Unconscious Processing

Alina Wang and Noel Kirsch

Evidence for unconscious processing-”Eureka moments”

-unconscious plagiarism

-before and after learning a skill (bicycling, languages)

Brain activity

-conscious tasks show much more brain activity than automated tasks

-try this out: ask yourself “was this decision conscious?” Can you clearly tell whether a decision was conscious or not?

-for emotional stimuli, conscious or unconscious, amygdala is activated

-philosophical problem: if every impression has an effect on the brain, what is the difference between the conscious and the unconscious impressions? Can’t be simply the quantitative amount of activity.

False metaphors

-unconscious as an unintelligent worker that does the boring jobs so that the intelligent conscious can flourish

-how can this be if perception, learning, memory, and problem solving can all happen unconsciously?

-what metaphor should we use?

Blindsight

-Peirce and Jastrow (1885): consciously cannot tell the difference between images, but subconsciously can, revealed through correct responses to questions

-Problems with empirical evidence: subjective differences on how cautious people are (e.g. how willing they are to say “yes, I see it”) → no definite boundary between what is in and out of consciousness

-Cheesman and Merikle (1984) propose ‘objective threshold’ and ‘subjective threshold’: when unconsciously given data really has no effect on participant’s perception VS. does have an effect

Subliminal messages

-Vicary (1957) claims to increase sales of cola and popcorn by flashing subliminal messages during a film (but no actual data)

-Dijksterhuis (2005) subliminal messages can alter one’s thoughts but rarely one’s behavior

-popular subliminal self-help videos or games (reduce anxiety, lose weight, etc.) have no proven effect other than placebo effect

Emotional effects

-Kihlstrom (1996): people less likely to consciously see threatening stimuli than neutral stimuli

-Uleman (2005): photos of people with distinctive physical features are paired with positive/negative events affects the participant’s later responses to strangers who share similar features

Implications on the model of mind-Traditional Cartesian Theatre: info must be either IN or OUT of consciousness and pass through the theatre/consciousness to result in action (problem is obvious)

-Updated Cartesian Theatre (most popular today): info can take an alternative route, bypass the theatre, and still lead to action

-Problem: retains the assumption that info is binarily IN or OUT of consciousness

-Revolutionary theory: there is no binary set-up, rather many different processes, each uniquely takes in info as conscious or unconscious, no clear binary outcome of conscious or unconscious

-Problem: contradicts our lived experience → our perception is illusion? (Dennett!)

Unconscious problem solving

-Berry and Broadbent (1984): play a game to alter factors to yield optimal output, over several days performance improved although couldn’t report what changes they made to get better

-Lewicki (1992): search for a particular number among a mixture of numbers, on 7th trial performance suddenly became much better

-Fletcher (2005): fMRI scans show trying to learn something explicitly can suppress implicit/unconscious learning → “benefits of not trying”

-disagreement on how smart your unconscious mind is

Creative incubation & intuition

-scientists and artists report hard work first, then solution will pop into mind

-creative people more prone to fantasy, imagery, hypnosis → let go of conscious deliberation and become absorbed into their surroundings

-explanation for ‘intuition’: seen as paranormal or inexplicable, but maybe just result of unconscious ability honed from experiences over time (e.g. telling whether someone is trustworthy, whether two people will fall in love)

-intuition = emotional knowledge? Emotions are essential to decisions: Damasio (1994) frontal lobe damage, no emotions, only rationality, decision-making becomes “nerve-wracking dilemma”

Creative ‘Flow’ Csikszentmihalyi 2002

“[A] good life is one that is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.”

Flow as a state of optimal experience, including heightened creativity and optimized modes of development or artistic production.

The flow concept

Creative ‘Flow’ Csikszentmihalyi 2002 → Part 2

Theories on the Character of Unconscious-Philosopher Elisa Galgut (2005) criticizes Gouws (2003) “it is a mistake to draw the distinction between [consciousness] and [the unconscious] as a mere difference in degree between items that belong to the same mental type”

-Gouws: the ‘grammar’ of the unconscious is the same as that of the rational consciousness.

-Galgut: Gouws implicitly says the unconscious has rational capacities just like consciousness… wrong! Words in consciousness refer to objects, words in the unconscious are the objects themselves (magic, curses, charms, poetry)

The Character of Unconscious (continued)-Theorists like Gouws can’t escape the Cartesian paradigm, can’t handle that we are truly irrational

-There are contents of the unconscious that can never become conscious, no matter how much recovery work, because of fundamental difference in nature

-Consciousness and the unconscious as a spectrum (daydreams VS psychosis)

Questions

-Is the unconscious overused as an all-purpose explanation or piece of evidence to support wacky theories? (e.g. multiple personality disorder, dream interpretation)

-Verifiability? (Karl Popper’s requirement of refutability)

-Or is the unconscious genuinely the answer, but it is too general/broad, and we need to break it down into more specific sub-structures?

-How would one try to break down the unconscious? Is it even possible?

Questions (continued)

-Is the unconscious a paradigm started by Freud? What paradigms from the past did the unconscious replace, and can you imagine what future paradigms might replace it?

-Can you tie the unconscious into the theories resulting Libet’s experiment and Split-brain studies? Is the unconscious the puppetmaster, and the consciousness the voice in retrospect trying to explain our movements?

-Is it possible to create true AI if we cannot perceive or conceptualize the unconscious?

Citations

Blackmore, S. (2010). Chapter nineteen: Unconscious processing. Consciousness: An introduction (2nd ed., pp. 308-324). New York: Routledge.

Galgut, E. (2005). Wishful Thinking and the Unconscious: A Reply to Gouws. South African Journal Of Philosophy, 24(1), 14-21.