Cognitive and Perceptual Studies I: You can't Be Here and Now, 'cause "Here" is there, and "Now" was then.

There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought:

Philosopher Peter Carruthers insists that conscious thought, judgment and volition are illusions. They arise from processes of which we are forever unaware

...According to a new article in Scientific American.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-no-such-thing-as-conscious-thought/

 

It's long been know that the brain functions way too slowly to explain real-time consciousness. Peter Carruthers suggests that we are actually observing pre-canned thoughts, and inner dialogue / monologue, rather than generating actual thoughts as things stimulate those thoughts.

 

You see a stop light turn to yellow and move your foot from the gas to the brake.  That's all conditioned. There is no way you can actually think "Ah, this is a yellow light. What should I do? I think I'll get ready to apply the brake...Hm,, I'm moving my foot now...." Even if you have such an inner monologue, that must be simply downstream of the source of all those actions, hidden, unconscious conditioning.

 

Carruthers says this is all an illusion that this is actually thinking, when it is just another set of cognitive behaviors we are witnessing that are conditioned. Even the thought "what shall I do? What are my options" are all part of a chain of conditioning.

 

There is no other way to explain how our slow slow brains can keep up. Stuff doesn't even get into working memory for us to become aware and act in anything like real time. So our perception that we are seeing, thinking and acting in real time, "Here and Now"  must be an illusion.

 

Carutthers explains...

I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. I came to this conclusion by following out the implications of the two of the main theories of consciousness. The first is what is called the Global Workspace Theory, which is associated with neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars. Their theory states that to be considered conscious a mental state must be among the contents of working memory (the “user interface” of our minds) and thereby be available to other mental functions, such as decision-making and verbalization. Accordingly, conscious states are those that are “globally broadcast,” so to speak. The alternative view, proposed by Michael Graziano, David Rosenthal and others, holds that conscious mental states are simply those that you know of, that you are directly aware of in a way that doesn’t require you to interpret yourself. You do not have to read you own mind to know of them. Now, whichever view you adopt, it turns out that thoughts such as decisions and judgments should not be considered to be conscious. They are not accessible in working memory, nor are we directly aware of them. We merely have what I call “the illusion of immediacy”—the false impression that we know our thoughts directly.

....

In ordinary life we are quite content to say things like “Oh, I just had a thought” or “I was thinking to myself.” By this we usually mean instances of inner speech or visual imagery, which are at the center of our stream of consciousness—the train of words and visual contents represented in our minds. I think that these trains are indeed conscious. In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Such thoughts never figure in working memory. They never become conscious. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.

 

We are only aware of our thoughts when a stimulus event triggers them into conscious awareness, or our internal monologue brings them up, but otherwise they are unconscious. And so we think we are doing the thinking  but we, the observer, are just along for the ride seeing thoughts long after they were created. 

 

 Comparing the brain's slow functioning  to our verbal reports, what we do see isn't the whole picture. We live in an illusion of complete awareness of "here" that is missing a lot  and a false sense of immediacy, of "now", that isn't actually "now". 

 

Carruthers very intelligently distinguishes conscious thought with Awareness:

Some philosophers believe that consciousness can be richer than what we can actually report. For example, our visual field seems to be full of detail—everything is just there, already consciously seen. Yet experiments in visual perception, especially the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, show that in fact we consciously register only a very limited slice of the world....

The illusion of immediacy has the advantage of enabling us to understand others with much greater speed and probably with little or no loss of reliability. If I had to figure out to what extent others are reliable interpreters of themselves, then that would make things much more complicated and slow.

 

If there is a Here and Now, and a truly "mindful"  Observer, who can "Be Here and Now", it hasn't been detected in the brain yet. And Carruthers believes it might just be an illusion.

Or maybe it's just not inside the physical organ of the brain? 

 

 

Comments

[Jen]

Living in the moment is about paying attention and being mindful of whatever you are doing in each moment.

Its about being aware and focussed and present, each moment to moment. Its not about being stuck in one moment, each moment flows into the next.

Its like going with the flow calmly and quietly and at the same time acutely aware of one's thoughts, feelings and actions. Its the art of living, flowing freely with concentration, observation, living the middle path of moderation.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Jen!
That state of mind actually defies physiological definition. Yet I know what you mean.
The observer role can't actually be found in the human brain.
And yet the brain is made healthier when its owner enters that state as much as possible, which you have defined.

[Jen]

Hi Spence,

I've just been thinking about how I must stop constantly talking about this practice of mine, it can get pretty boring if I keep on talking about it forever. Getting old and daffy nowadays!

Thanks for your nice comment, I appreciate it. Its strange what you say about the observer role can't be found in the human brain. There you go! I always thought I was different, maybe I'm an alien hybrid LOL (I've been watching youtubes about alien abductions and visitations).

[Dungeness]

Peter Carruthers suggests that we are actually observing pre-canned thoughts, and inner dialogue / monologue, rather than generating actual thoughts as things stimulate those thoughts.

Fascinating article, Spence. I "just thought" of an exchange in RS Magazine
years ago in which the question was asked if even our dialogue, seemingly
so much in the "here and now", is destined and Maharaji responded:
"Did you think this would be a silent drama?"

[777]

ONE. means GOD , . . Shabd Vibration
WE. are THAT
All Saints said that
starting with Zarathrusta, Melchizedek , . . I once placed a list

What else could we be ?
Check it out !
<3

777

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Dungeness
So if it isn't thinking, apparently it isn't even memory, at least it (reported or perceived awareness) happens so fast that working memory can't possibly explain it.

Could be something upstream of the brain, pre-brain?

[Dungeness]

So if it isn't thinking, apparently it isn't even memory, at least it (reported or perceived awareness) happens so fast that working memory can't possibly explain it

Hi Spence, I didn't really grasp any nuance. I just assumed we kinda pull
our "drama lines" out of memory somehow.

My brain's too slow to weigh in though.... just got the memo :)

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Dungeness
It's complicated because our brains don't actually work that fast.

The theory of working memory was a hypothesis to help explain that the brain must have a very limited means of using information, or smaller brain structures that work in parallel coordinated by "executive functions" of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), in order to explain how the very slow speeds of its individual parts can, together, respond in real time. The idea was that pre-canned bits of memory pulled up by stimuli or other memories are then coordinated by executive functions used for decision making and action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory

These elements all have supportive evidence. And parallel processes would help reduce the need to function quickly.

But the actual test evidence shows they just don't work quickly enough for actual conscious decision - making and action. Great hypotheses. Data supports these systems exist. The data still can't fully explain the speed though. They all work too slowly to explain performance.

Hence the hypothesis that it must all be run unconsciously, on a fairly canned, conditioned, pre-learned set of responses, and our conscious brains fed a movie that isn't real time, to keep us busy and attentive, or at least happily giving up our attention so that our unconscious processes have the go ahead to keep doing their thing.

What Carruthers refers to is the evidence that working memory, what you recall and use, is actuality too slow for real time perception or use in aware, volitional, decision making. So this leads to a lot of other theories, as you can see, with the upshot conjecture that we must all be living a dream, since our brains, however many processes work in parallel, don't work fast enough to explain any action driven by real time awareness.

Hence the conclusion that awareness must be a recording and basically an illusion.

The logic is pretty basic, but ofcourse open to conjecture. And there is a certain silliness to that thinking.

They still haven't figured it out. The brain works too slowly for conscious thought.

But if conscious thought did exist independent of the brain, in real time, informed by some sensory input, and some limited memory bits, then that could explain why we actually do perform in real time with real time awareness as quickly as we do, such as with skiing, or martial arts. Because consciousness would not be the limiting factor in speed. The controls of the brain would be the limiting factor on speed. You can make any decision instantly, but you are stuck waiting for the brain to give you the information about what's going on. So your involvement overseeing this and intervening at key moments would require, actually, that while you're conscious awareness may be limited by the brain, it must be an independent element from the brain.

So the brain learns shorthand, most of which you don't see.

The rider of the motorcycle is not limited by their speed. They are limited by the motorcycle under them.

[Dungeness]

So this leads to a lot of other theories, as you can see, with the upshot conjecture that we must all be living a dream, since our brains, however many processes work in parallel, don't work fast enough to explain any action driven by real time awareness.

Silliness aside, that kinda sounds like the metaphor of life as a
dream and we're just actors Informed by a separate super
consciousness that guides us through the script.

Were it not for the brain's intermediacy in reading and saying
the lines, (even if turbo charged with parallel processing) we
could do it much faster or even instantaneously. NASA's Lunar
Module competing with a Star Trek Transporter,

It reminds me of the brain's fussy sabotage of our intuitive
hunches. "No, don't be silly. Let's think about it a little more.
Deconstruct it. Catch the nuances. It'll be plenty fast for
the likes of you."

[777]

@*
There is a tiny antenne buried under the grey, . . .
when clean it captures the highway sounds

Next u see you are THAT without a doubt because it's 24/7

Unnecessary but a source of gratitude (Love) are serendipities
all the time

[Osho Robbins]

from the article

What side effect does the illusion of immediacy have?

The price we pay is that we believe subjectively that we are possessed of far greater certainty about our attitudes than we actually have. We believe that if we are in mental state X, it is the same as being in that state. As soon as I believe I am hungry, I am. Once I believe I am happy, I am. But that is not really the case. It is a trick of the mind that makes us equate the act of thinking one has a thought with the thought itself.

We mistake the menu for the meal.

So if we have a belief about say God, or a Guru - we don't consider we have a belief. We live our life AS IF it was the absolute truth.

We mistake the thought / belief for the REALITY.

So when something happens like the news about the financial affairs of GSD, we are shell shocked about the shell companies (pun intended).

Why?

Because our belief that GSD is GIHF was just a belief, not reality.

So now we have to evaluate how this could happen. Actually there is nothing to evaluate. We mistook our belief for reality.

We based our whole life on it.

Happens every day in marriages. You might spend 20 years with someone. One day, they tell you they don't love you anymore (which you suspected anyway) and they have been seeing someone else and want a divorce.

Now you are shocked, because you built up TRUST and now it seems you were wrong to trust.

Your opinions of the world are made up - but you take them as fact.

once the reality is in front of you - you have to re-evaluate.

If you have spent 30 years considering RSSB is the only true path - then suddenly something like this happens - you are broken at the foundation. Your whole life was based on this and now it all collapses.

You took what you read in books as gospel truth. You deleted all the evidence to the contrary. You distorted the rest to make it fit in. You convinced yourself, despite all the evidence.

So Jim, for instance, heard the 69 joke first hand. Now he can't deny what he heard, so he has to re-evaluate his opinion.

However, even that is based on another belief: that a master is not allowed to tell jokes that are rude. Simply not allowed.

Again - all beliefs. We base out life on the belief being true.

We have to do this to cope with life. That is what enables us to life our life practically.

If I have to "evaluate" the meaning of a RED LIGHT every time I see it - I would not be able to cope. So I create a belief. "A RED LIGHT means STOP.

This is how be become conditioned to follow blindly. We already do it in life.

It is also the basis of all hypnosis. Beliefs run our life - not reality.

We don't know what reality is - because we live in a sea of beliefs and take them to be real.

[777]

@theosho said

""We mistake the thought / belief for the REALITY."" & "We don't know what reality is""

Think out of the box , even in the box :

1)
The Sweet Sound
Objective ( but others say this is subjective, like when U hit your thumb with a hammer

Same when You have been integrated in that Sweet Sound and BE IT !

2)
Visions and revelations concerning past/ future lives
Revelations specially also concerning other jeevas,
These can be so fabberblasting
specially when they came from the FOURTH region
Same reasoning

3)
Darshan & Thristy. OMG > What to say

4)
Serendipities which are TOTALLY objective
F I :
When your TV suddenly goes on tilt and gives you a message
an answer on the subject you discussed

5)
Information
In or out of meditation - ( like 1) )

x). Special attributes for Holy people and I cannot say a word . . .
being a manmukh

[Dungeness]

We don't know what reality is - because we live in a sea of beliefs and take them to be real

The mystic would argue we don't know what reality is
because we don't look inside. Instead we swim in that
sea of beliefs you've identified so well. We're trying to
find solid ground but are drifting further and further from
shore.

Unguru-ly behavior, spousal betrayals, snafu's, breakdowns,
bankruptcies, disasters are all par for the course. Dogma,
rules, expectations are always shifting, patterns of normalcy
seem to morph right before out eyes. It's relentless.

Find a little island of stability and soon it will be eroding away
or submerging with rising seas. The goal posts mysteriously
moved while we glanced off. The universe's sleight -of-hand
has punk'ed us again.

Beliefs shouldn't run our life. The pursuit of truth should. We
should look inside to find it, not outside. We expect it to
be treacherous outside. The exit ramp is via consciousness
itself. The way out is in.

[777]

A lady asked Sawan : when you go in
would you have a look at my deceased son
(as if HE needed to go in )
Sawan then said : Which one of ten thousand of your sons , . . you mean

A Lady sais to Charan : My progress is so slow"
Charan : Are U afraid of death ?
She : No Sir , . . Not at all !

777

[Osho Robbins]

These are all beliefs:

1. Beliefs shouldn't run our life.

2. The pursuit of truth should.

3. The mystic would argue we don't know what reality is because we don't look inside.

4. We should look inside to find it, not outside.

5. We expect it to be treacherous outside.

6. The exit ramp is via consciousness itself.

7. The way out is in.

definition of a belief:

An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.

Do you KNOW (have proof) that the above statements are true?

If you do, please explain HOW

if you don't, then it is a belief

beliefs held strongly appear to be fact - but are not

[777]

Stop your inquisqtores

Everybody has the fullest right to tell about what makes him happy
A gorgeous concert, even outside, can't be explained
A trillion force orgasmus can't be neither

AND IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS

777

-

[777]

Beliefs shouldn't run our life.

They DO. - Almost always

You can't pass a bridge without it

7

[Dungeness]

Do you KNOW (have proof) that the above statements are true?
If you do, please explain HOW

Re: treachery awaiting outside
"The universe vill find vays to convince you."
[German accent, circa 1933-45]

Re: staying inside
"Get in here. You'll catch your death from cold"
[ Mom's voice, still ringing in ears]

[777]

This is old about the chance
that You exists like actually is the case

Is very easy with simple Math
The odds Brian F.I. exists as he does
are 'x' zeros after the colon,as a percentage on possibility
It is very tiny

if you wanted write 'x' zeros with ink
you must replace every electron in the entire
known universe with a 30 ton trailer ,filled with ink, with ink
doing so each nanosecond during 13.8 billion years
and even then you will not have enough ink to write the number

That means that it's zero
So following Math You do not exist
Any actuarial will agree
-
The only possible explanation is
that indeed Nothing happens and you
are an imagination ( holodeck_kind )
the construct of a powerful consciousness
that of course applies amnesia and lack of power
to have a realistic result

SO BRIAN IS HIM, IS THE DOER, IT GOD
but with minuscule possibilities / knowledge

Same 4me

777

Nice Christmas riddle
Read it several times

[Jen]

Hi Spence,

Wondering what you will make of this article about memory loss which cheered me up no end, especially as I am learning new things every day because of the Internet !!

"If you’ve ever forgotten something and felt really awkward about it, or unsure of yourself, relax. Forgetfulness is a sign of higher intelligence, according to recent studies.
...
According to the study, a perfect memory isn’t connected to high intelligence in any way. In fact, the study found that the opposite tends to be true. While you might assume that someone with a great memory is generally considered intelligent, it is actually more useful and even healthier to remember a larger scale of everything and forget small details.

“It’s important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses on the things that will help you make decisions in the real world,” Richards explained in an interview with CNN."

https://mindactivist.com/inspirational/14400/neuroscientists-say-your-forgetfulness-is-a-sign-of-extraordinary-intelligence

[s*]

Thanks Jen,that sounds good to me ;)
I gonna read the artical.

[777]

It come ALL & ALL
to Charan's saying
( i have it on tape - the two others probably as well )

YOU WILL GO WHERE YOUR HEART IS

Look into yr heart
and ask yourself if THAT is where You want to be

777

BTW
I will only be present here from now on ,

[777]

Posted by: s* | January 08, 2019 at 04:06 AM

Perhaps a few of you may be more versed with the reality at the Dera or its centres that you feel comforted by being away from it than into it. But a common satsangi has no real sense or understanding of the scene behind the curtains or beyond satsangs/teachings or even meditation.

yes, personal experiences can never be confirmed. These are a matter of faith. And if one does not get consistent rise often with the time devoted in meditation regularly then one has to rely on others experiences and satsangs for motivation. And these others' experiences could validate the path till such time one experiences himself or may be such time may never come.

Perhaps direct answers can never be drawn due to faith generated out of in-depth inner experiences to great levels of a few of us (however, not sure if they have spoken the truth) juxtaposed against deceitful reality seen/concluded as witnessed by a few of us.

Posted by: Meditator | January 08, 2019 at 10:30 AM

Sometimes and often I think :
"Do these writers know with what kind of force
we deal with here
The Almighty >. the universe is an ant for HIM

Would he be perceived easily
Do you think HE is clever ?

777

[Spence Tepper]

Hi 777
There is worldly experience.
And inner experience..
The two are often quite distinct....
There is the larger view and the smaller one....
As an ant, here, let me carry my grain of sugar responsibly.
To serve... Never to expect others to serve me.
In OK being a brick in the middle, even in the bottom!

Because, while there must be bricks at the bottom to support bricks at the top...

It is hardly a full floor high...
Not even a full storey.

Nor the whole story.

To reach those heights where worldly wealth is merely dirt,
Where possesions are chains of gold,
And desires are chains of iron...
And casting judgment on others...
A millstone around our own necks.....
We must open our hands...
Let go our grip on these useless things...
And fly.

[777]

Ha Ha

There is the larger view and the smaller one....
As an ant, . . . . . judging 2B$

I think we all do our specific path
I guess you are aware that mine is a Rumi like thing all the time

Like you fall in crush for the very first time . . each new day
and see Them and Their Glance, . .
the Holy RSSB Saints
Like look to a flower > it's Them

Hear music : They enjoy that too with you
Like you say during sex : I'll eat you , every inch of you . . .
If these exers only knew what they are vomitting!

Plus delicious Shabad as a soft dew with accents / peaks at very special moments
the thoughtlessness . . nobody can describe
and trillion steps to go
just at the start . . . I am
with my idea of
"One needs TWO to dance the Tango"

777

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