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Subject:

Intentions, consciousness and visibility

From:

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Reply-To:

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Date:

Tue, 24 Oct 2000 12:17:57 +0200

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (112 lines)

Keith and All,

Keith wrote:

1) I do not presume that there is an unconscious  - given that Kalus and
Brynjulf want to talk about not being able to inspect an act of
consciousness
on the part of another I would presume, logically, that if they think that
you
can't inspect an act of consciousness then you have no hope of knowing
about
let alone inspecting an unconscious event, either of the self or of
another.
This sorta makes a large logical hole in the construction of an
interiority.

2) There is no interiority that is not mediated, as an object of
consciousness
and therefore, in order for any event of consciousness to be available to
consciousness it needs to be mediated - hence all events of consciousness
are
intentional - they are only know as objects.

To presume away something might lead to wrong conclusions. If somebody hits
you on the head hard enough events may happen around you that you are
utterly unaware of - you are unconcious. But it does not have to be that
drastic. According to A. C. Millar, a noted american psychologist who wrote
the famous article "Seven Plus minus Two", our conciousness capacity is
extremely limited - to roughly 7 information bits. If information exceeds
the capacity, we start a process of putting the content of the concious
into our unconcious space, which is thought to be limitless in capacity in
practice. It has been measured that the average person probably uses only
roughly 10% of their unconciousness memory capacity. How we process from
concious to unconcious and back has been studied by many, including people
trying to understand the role of dreaming.

Have you ever tried the game of looking at 20 items for a minute, and the
try to recall all of them? Unless you group the items into acronyms or
other systems of association, you will not be able to account for all of
them, because you have to reconstruct what you have seen by using
associations to recall items in logical sequences. Some claim to have
photographic memory, and may recall the whole picture, but that is rare.

Have you ever driven home in your car with your head full of the day's
events? I have, and woken up finding myself at home, being totally
incapable of telling anybody, including myself how I got home.

Keith, I think you make another error in your e-mail by presuming away the
possibility of not being aware of one's own driving forces. What
associations our brain makes with our unconcious we cannot fully be
concious about. In other words, we are not necessarily aware of our own
motivation. To improve our understanding of our own driving forces we can
get help from others (sensitivity training, meditation, etc.), but you
cannot do that all the time in any situation you encounter. Several great
books have been written about "the hidden Powers". If you are not aware of
what is happening to yourself, you cannot relate it to others even if you
wanted to. And often you don't want to let others become aware of your
thoughts and feelings. Ever played Poker?

The weakness of all the research related to the above is that the
theoretical constructs cannot be seen and measured directly - because they
are indeed invisible, especially to others. What is measured is the
visible: artifacts and other objects resulting from behavior, behavior
including speech, and bodily chemical/electric processes (lie detectors are
of this kind). The problem with artifacts, objects and behavior is that
they do not tell us the underlying motivation, intentions and thought
processes that drive and direct and result in what we as outsiders observe.
So we rely on bodily uncontrollable (?) reactions and story-telling to gain
insight into that other person to the extent that the person is willing and
able to relate personal and subjective realities to us.

As interpreters of others' behavior and artifacts we use our own brain. To
the extent that my associations are different from that of the subject
observed I will draw wrong conclusions - and I guess that happens more
often than not. I will therefore communicate back from a different reality
than what the other person thinks I have, and so goes the spiral of
miscommunications. We will therefore seldom communicate at a perfect level,
some degree of miscommunication is the rule, not the exception.

Yes, I will admit that because of inconclusive evidence on a lot of
theories dealing with individuals (psychology) and relations between people
(language, anthropology sociology and culture, etc.) and with objects
(estetics, symbolism, etc.), we do have large holes in our knowledge. That
does not mean that the theories put forward necessarily have large logical
holes, but can have perfect internal consistency. Several theories with
perfect consistency (or as close as you get) are competing and cannot all
be true. Our trouble is that we do not have conclusive evidence to choose
which one is right, but we do have subjective opinions on which ones we
trust more than others.

So we are doomed to live in a world of uncertainty and not knowing, and how
boring it would be if it was not.

Brynjulf

Brynjulf Tellefsen
Associate Professor
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
P. O. Box 4676 Sofienberg
N-0506 Oslo, NORWAY

Phone direct:  +47-22985142
Via exchange:  +47-22985000
Faximile: +47-22985111
Private phone/fax: +47-22149697
e-mail: [log in to unmask]



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