I have always liked Lilly's biocomputer modeling. Tom likened the "I" as being the operating system but it seems more likely to me that the OS is what we call unconscious or autonomic or .........?

Does my mail program Eudora know she is not the OS? She can open ppp and check mail, can override other programs when she wants to check mail, Depending on how long an interval between being on and off passes she either knows or does not know that she has been off. Yes its a metaphore but we could be the same sort of thing.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2000

Answers

I think that the models we use are a function of the social artifacts that we have to play with. A lot of the psychological models of Freud's era have a strong resemblance to a steam engine.

The operating system was more of a small, illustrative example. I think your question takes the next logical step.

Consciousness is some program riding on "top" of underlying systems. You can be unconscious under anesthetic and still hear, understand, and later be influenced by talk going on in the operating room. One of my hypnotherapy books talks of this.

So maybe consciousness is more like your Eudora program than the operating system.

Want to set up an explicit mapping and see where it takes us? I feel equally unconfident of both psychic structure and computer structure, so why not?

BIOS ---------> deep structural abilities because of homo-sap physiology

Operating System ----> social/cultural/familial/personal experience acquired abilities

The small window open on your screen -------> consciousness

Note that this mapping respects the shift in logical types that should happen at each level.

And I think that it properly assigns "consciousness" its place in the scheme of things.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2000

QUICK! Before the thread expires!

My take is that "I" am the software.

That the concept of "I" centers on both the sensory input establishing "place", knowing the diference between here and there, and also there and way over there, and establishing an XYZ position relative to the sensed/observed places and the "equilibrium sensors", and also on the center of the thought processing, which, during meditation, when "the world" is shut down, seems to be in the area of the "third eye"/mind's eye, and/or slightly left or right of the third eye, depending on left or right brain thinking.

I think the concept of "I" rests in the front of the brain because we are essentially visually stimulated creatures, (hell, we even dream in pictures) and when the sensors for teh external world are shut down, as in dreaming or meditation, the same sense of "I" or "self" continues to play or run in the same area of the brain in which the processes are accustomed to running.

Ouch. Does that mean "I" am nothing more than a glorified DOS progam?

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2000

Ken - I'd say you're at least UNIX.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2000

Also - thought on us being visual creatures....

One of the notations that NLP uses is the V-A-K or sometimes denoted V-A-K-O which is an acronym referring to Visual - Auditory - Kinesthetic - Olafactory. Some people are trying to add vestibular and balance senses into as a further mix.

Anyway - the reason they came up with this notation system is the notion that internal experience is constituted of sensory descriptions in these representational systems. Some people prefer the visual system and make pictures in their heads. Some people prefer auditory and talk to themselves internally. And some prefer kinesthetic and will construct feeling maps of situations.

The background theory gets a little vague at the relation between preferred systems and consciousness, as typically people can "do" all systems, but the notion is that one becomes more preferred/practiced and is also what the person reports doing (as in has conscious access). You can tell from watching their outsides what they are "doing" when they go inside - for example if they look up and eyes change focus and breathing shifts up high towards shoulders, you can get them to readily answer questions which would require access to a visual image ("Spell this word backwards...") Ditto for the other systems. Lots of times they can't tell you specifically what they were doing ("I don't know - I just spell it out!")

Extrapolating that everyone makes pictures in their heads or dreams in images is a bit chancy. Someone can tell me to make an image of a helix and slowly rotate it. And I can. And so could my engineering buddies back in design. But many of my colleagues here at the law department adjacent to the patent group I work in can't. They close their eyes and "see" blackness. They seem to use auditory strategies for thinking through things ie. talking through it. Makes for interesting differences in writing styles when we're describing inventions.

Not a lot of kinesthetic types congregating in the high-tech world, but certainly a lot in the therapy world.

They all have senses of "I"ness, but I'd wager that they would describe them differently.

-- Anonymous, March 31, 2000