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Myth: the conception or "theory" of unconscious thought?

#1
C C Offline
http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/there-...us-thought

EXCERPT: . . . Taken literally, [German composer Paul] Hindemith’s claim would seem to imply that the entire process of composition is the work of the unconscious—the complete score is, it seems, worked out by subterfuge by unconscious processes, only to break forth into consciousness in a moment of spectacular incandescence. The unconscious work complete, the composer needs merely to go through the laborious process of transcribing the already finished work onto paper, a humdrum activity indeed, given that the creative labor has already been done. Hindemith’s conception of the composing of processing is all the more remarkable in the light of the extreme complexity and idiosyncrasy of the musical system governing his own pieces.

[...] Poincaré and Hindemith cannot possibly be right. If they are spending their days actively thinking about other things, their brains are not unobtrusively solving deep mathematical problems or composing complex pieces of music, perhaps over days or weeks, only to reveal the results in a sudden flash. Yet, driven by the intuitive appeal of unconscious thought, psychologists have devoted a great deal of energy in searching for evidence for unconscious mental work. Other researchers have, though, a simpler explanation, which involves no unconscious thought at all.

[...] Across a wide range of test stimuli, the results were unequivocal: There is absolutely no sign that we can search for x’s when we are currently thinking about y’s; or search for y’s when we have been thinking about x’s. As soon as we switch from searching one category to searching another, all search processes for that first category appear to cease abruptly. While it would be highly advantageous for an unconscious process to keep running in the background, there is absolutely no evidence that this occurs.

An active unconscious, able to amplify the power of our limited conscious minds, would be a wonderful boon, working away on countless difficult problems, while we go about daily lives; and overcoming the slow step-by-step flow of conscious thought. But unconscious thought is, for all that, nothing more than a myth, however charming.

MORE: http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/there-...us-thought
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#2
Syne Offline
Unconscious thought doesn't have processing capabilities, but it does have memory retrieval capabilities. Like the thing you can't remember until you an hour later, after you've given up trying. Even in sleep, it's more about proximity of memories retrieved than any real processing.
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