying
that driving is a “skill” and “we know it can be done unconsciously” suggests
to me that other skills can be done unconsciously, too. A lot happens in ten
minutes of driving; options are weighed and decisions made. Music composition
and doing mathematics (stopping short of the actual symbols) are also
habitually developed skills over years of regular practice.

Edit: I just remembered that Jonathan Blow reports programming “unconsciously”
in the same manner as the driving example. Also, on a good day my
consciousness is not devoted to “problem-solving” every second of the day;
that would be miserable. I don’t see why conscious awareness is seen as so
necessary for thought, the only explanation for me being that many people
experience themselves as being their thoughts and not their awareness. It is a
journey many of us are on.

~~~
red75prime
Without the symbols you have a big somewhat structured blob of experiences.
It's apparently enough for hunting, mating and the like. It is apparently not
enough for being the most technologically advanced species. [0] is of interest
here. Ildefonso didn't like to talk about his life without language and called
it dark.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words)

------
jawarner
I'm not quite convinced of the article's thesis. It may be true that the brain
doesn't chug along on a background problem continuously for days, but instead
it checks in on the problem every so often when it is in a different state.
But the act of reconsidering a problem from a different mental context is the
essence of problem solving.

The experiment involving retrieval of foods and countries is suggestive, but I
think it cannot be generalized outside of that experimental paradigm. The same
for doing arithmetic in one's head. Creative problem solving is a different
beast, and the flashes of inspiration described in the article which take
place after a matter of hours or days are indicative that the mind revisits
the problem in the unconscious.

~~~
mtippett
It might be arguable that the check-in on the problem isn't so much an
automatic process, but one of stimuli triggering a pattern match on a problem,
or conscious triggering of the thought process.

When people are working on a problem, simply saying out loud "I'm trying to
work out this problem" has an effect lighting up the neurons associated with
the previous thinking done on that topic. If there is new information, (like a
snake eating its tail), that may be integrated unexpectedly into the
consideration.

I would suggest that there are prompts all around us that will trigger a
"revisit" of a problem, it is conscious (or at least autonomous based on
stimuli) action, but not directed.

~~~
wahern
> I would suggest that there are prompts all around us that will trigger a
> "revisit" of a problem, it is conscious (or at least autonomous based on
> stimuli) action, but not directed.

That doesn't explain dreams. The notion that the brain requires constant
external stimuli to keep it pumping along doesn't fit known phenomena.

------
toss1
Having before college stumbled across the "study then toss it to the
background and wait for inspiration" method, and used it successfully ever
since (& having studied neuroscience in college & seen other similar
mistakes), I can say that the author's study & results are likely accurate,
and _definitely_ irrelevant.

The key is NOT, as the author describes, to work hard on topic B while topic A
is expected to percolate in the background process. This will have the exact
result that he found, no progress on A, and indeed many studies show that it
will actually interfere with learning/cogitating A to immediately switch to
work/study/cognition on topic B.

Instead, the method requires focus on topic A until near exhaustion, then
active rest -- do something not requiring any big mental energy/focus, e.g.,
go for a walk, do work with your hands, go to a cafe for idle conversation,
and await inspiration (with writing implements at hand ready to write
furiously & in no particular order when it arrives).

He highlights a nice little study showing 1, stuff we already knew (similar to
studies I read of decades ago), and 2, are irrelevant to the question at hand.

I'd go even further to counter his title and say that there is barely any such
thing as conscious thought, and that the vast majority of thought is
unconscious.

------
masswerk
This is really taking the Von Neumann computing device metaphor to the
extreme.

Opposed to this, I'd rather suggest that there is no such thing as an active
thought process (which is probably more like an illusion). Also, the concept
as described in the article really fails to account for the experience of
creative insight or impulse, neuroses, or "metapsychological" phenomena.

Edit: By applying the idea/concept of threaded processes (pretty much the only
concept sufficiently defined in the piece), it really illustrates how much we
adapted culturally to the technology we use, which, when introduced, was
clearly pictured as an restrictive abstraction from how we would model such
processes or how the underlying "architecture" was described by McCulloch and
Pitts. (Comparatively, we might add an observation on how Freud was influenced
by the then prominent technology of telephone networks on how this was
reflected especially in his first topic.)

------
bodas
The unconscious is the opposite of the conscious, if you walk down the road
you are _thinking unconsciously_ about where to put your limbs.

You might say "aha! walking is not thinking", but surely you would think very
hard about where to put your limbs if you were to walk through a minefield,
etc. Is walking thinking if the conscious mind does it? So whether "thought"
can occur unconsciously or not is a question of English not of neuroscience.

~~~
projektir
> if you walk down the road you are thinking unconsciously

I think this statement makes the same error as the article, just in reverse:
making a very strong claim that's impossible to prove.

I don't think walking uses "thinking". That sounds incredibly inefficient.
Wouldn't unconscious thinking be slow, just as conscious thinking? If not, why
not? Wouldn't the body be better off using its short-circuited system, as
opposed to thinking through it?

And consider animals whose brains are not very large or known for their mental
ability, yet who are very good at body kinematics. I'm inclined to think these
are not related at all. The body likely uses some short-circuited system for
kinematics, similar to how spiders' legs work, just more advanced. If we
figured out how such a system works, we'd be able to build very good robots,
but right now we try to make our robots think about how to control each
individual part of their limb, so it's cludgey, slow, and inaccurate.

> but surely you would think very hard about where to put your limbs if you
> were to walk through a minefield, etc.

I'm not thinking of how to put my limbs there, only where to put them, which
is a very different task from actually putting them there.

------
StClaire
The author jumped from an experiment he did which suggests that our brains
can't pull different objects from our memories at the same time to "There is
no unconscious thought."

I think he needs stronger evidence

------
brianberns
The thesis of this article (that the brain can't multiprocess because neurons
are all interconnected) is presented without evidence or any elaboration. It's
not hard to imagine that brain has a way to maintain the integrity of multiple
distinct thoughts at once, even though they're all running on the same
hardware network.

~~~
opportune
Yeah, this is like saying that CPUs can’t truly multiprocess because cores
_can_ share memory

~~~
brianberns
Or like saying that a room can't carry multiple sounds at once because all the
air molecules in the room are touching each other.

------
armitron
Any experienced psychonaut knows this is utter bullshit. It doesn't take a lot
of LSD or psilocybin for one to experience "unconscious" thought, it is
amongst the first things to manifest on a trip. To clarify, this is cognitive
activity that results in various streamS of thought that is ordinarily hidden
from the conscious self but one can become aware of under altered states of
consciousness.

Moreover, if we examine more powerful trips (mystical experience, induced
psychosis), there can be no doubt whatsoever as to the presence of a multitude
of intelligenceS that one can communicate with. In fact, one can take away the
psychedelics and learn to gain access to these parts of the mind through other
methods (Jung - active imagination, western esoteric tradition, shamanism). It
boggles the mind that the author of this nautilus drivel has nothing to say on
these matters.

Finally, he makes the classic mistake of assuming that the unconscious
processes of the mind work in the same way as the conscious ones, in terms of
one taking advantage of them, when he describes the experiments he uses as
proof, that are based on verbalisation and language instead of visualization
and symbol reinforcement.

~~~
dingo_bat
One time I smoked a lot of weed and I felt myself rising and falling with the
music in my room. It was quite pleasurable.

What does this profound experience with drugs tell us about human
consciousness/thought? Literally nothing.

~~~
armitron
First, the definition:

Psychonautics (from the Ancient Greek ψυχή psychē ["soul", "spirit" or "mind"]
and ναύτης naútēs ["sailor" or "navigator"] – "a sailor of the soul") refers
both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of
altered states of consciousness, especially an important subgroup called
holotropic states, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering
substances, and to a research paradigm in which the researcher voluntarily
immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the
accompanying experiences.

Smoking weed with music playing in the background (your own words) is pretty
far from doing _research_ by immersing oneself into altered mental states.
Psychedelics are powerful but one, of course, needs a modicum of understanding
into how to best take advantage of them and the ability to do _research_ with
one's own psyche as the subject. I could rephrase your comment as:

"One time I drove a race car and I had a lot of fun, it was quite pleasurable.
What does this experience tell us about the limits of the human body in such
situations? Literally nothing." => Because you are not in the position to
evaluate the inputs you are receiving besides the rudimentary level of "having
fun". Or as the old Hermetic proverb goes:

"The lips of Wisdom are sealed; except to ears of Understanding"

------
pixelperfect
The arguments in this article were unconvincing. It's not surprising that
naming foods and countries together is no easier than naming them separately.
These are two similar, focused tasks. There is no time for the unconscious to
do any work amidst this focus. The unconscious mind requires a more diffuse
state, which is best attained by walking in the park, taking a shower, or
something like that.

------
nitwit005
> A natural answer might suggest itself: “I must have been unconsciously
> working away on these images—and solved or partially solved the mystery
> without even knowing it. Then the answer ‘broke through’ into consciousness,
> when I saw the image again.” Yet this would be quite wrong—the same sudden
> “pop out” occurs when we continuously contemplate the image, and there has
> been no opportunity for unconscious background pondering.

The statement "and there has been no opportunity for unconscious background
pondering" doesn't seem true here. There is always opportunity for "background
pondering", even if you're apparently focusing on something. There's no reason
to think two parts of the brain aren't working in parallel.

Something close to the reverse might be true. It's possible the apparent act
of focusing may not have helped solve the problem, and it's always solved by
some background effort. I can't say that I'm consciously aware of how to
analyze an image, in the same way that I'm aware of how to multiply.

------
projektir
I wouldn't be _too_ surprised if this is true... but there's no way in hell
that's enough evidence to reach that conclusion. We do not know 100% that
brains are ran on a single conscious mind, even.

Following the conclusion of this article, given that it uses fairly broad
definitions, I'm not sure how it is possible to understand a concept the
morning after a good night of sleep. _Something_ has to be going on
sufficiently powerful to solve a problem, even if it's not a "thought" in the
experiential sense.

I'm inclined to believe the opposite, the brain does a hell of a lot of work
unconsciously and not that much consciously. I generally found that I reach
better conclusions from throwing a lot of information at my brain, as opposed
to trying to build a logical chain. The latter generally happens after.

------
teilo
Right. So we have no idea what consciousness is, or how it works, or where it
comes from, but yet we can deduce that there is no such thing as unconscious
thought?

------
mrob
>If unconscious thought is impossible, any background racing around our mental
archives is entirely ruled out. That is, if we are scouring our memories for
foods, we cannot simultaneously search for countries, and vice versa.

The author is not arguing against unconscious thought. They are arguing
against background thought. I've never heard of anybody claiming to gain
unconscious insight while concentrating hard on something else. It's only
claimed to happen while dozing or walking or similar. I'd always assumed that
unconscious thought used the exact same brain resources as conscious thought,
and the only difference was the lack of consciousness. Obviously if you're
using those resources for something else then they won't be available for
unconscious thought.

~~~
projektir
> I've never heard of anybody claiming to gain unconscious insight while
> concentrating hard on something else.

I feel like this might have happened to me here or there...

You never felt like you thought about one thing, and, in the background,
something else was processed?

------
StanislavPetrov
I've never seen so many unsupported assertions presented as fact outside of
the realm of politics.

------
Symmetry
_Poincaré and Hindemith cannot possibly be right. If they are spending their
days actively thinking about other things, their brains are not unobtrusively
solving deep mathematical problems or composing complex pieces of music,
perhaps over days or weeks, only to reveal the results in a sudden flash._

No, the brain is reconfiguring itself during REM sleep to be more able to
solve the sort of problem that you had been working on. It doesn't happen when
you're thinking about other things, particularly. There's a ton of research
relating REM sleep to improved skill at problem solving and Poincaré was
certainly sleeping on the problems he was trying to solve.

------
jeffmcmahan
Nautilus is built on this kind of psycholo-garbage. The conclusions go way too
far, but the title gets clicks.

------
DanWaterworth
Off topic, and IANAL, but I believe this website breaks European law by
refusing to serve the article to european residents who block cookies.

Under the ePrivacy legislation (and GDPR's redefinition of consent), you must
obtain "freely given consent" to use cookies that are not necessary for the
proper functioning of the site (and under this definition, analytics cookies
are not necessary).

By refusing to serve the site to those who opt to block cookies, they ensure
that consent can only be given under duress.

~~~
dingo_bat
> they ensure that consent can only be given under duress.

Not being able to read a random website is not "duress".

~~~
conquistadog
The randomness of the website is irrelevant to the requirement, at least as I
understand it.

~~~
dingo_bat
Irrelevant to the main point. Since you're being childish I'll explain again.

Not being able to read a particular article or articles is not duress. Duress
is if nautilus would threaten to send killer ninjas to your house of you won't
accept the cookies.

~~~
DanWaterworth
You're right to complain that conquistadog's comment was irrelevant to your
main point. It's frustrating when people miss what you are saying and get so
hooked on trivialities. Incidentally, your nitpicking about my use of the word
duress is also irrelevant.

Next, you call people childish, when you are acting immaturely. How does name-
calling generally work out for you as a means for settling disagreements?

It also bugs me that you are not even technically correct. You see, I looked
up the definition of duress before I posted. I am British, so I used the OED
and it told me that in the legal sense of the word, duress is, "Constraint
illegally exercised to force someone to perform an act." Based on that
definition, I don't think I could have picked a word that would better suit my
intention.

------
groupdeterminac
> Importantly, the cycle of thought proceeds one step at a time. The brain’s
> networks of neurons are highly interconnected, so there seems little scope
> for assigning different problems to different brain networks. If
> interconnected neurons are working on entirely different problems, then the
> signals they pass between them will be hopelessly at cross-purposes—and
> neither task will be completed successfully: Each neuron has no idea which
> of the signals it receives are relevant to the problem it is working on, and
> which are just irrelevant junk. If the brain solves problems through the
> cooperation computation of vast networks of individually sluggish neurons,
> then any specific network of neurons can work on just one solution to one
> problem at a time.

Are we to conclude upon observing the crossing paths of trains and passengers
that a rail system can service only one route at any moment?

------
carapace
This is a "just so" story.

The _bulk_ of our thinking is unconscious (in the sense that, whatever your
subjective awareness is, it doesn't contain perceptions of the process of most
thinking your system does.)

In fact, you have a distributed brain in your gut that does a great deal of
thinking about food, both what to eat and what to do to handle what we've
already eaten. (To give an extreme example, it's what decides you have to
throw up.) And the spine and motor cortex form a kind of brain also. But even
the head-brain thinking is mostly outside of your subjective awareness.

Certainly it's possible to cram your brain with information, then take a break
and sleep on it (literally or otherwise) and then come back and suddenly the
answer appears, or your understanding has increased.

------
lostconfused
The article doesn't succeed in presenting a good argument. There's a lot of
attempts at making examples and using thought experiments but it doesn't
actually present any sort of mechanism or model for the mental process
involved.

------
hyperpallium
I wonder if the key evolutionary development for intelligence was a way to
reliably harness it for survival purposes.

Chomsky thinks that there's a sharp divide between language and non-linguistic
communication, in that a language is infinite. Turning to formal languages,
even regular languages are infinite, so I think he's more talking about Turing
equivalent languages - and given just a little complexity, just about
everything is Turing equivalent.

Some people equate language with intelligence. But it's possible intelligence
is a cause of language (or both are caused by something else).

------
faragon
"Science and Method" (1908, "Science et méthode" -original title in French-)
is Poincaré's book the blog post author is speaking about. In my opinion,
Poincaré's book is very valuable, and useful for anyone dealing with non
trivial problems, no matter if there is "unconscious though" or not.

------
_mhr_
So what is the Default Mode Network doing during daydreaming/"inactivity"?
Nothing at all?

------
crazygringo
tl;dr: When you have a flash of inspiration, it isn't because your mind was
subconsciously putting it together in the background prior to that, or
preparing you for it -- you just had the inspiration in that moment like any
other thought.

However, I'd make two counterpoints:

1) The article completely ignores nighttime dreaming, when our brain _does_
reorganize information we've processed during the day, and perhaps prepares us
for the subsequent flash of inspiration we wouldn't otherwise achieve.

2) The idea of "unconscious thought" is a contradiction in terms -- thought is
generally defined as exclusively conscious -- so the article sets up a bit of
a semantic strawman. But the research here in no way invalidates our
unconscious knowledge or instincts, which of course play a huge role in
psychology.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I think the counter-argument for 1 would be that, as we are dreaming, we ARE
explicitly putting things at the forefront of our mind to organize it. We just
mercifully forget it when we wake up. I guess that raises the question of how
that queue of stuff to think about forms, and where sits until runtime?

~~~
projektir
> I think the counter-argument for 1 would be that, as we are dreaming, we ARE
> explicitly putting things at the forefront of our mind to organize it. We
> just mercifully forget it when we wake up.

I don't know if this really passes the... sniff test, if you will.

Even if something is not remembered, it would need to be processed long enough
for the subject to also be able to recognize it and/or wake up as a result,
with an emotional reaction. This doesn't really seem to happen. Most cases of
people waking up with a strong reaction involve nightmares and similar.

"Anything can happen if we can forget it" is not really that solid, since
things happening here-and-now nonetheless have effect, even if not remembered.

Conscious thought requires effort, is tiring, for some painful, etc. I find it
unlikely that, during sleep, this activity suddenly becomes more viable.

------
boomlinde
A long, meandering article making some sort of argument about consciousness
and thought, seemingly without defining either (I stopped reading halfway
through) when when it really hinges on what exactly these things are.

------
denimalpaca
> "A natural answer might suggest itself: “I must have been unconsciously
> working away on these images—and solved or partially solved the mystery
> without even knowing it. Then the answer ‘broke through’ into consciousness,
> when I saw the image again.” Yet this would be quite wrong—the same sudden
> “pop out” occurs when we continuously contemplate the image, and there has
> been no opportunity for unconscious background pondering. The phenomenon of
> sudden insight stems not from unconscious thought, but from the nature of
> the problem: Searching for a meaningful interpretation with few helpful and
> unambiguous clues."

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Just because we have
an instance of conscious thought leading to the conclusion, and a scenario
where it is possible that the unconscious is playing a role, the conclusion
that in the second scenario the unconscious does not play a role based on the
ability to come to the conclusion consciously does not follow. The nature of
the problem here is not given enough of a definition for one to conclude that
there is only one way to get to the answer, either.

>"The brain’s networks of neurons are highly interconnected, so there seems
little scope for assigning different problems to different brain networks."

Except we know very well that the brain solves different kinds of problems in
different areas... the Occipital lobe, Wernicke's area vs Broca's area, are
different "sub problems" the brain is working on which the conscious part gets
information about. Maybe different creative problems use the whole frontal
cortex differently, but the "computational machine" that is our brain is
definitely divided up into sub-problems; some are very, very obviously
unconscious, like the "problem" of keeping our hearts beating.

>" If it is indeed possible to search for foods or countries simultaneously
(even though we can consciously report the results of only one search at a
time), then the rate at which we generate answers in both categories should be
substantially greater than the rate at which we can generate answers from
either category alone."

I think this is a bad experiment and a bad conclusion. It's a bad experiment
because in the "control case" (only listing foods or only listing countries),
the unconscious, if helping, would still be helping in these cases, trying to
generate a list while the conscious mind is also trying to generate a list. So
it's not really a controlled experiment, because the unconscious mind is never
"stopped" \- it is assumed to not be used. It's a bad conclusion then because
the premise is faulty; we wouldn't expect someone to list two separate lists
more quickly if the same unconscious mechanism is a poor assistant when making
the lists alone, too.

------
8bitsrule
What behavioralism lacks in charm, it tries to compensate for with
persistence.

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treya
We clearly think in ways that aren't available to the conscious parts of the
mind, read most any Oliver Sachs or VS Ramachandran book for clear evidence of
that. But what part this plays in specific problem solving isn't clear.

And this article dismisses unconscious thought but doesn't offer a good
explanation for what is happening. For instance, what actually happens when
you figure something out? And while what actually happens is undoubtedly
related to flashes of inspiration or seeing an optical illusion in a new way,
these things are only part of the story. A story that isn't told by most
conventional models of learning or understanding.

But with careful observation, you can find clues for a simple explanation of
epiphanies, solving problems in your sleep, and acquiring greater
understanding over time. And that explanation is that the mind grows during
rest/sleep in response to cognitive effort, most significantly during a period
starting at least 24 hours afterwards and maybe peaking 36-48 hours later.
That time frame here is from my own observations, the actual numbers aren't
important to the explanation here. But it seems probable that learning and
understanding is the result of “brain growth” that occurs as a result of
thinking about something, and that this growth is specific to what you've been
thinking about, and is cumulative. Your brain is not consciously thinking
during this, and likely not unconsciously thinking about it either, but
instead is just growing in a specific area. The result of the growth is that
you are better able to perceive and grasp ideas that you couldn't previously.

We already know that memories are “consolidated” during sleep. Likely this
consolidation is just some kind of structural or neural growth in the brain.
Other parts of the brain are unlikely to be much different. The flashes of
inspiration can be sudden understandings of a simple problem, but
understanding deeper concepts or ideas requires brain growth in the area. I'd
guess the flashes of inspiration type of understanding is analogous to short
term memories, whereas deeper understanding and learning is the result of
accumulated brain growth. When that brain growth becomes sufficient to grasp a
concept, the sudden understanding (or epiphany) moment doesn't necessarily
come with a realization that your brain is different and only has just then
been able to grasp or figure out a problem.

Also, my intuition tells me that maybe we don't actually know anything at all,
and we really only “figure out” everything. In other words, our brain is just
a very good JIT (just-in-time) prediction engine. And when we think we know
something, it's actually just the case that we predict or model it in real
time at the moment we begin thinking. And memories are reformed every time we
try to recall them, by neural structures that recreate the same pattern over
and over when it's asked for.

This also explains things like prodigies, who typically spent many formative
hours immersed in something over a long period to develop their abilities, and
even acquired savant syndrome that can occur after head trauma (which does
occur until after the brain has healed in response to the trauma).

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alexandercrohde
What garbage. I can't even make sense of the author's point, it's so diluted
with random asides and free-association tangents (poincare, etc).

Perhaps we should start by defining terms. What is "unconscious," and what is
"thought." Depending on how you define that, visual processing, dreaming,
operant-conditioning, all fall into that category.

There is also strong peer-reviewed evidence that our mind is constantly
reviewing what we have just learned, and interrupting this will inhibit our
learning. Perhaps the author should discuss that [1].

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory#Retroactiv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory#Retroactive_interference)

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modzu
f off dull professor at Warwick Business School

~~~
dang
Posting like this will get you banned here. Please post civilly and
substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
modzu
it was an emotional reaction. i do think the subject is worthy of more
rigorous discussion. please accept my apologies

