Is the human self nonexistent?

[Laird]

Regarding the subconscious guess - do you mean the unconscious belonging to the person whom Robert Monroe was visiting while in OBE?

Yes. Also, some further thoughts have, indeed, occurred to me. Here's the possibility they suggest:

The subconscious does not entail a separate stream of phenomenal consciousness, nor an additional self - the latter of which you're not suggesting anyway, but it is a possibility that I could have chosen to affirm in defence of my ideas on all of this, so I'm choosing to make it clear that, at least tentatively and provisionally, and as a part of this suggestion, I disclaim it.

Continuing my suggestion, then: the subconscious in the sense in which it operated in the conversants in Robert Monroe's OBE conversations, etc, with them is a sort of semi-autonomous process in the mind, which does not (the process) experience per se, but which, because it operates in the same mental energy as the experiencing self, can - via a sort of "organic mechanism" - draw on the opinions, views, thoughts, habits, personality, etc of the person of whose mind it is a process so as to mimic them to a meaningful degree.

One intuitive way of understanding my suggestion is to consider - in this sense - the subconscious to be an A.I. that has been "trained on" one's mind, and that maintains a consistent connection with it, and can to an extent operate autonomously, but which - because it is an A.I. - does not itself experience.

Does that make any sort of sense to you? I'm not claiming it to be definitively true - just a possibility that suggested itself to me that explains Robert's experiences without compromising my concepts of self which I've shared already.

[Ninshub]

Yes that makes sense, Laird, and now that you articulate it I can conceive of it as a definite possibility.

What if the unconscious is the person, though, and the conscious mind the organic AI mechanism?  A joke, but not completely... (See the post where Monroe describes his Locale II experiences.)

[Ninshub]

Yes that makes sense, Laird, and now that you articulate it I can conceive of it as a definite possibility.

I just wanted to underline this again and express to you, Laird, that I find it very helpful that you're giving thought to those examples I've brought up and coming up with considered responses. You've come up with an ingenious explanation here that definitely has some potential explanatory power, aside from whether it's the right explanation or not (which of course I don't know). Good stuff! Helps me think through these matters.

[Laird]

Thanks for the positive affirmations, Ian.

I hope you don't mind me taking this opportunity to share an extra reason as to why I think my suggestion is worth taking seriously:

We seem to be able to train our minds (and brains) to operate on "autopilot" to an extent. For example, when we first learn to ride a bicycle, or to type, we are exquisitely aware of all of the minute steps that we need to take to perform the task. Once we've learnt, though, we are no longer conscious of how we perform those tasks - but something in us is performing all of those minute steps of which we're no longer conscious. I think it would be strange if that something is, itself, (separately) conscious. On the other hand, we know that these sort of tasks can be performed by non-conscious A.I. This is consistent with, and tends to affirm, the idea that a part of our minds - "the subconscious" - is a sort of non-experiencing "organic mechanism", which can be and has been trained, and can "mimic" us, analogous to an A.I.

Also on the theme of autopilot, we know that we can fall into a reverie whilst driving: again, we are not conscious of driving while in that reverie, but we (generally) perform that task well enough anyhow, and without crashing - all on "autopilot". Again, I think it would be odd if the part of us that is doing the driving while we're off with the fairies is itself (separately) conscious. Again, this has the same consistency as noted above.

Bernardo Kastrup disagrees with me: he thinks that the driver while we're lost in thought is a "dissociated" part of our consciousness. The thing I'd like to ask him about this, though, is: does he think that this dissociation is permanent, and just waits for an opportunity to drive for us, or is it temporary, popping into existence as required, and then promptly disappearing when not? Neither option makes much sense to me.

[Ninshub]

Intuitively I buy into your explanations of the subconscious in those examples and of the automatic driver. I'm tempted to agree with you that it's not separately conscious.

Back to the Monroe example about having "discussions" with the astral plane "version" of the persons he visits, though, bringing in verbal language etc., more involved thought, seems to me to stretch things into another level, further complexity. I'm not discounting your conception as false, however, it's just that it's less obviously likely or convincing to me. (Not that I'm convinced of the contrary.)

Re: Bernardo. I'm not completely sure what he means there. Is this the same as what he usually talks about with dissociated consciousness? (That our whole self is but a temporary dissociated part of larger consciousness.) Has he made a specific reference to the autopilot driver situation?

[Ninshub]

Back to the Monroe for a minute. I'm not discounting the hypothesis that possibly he is indeed "imagining" (or creating rather) those discussions (a non-fully conscious process) but that somehow psi is involved and getting correct data, while the rest of his OBE is an "actual" visit of the person. Not a hypothesis I necessarily favour, but one I think is possible.

[Laird]

Intuitively I buy into your explanations of the subconscious in those examples and of the automatic driver. I'm tempted to agree with you that it's not separately conscious.

Back to the Monroe example about having "discussions" with the astral plane "version" of the persons he visits, though, bringing in verbal language etc., more involved thought, seems to me to stretch things into another level, further complexity. I'm not discounting your conception as false, however, it's just that it's less obviously likely or convincing to me. (Not that I'm convinced of the contrary.)

I think that that's a pretty reasonable response.

Re: Bernardo. I'm not completely sure what he means there. Is this the same as what he usually talks about with dissociated consciousness? (That our whole self is but a temporary dissociated part of larger consciousness.)

As best I understand: yes.

Has he made a specific reference to the autopilot driver situation?

Yes. In case you want me to locate it for you: I doubt that I can. Ask and I'll try though.

[Ninshub]

I think your explanation makes more sense to me than Bernardo's, unless we can clarify what he means more specifically in this instance by "dissociated" and by "part" (of consciousness). I certainly don't conceive of a conscious part-self being the reverie and another conscious part-self being the driver.

Maybe I could agree with "dissociated" in the loose meaning of our having our conscious focus on one thing (the reverie) and something in us is dissociated from that, and become re-associated with it once we focus back on the driving, but I wouldn't conceive of that "thing" as an "experiencing". Not experiencing in the same way at least.


No need to put yourself through looking for specific reference! But if you come across it by chance, great.

[Ninshub]

I'm just listening to this exchange for other reasons, out of general and vague curiosity, but there's a section that I find potentially very relevant to some of the stuff we've been talking about here, and maybe especially to the discussion revolving around Bernardo and the driver in the last little while.

I like this format where the host is not inviting a debate but rather a meeting of the minds between Bernardo and John Vervaeke, as if they were getting to know each other in academic halls, who from what I understand is a nuanced, non-reductive physicalist of the epiphenomenon variety (I misunderstood: he describes himself as a naturalist but not a materialist, and as a "deep continuity theorist"), but whose primary interest is meaning, and very much appreciates where Bernardo is coming from in his motivations and also in his bringing phenomenology to the fore in the philosophical investigation of reality.

So, spurred on by the importance Bernardo puts on parsimony, John starts questioning, trying to understand and challenge Bernardo's ideas on consciousness as fundamental, the unconscious or the experience of "dual consciousness", the difference or not between consciousness and experience, metaconsciousness, his notions of dissociation and then "who reports to who", the self, and I think it all very much relates to questions in this thread. In some ways, I think John's questions wouldn't necessarily be entirely different from the sort of questions someone who believes in the immortality of the soul and having problems with Bernardo's One Mind might ask him to address.

I can't claim to understand it all, I'll have to maybe listen to it twice or more, slowly, but @Laird, particularly, if you've got the time and interest, maybe this could further the discussion or clarify what Bernardo is saying and illuminate you and/or indicate where you think he goes wrong in his laying out of these issues.



The relevant sections (roughly 22 minutes) are from 47 minutes to 1h 9 min 33 sec.

0:47:18 Individuating Consciousness 0:51:33 Standard Hume Empiricism 0:52:22 Elegance & Problematic Parsimony - why not be a realist? 0:53:40 Nominal vs Ontic partitioning 0:58:28 Questioning the Experiencer - Precisely Transcendental 1:01:18 Meta-conscious Reflective Attention 1:03:03 Hume's Straw Man 1:04:16 Self, Consciousness & Meta-consciousness 1:06:33 Dissociative Folded Experiential Reflection 1:08:08 What is the Self

EDIT:

I'm further along in this video, and they return to the topic of consciousness & meta-consciousness. This distinction seems key for Bernardo. A lot of stuff that we tend to associate with being "conscious" he associates with "meta-conscious". If I understand him right, then, the reverie that the driver is engaged in is metaconsciousness, the automatic driving is consciousness without the meta. If one becomes aware of it again, then it's "meta".

2:26:37 Inducing Dissociation in the Universal Mind 2:30:33 Meta-consciousness and Reportability 2:34:40 Jung and Meta-consciousness 2:38:00 Metacognition and Dissociation 2:43:22 Beyond the Boundary of our Own Dissociation 2:45:55 Mental, and of Dissociative Character

[Laird]

@Laird, particularly, if you've got the time and interest, maybe this could further the discussion or clarify what Bernardo is saying and illuminate you and/or indicate where you think he goes wrong in his laying out of these issues.

Cheers, Ian. I'll add it to my "forum TODO list", which already contains the items: (1) respond thoughtfully to @nbtruthman's theodicy (I have most of a response drafted here, but it needs further contemplation before completing and posting), and (2) read all of the consciousness/self-related papers that @Ninshub shared in another thread (the title of which escapes me for the moment), and share my thoughts on them.