i really don't like the argument, it turns people into brainless fleshbags

author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Chater

photo: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wb7sTaSm3Ww/maxresdefault.jpg

he looks like an arrogant hypocritical british prick

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166135)

but seriously yeah this is cr. smart people can reach a level of self-awareness to the extent that they can detect and are aware of their own instinctive rationalizations, but that's about the best we can do

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166159)

that's a very, very grim way to live imo

i much prefer carl jung's approach, which is basically the opposite of this. and having wrestled a lot with my unconscious i think via my experiences that it is

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166175)

not a criticism of you btw. we all do this. it would be pretty insane if we didn't, if you think about it - we're animals who are built to survive and reproduce, and the mind working this way is a big boon to facilitate this

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166192)

"There are many who suspect that the scale of our inner world is far greater still – that we should add into the mix subliminal perception, which slips into our minds without our noticing; that we have unconscious beliefs, motives, desires and perhaps even unconscious inner agents (for Freud, the id, ego, and superego; for Jung, the collective unconscious). And perhaps there is a self, or many selves, or a soul. Many believe that with the right meditative practice, psychotherapy or even hallucinogenic drug, the doors to the rich inner world of the unconscious might be prised open. And, turning to neuroscience, it is natural to imagine that the contents of our inner world might one day be accessible to brain-scanners – which might ‘read off’ our beliefs, motives and feelings, whether conscious or not. But all of this depth, richness and endless scope for exploration is utterly fake. There is no inner world. Our flow of momentary conscious experience is not the sparkling surface of a vast sea of thought – it is all there is. And, as we shall see, each momentary experience turns out to be startlingly sketchy – at any moment, we can recognize just one face, or read just one word, or identify just one object. And when, like our imagined Anna, rehabilitating in the Alps, we begin to describe our feelings, or explain our actions, we are only creating stories, one step at a time, not exploring a pre-existing inner world of thoughts and feelings. The more outré ‘inner worlds’ of dreams, or mystical or drug-induced states, are similarly nothing more than streams of invention – acts of the imagination, not voyages of inner discovery. And the interpretation of dreams, far from boring deep into our psyche, is no more than one creative act set atop another....

In Part Two, we take up this question. If the mind is flat, then our mental lives must exist purely at the ‘mental surface’. Our brain is an improviser, and it bases its current improvisations on previous improvisations: it creates new momentary thoughts and experiences by drawing not on a hidden inner world of knowledge, beliefs and motives, but on memory traces of previous momentary thoughts and experiences."

so he is arguing that we just improvise based on previous momentary thoughts and experiences, that there is no inner world that we draw from. he seems to be denying that there is a feedback loop between mind and body; rather, body gives rise to mind and then the mind just runs wild basically with imagination. so I am asking how he (or you) would deny the feedback loop between mind and body -- if a thought impacts the body, does that not then lead to deeper inner experiences? and if so, wouldn't those deeper inner experiences leading to a rich inner world begin early in life?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166246)

this is a fairly common interpretation of what consciousness is. we can't explain 'consciousness' at all. it appears to just be magic. the best we can do is hand-wave it away as some kind of magical emergent property of the physical brain, or subscribe to mind-body dualism and say it's some other magical thing, separate from our physical body and mind

i don't think it's crazy to "believe" either of the 2 above interpretations. there are lots of smart people who believe them. but it seems overwhelmingly more likely that 'consciousness' as described above isn't actually "real," *especially* given that we can observe varying/lower levels of 'consciousness' in other humans and animals, which strongly suggests that it's just a side effect of biological brain operations

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166345)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/opinion/psychology-consciousness-behavior.html

https://archive.is/Fv4Lg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5606839&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=5310910",#48166368)