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[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 103 points 6 months ago

I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands "smaller agents" that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say "this, THIS right here IS concsciousness". That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.

[-] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 52 points 6 months ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat is a fantastic exploration of this idea, focusing on people who have lost specific parts of their brains due to tumors or strokes. The human mind is very much like a complex modern website- take Amazon for example, if everything is working, it’s the website where you buy stuff, but if certain specific systems are offline, you lose specific features, like your order history, or your cart, or your recommended products, etc… Missing one or two of of those components diminishes the site somewhat, but it’s still more or less Amazon. Your brain works the same way!

[-] jballs@sh.itjust.works 24 points 6 months ago

Stupid brain running micro-services.

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[-] Raxiel@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

And the underlying animal is still there too. It's fully in control at birth, and gets drowned out as we mature (for some people, less than others).
Small children are little more than animals, which is why they're so unreasonable.
It's my belief that the reason the written word or things like clocks are usually unreadable in dreams, is because the animal is both illiterate and innumerate. Dreams are the animals understanding of our waking experience. It knows these patterns are important and how they relate to other things, but it has no fucking idea what any of it actually means.

[-] Spiritreader@lemmy.world 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I do find myself reading and writing words in dreams quite a lot. I've never seen a clock though, not as far as I can remember.

But sometimes I can even remember signs with street names or banners / short paragraphs.

Dynamic lighting sadly doesn't work tho. Light switches do nothing. For example if I turn on the lights in my bathroom in a dream, I can even hear the bathroom fan turn on, but the room remains dark. Ive heard thst this is apparently quite common though.

[-] PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca 12 points 6 months ago

I posit this as well. I’m made up of at least 5 or 6 different versions of me with different biases and personalities. There’s a negative narcissistic version, there’s a happy go lucky version, a pragmatic version, a nihilist with a dark sense of humour, a soppy emotional one, and others and they all fight constantly to have their say. I thought everyone was like this 🤪

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[-] Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 6 months ago

You would like Global Workspace Theory, basically says your consciousness is the result of components of the brain broadcasting their information to the whole.

I also like Integrated Information Theory which measures the conscious experience of a system by how integrated it is, which means that you can't reduce the system to the sum of it's parts without losing the emergent properties.

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[-] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 81 points 6 months ago

Inside you there are two wolves

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 37 points 6 months ago

Both gay & both loud af, at the same time.

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[-] RavenFellBlade@startrek.website 30 points 6 months ago

Sorry about that transporter malfunction.

[-] Skymt@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

And they were delicious

[-] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 72 points 6 months ago

IIRC the "other consciousness" is the internal monologue or internal visualization you experience when thinking

There's a potentially related theory too that the origin of religion is internal narrator thinkers having perceived the internal narrator as a second entity who was issuing them commands and beliefs rather than their own internal dialogue.

These people would claim to be "prophets" and basically evangelize whatever presence they ascribed responsibility for the internal narrator to. Leading to more people believing their internal narrators are also these divine forces speaking to them.

Not to dunk on rural americans, but a phenomena like this could also explain the recent evangelical movement in the US considering how much emphasis is placed on the personal relationship and communication with God, these people might actually just not realize their own thoughts and ascribe all thought process as the voice of the big man himself.

[-] Stonewyvvern@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

Lived in SE USA most of my life...the majority of the most ridiculous fundamentalists don't have an inner monologue. They speak but there is nothing going on upstairs except life processes.

The way they cling to ideas from others explains why they cling so tightly...they never had one of their own.

Because of this phenomenal outlook they typically adhere to the first idea that comes around and dismiss everything else as false.

Critical thinking is not applicable to everyone.

[-] root_beer@midwest.social 16 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Absence of an inner monologue does not mean that there is no thought process. I’ve done just fine without one myself. Can’t speak to whatever is plaguing the fundamentalists apart from indoctrination and being steeped in an oppressive culture that’s been fostered over generations.

[-] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

I have a coworker who I discovered a few weeks ago had no idea internal monologues were a thing. I had to explain that it's a real documented phenomena and that it's actually a minority of people that don't have one. She's pretty damn smart, too. I also play D&D with a guy who has aphantasia. He's also pretty damn smart and you would have no idea he was incapable of visualizing things if he didn't tell you. Him casually mentioning it in conversation surprised people who had known him for years. So, yeah, absolutely no correlation between intelligence and how your thoughts may or may not produce phantom sensory input.

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[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 14 points 6 months ago

*origin of prophets as they are understood today

The first religions were generally flavors of animism.

[-] PiJiNWiNg@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 months ago

Makes you wonder what happens to a person who now accepts the voices in their head as divine mandate...

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[-] nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 45 points 6 months ago

My speaking consciousness says there isn't.

[-] ignotum@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

My non-verbal consciousness says

[-] 01101000_01101001@mander.xyz 39 points 6 months ago

I'm aware of my other consciousness. She's cool. I try to be more like her.

[-] Omgboom@lemmy.zip 20 points 6 months ago

I wish mine would stop giving me intrusive thoughts

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[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 16 points 6 months ago

I call it my customer service face.

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[-] DaMonsterKnees@lemmy.world 33 points 6 months ago

Only the Baron Harkonnen speaks in my head, so hah!

[-] Aganim@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago
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[-] Emmie@lemm.ee 33 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I will always held belief that we are part of the spiritual greater universe and our brains are antennas for the consciousness. At the same time I won’t allow this belief to interfere with my daily logic and scientific pursuits.

It’s way more fun to have some nice private things you are contemplating as you enjoy the various psychedelics.

[-] Fungah@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

I, too, did a heroic dose of mushrooms once

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[-] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 6 months ago

You're not gonna give us a source?

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 26 points 6 months ago
[-] smeg@feddit.uk 63 points 6 months ago

It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy.

So unless you've had your brain cut in half to treat your epilepsy then you're probably alright

No conclusive evidence of the proposed phenomenon has been discovered.

[-] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 19 points 6 months ago

The one thing I can think of that approaches support for the idea is "Joe, the split-brain patient"'s case. You can show him stuff on the right side of his visual field, and he'll tell you what it is. Show him something on the left side of his vision, and he can draw it and react to it, but can't name it. The speech center of his brain is disconnected from the right hemisphere due to that procedure.

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[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 22 points 6 months ago

So not one but two suffering entities?

Somehow that makes it worse.

[-] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 21 points 6 months ago

What, you guys haven't killed the other one? You truly aren't minmaxing your brain usage capacity.

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[-] JoYo@lemmy.ml 20 points 6 months ago

oh there’s way more than two minds in your brain.

[-] EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 6 months ago

I too have ADHD

[-] ExtraMedicated@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

So that's why my constant inner-monologue is verbose and meaningful, but I can't communicate for shit?

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[-] OofShoot@beehaw.org 18 points 6 months ago

As far as I understand, the line gets even blurrier then that. Apparently quiet a lot of the subsections of your brain do things that can be interpreted as conciseness, but we experience it as one unified thing.

[-] schmorpel@slrpnk.net 22 points 6 months ago

No, conciseness is the ability to describe things in few words. You probably meant to say consumption.

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[-] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 14 points 6 months ago

Can vouch for that. Ive always been of two minds on any given subject

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[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 12 points 6 months ago

Neither of mine can do speech.

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this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
617 points (94.6% liked)

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