“Imagine a new technology that allowed subsystems to report their conscious states! But we don’t have that evidence and, unfortunately, may forever lack it. ”
We already have this technology. It is called Internal Family Systems therapy. Mindfulness meditation also results in awareness of the brain processes that were formerly shielded from conscious awareness, and knowledge of the fact that they have valenced experiences of their own, separately and often in conflict with the valence that the conscious mind reports.
Denying the existence of conscious subsystems in the human brain is like denying the existence of jhana. The lived experience of thousands of people is that they exist. We have watched them, and talked to them, and watched them talk to each other. We have seen that the ‘I’ of our assumed personal identity is actually a process that results from ‘passing a microphone’ from one subsystem to another as they take turns reacting to various stimuli.
Humans are vast, we contain multitudes. If you hurt me, you are hurting a lot of things. Theories of a singular consciousness are based on a narrow and limited sense of identity that anyone with meditation attainment will tell you is a delusion.
I think those subsystems’ states (whether conscious or not) have to pass through the larger system’s access (e.g. attention) and report functions to be reported. They can’t report directly without passing through the larger system. At least, I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that they can do so directly and I’m not sure what it would look like.
Another interpretation of what’s happening with meditation is that it’s just generating different kinds of accessible conscious states, not revealing hidden ones. (It at least is generating different kinds of accessible conscious states, since otherwise we wouldn’t be discussing them.) You could have multiple subagents or personalities or similar, but they may only be conscious when accessed as part of the larger system.
“Imagine a new technology that allowed subsystems to report their conscious states! But we don’t have that evidence and, unfortunately, may forever lack it. ”
We already have this technology. It is called Internal Family Systems therapy. Mindfulness meditation also results in awareness of the brain processes that were formerly shielded from conscious awareness, and knowledge of the fact that they have valenced experiences of their own, separately and often in conflict with the valence that the conscious mind reports.
Denying the existence of conscious subsystems in the human brain is like denying the existence of jhana. The lived experience of thousands of people is that they exist. We have watched them, and talked to them, and watched them talk to each other. We have seen that the ‘I’ of our assumed personal identity is actually a process that results from ‘passing a microphone’ from one subsystem to another as they take turns reacting to various stimuli.
Humans are vast, we contain multitudes. If you hurt me, you are hurting a lot of things. Theories of a singular consciousness are based on a narrow and limited sense of identity that anyone with meditation attainment will tell you is a delusion.
Hi Richard, thanks for your comment!
I think those subsystems’ states (whether conscious or not) have to pass through the larger system’s access (e.g. attention) and report functions to be reported. They can’t report directly without passing through the larger system. At least, I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that they can do so directly and I’m not sure what it would look like.
Another interpretation of what’s happening with meditation is that it’s just generating different kinds of accessible conscious states, not revealing hidden ones. (It at least is generating different kinds of accessible conscious states, since otherwise we wouldn’t be discussing them.) You could have multiple subagents or personalities or similar, but they may only be conscious when accessed as part of the larger system.