One rabbit hole to go into with this thought is Hubert Dreyfus and his use of Heidegger's philosophy to explain why the early AI research program was deeply misguided by focusing on explicit cognitive symbolic representation and logical manipulation rather than embodied motivated learning.
From what I understand, Heidegger's phenomenology is related to this piloting and autopiloting, exemplified by the way a hammer only appears as explicit conscious representation to a woodworker when something is wrong with it. The hammer's normal relation to the woodworker is just its ordinary function; the tool's own presence recedes.
But then I also wonder if there's something suspicious about the pilot/autopilot dualism. It seems to mirror dualisms like culture/nature and animal/human. Maybe what we think of as piloting is not as critical, rational, and creative as we are inclined to believe?
> The hammer's normal relation to the woodworker is just its ordinary function; the tool's own presence recedes.
We see the same thing with auto racing. Really experienced drivers "feel" as if the car is an extension of themselves. Its mechanical nature disappears beneath conscious thought.
My hypothesis (admittedly based on little evidence) is this is an optimization function due to conscious thought being a relatively slow process. Once the autopilot has integrated the necessary functions the conscious mind can get out of the way and focus on more "important" things. This appears to apply to memory as well: unless the situation is in some way extraordinary the brain doesn't bother keeping full details in long-term storage. When interrogated later our minds just make up the likely details and call it good enough.
> But then I also wonder if there's something suspicious about the pilot/autopilot dualism. It seems to mirror dualisms like culture/nature and animal/human. Maybe what we think of as piloting is not as critical, rational, and creative as we are inclined to believe?
If it helps I was thinking of the mind as four layers: unintelligent instinctual/automatic systems, subconscious processing, autopilot, and pilot (conscious rational mind).
That said I think you are correct: being critical, rational, or creative is probably rarer than we like to believe. Maybe it is partially a cultural belief, as if admitting we are just cruising through life most of the time makes us seem stupid or un-human?
From what I understand, Heidegger's phenomenology is related to this piloting and autopiloting, exemplified by the way a hammer only appears as explicit conscious representation to a woodworker when something is wrong with it. The hammer's normal relation to the woodworker is just its ordinary function; the tool's own presence recedes.
But then I also wonder if there's something suspicious about the pilot/autopilot dualism. It seems to mirror dualisms like culture/nature and animal/human. Maybe what we think of as piloting is not as critical, rational, and creative as we are inclined to believe?