I wanted to test a statement that I have just come up with and have posted it below, with added commentary.

"Most of our lives are spent in what could be referred to as a waken subconscious state.
Most of our actions are the accumulation of all past experience and learning and automatic in nature.
It is only when we become aware of a subconscious action and decide to take control of those subconscious actions that we can say we have made a conscious decision or not."

I use the example of breathing to show this point.

Most of the time we breathe in a passive relaxed reflexive way and have little awareness of it. However when we become aware of difficulty or when we choose to take control because of any reason the breathing becomes under the conscious control of the person. This decision I consider to be a conscious decision.

Say you are sitting at a table and your leg starts to tremor, at first you are unaware that it is then you become aware of it. It is at that point that you make a conscious decision, either to stop the tremor of let it continue. It is at the moment of awareness that a conscious decision is made.

When sitting and thinking most of the time our thoughts are reflexive, a sort of daydream, then when we become aware of a certain thought we choose whether to take control and guide our thoughts pro-actively or not, again it is at the moment of awareness that a conscious decision is made " to think about that thing or not to"

Discussion on this topic would be appreciated.

Another example coulfd be a person on a fruit sorting line.

When the person was training for the job as a fruit sorter he was constantly having to make conscious decisions about his subconscious reactions to what he was doing. This allowed him to learn his job. But now that he is proficient and probably bored to tears his actions on the sorting line are automatic or mostly subconscious.

He does have to make decisions on the quality of the fruit but these become almost subconscious and automatic, almost........

I just believe that our conscience, not our conscience concience, is our sub concience. When you decide to do something bad, and then you have a sudden feeling of guilt, you blame this on your conscience, while i believe that it is simply your sub concious acting out. But this is just accepting your theory. Lol i think you just hit the spot with your theory. Not much to debate here. :rolleyes:

Votorx, I would equate our conscience with our ability to determine "Value" and it certainly is integral to our consciousness.

A man acting psuedo automatically has no need to utilise his value systems in any big way until he gets the idea that he could be doing something better than "sorting fruit"

But to select the fruit properly and do his job is very much a part of doing what he sees as the right thing so there for his conscience is very important to the whole picture.

Just been thinking since posting the thread.

One could consider that the subconscious is automatic where as the conscious is relatively manual in function.

Decisions are generally made with conscious effort, where as subconscious actions are not, hence the automatic/manual relationaship.

In fact it could be suggested that the only "function" of consciousness in the scheme of things is to do just that make decisions and not much else.

What do you think?

Exactly. You're concious is manual and your subconcious is automatic. For example, your heart beating. That is part of your subconcious you don't control how your heart beats, it's mentally impossible.

But, the conciousness has more of a function than making decisions. It also controls almost ever aspect of your life that isn't done manually. Although its evident that your subconcious has more functions than your concious, since your sub concious controls things such as breathing, heart beating, memory storage etc etc.

/It is only when we become aware of a subconscious action and decide to take control of those subconscious actions that we can say we have made a conscious decision or not

I think you're all backwards! ;) Eh, not really, it's just a little like saying "the only way to breath on purpose is to breath on purpose" you know?

It seems to me you're trying to get at the nature of thought. I think the nature of thought is a continual solution to the conceptual geometry problem in your head. It knits together things that lie just outside of your "conscious" mind, temporarily rearranging them in a sense - to fit the demands you place on them by reflecting on your experience (which exist in your mind as both raw experience and as re-enforcements of concepts you've developed in order to model your place in your world) in conjuction with your current stimulous and the momentum of your thoughts.

So the subconscious that you do not keep in denial from you, and that you have realized (in other words, sometimes you can have subconscious properties that you do not deny, you simply haven't realized them yet), sits just outside of focus (the distance determined by your current mode of thought, for instance if you're thinking about pizza, consciousness itself as in your information regarding the subject is farther away from your focus than pepperoni and vice-versa, if you're thinking about consciousness, mind is a lot closer to your focus than pepperoni), available for use in processing your current whatever.

Did that just sound like a bunch of garbage?

Votorx: your heartbeat is unconscious; the nerves that cause your heart to beat work involuntarily. I'm told that you can learn to speed or slow your heart rate, but you don't have access to the "heart beats once" impulse, that part of your body doesn't need your brain to work.

QQ: The degree to which you have conscious understanding of your actions is not clear to me... I often imagine other people as constructs in my head, and imagine them to have actions independent of my own (for stories, and such). The way that the brain addresses the operation of these constructs isn't readily understandable in the context of your theory. Are they subconscious constructs? You have to build them as thoughts before they exist, but they seem to operate on a conscious level because they don't come about spontaneously - it's a matter of mental effort.

In my lingo subconscious means anything that is not fully conscious.

It’s a bit like a sphere that is painted red. The red is the conscious and everything inside the sphere is subconscious the red being the outcome of that subconsciousness.

The paint looks outward and knows very little of what goes on within it.

Also a prayer wheel of eastern philosophy could be considered as an example, it spins as you live and every time you make a decision you give it another spin. The spin being maintained by all the times you spin it with your decisions

“Are they subconscious constructs? You have to build them as thoughts before they exist, but they seem to operate on a conscious level because they don't come about spontaneously - it's a matter of mental effort”

I think the best way to respond is yes. In a way it’s a bit like subconscious dreaming where past decisions and actions are in some way reconciled with the current situation or state.
As we go through life from a very early age we build our subconscious existence with the decisions we make and the impact of other peoples decisions on us.
The brain or mind reconciles itself automatically, all your memories including your decisions.

Normally this is quite a stable process and not of any concern. Some times as you will no doubt agree the reconciliation can produce rather interesting results, usually in the form of inspiration or realisation that we can then make a decision about etc.

Freud’s understandings are in a lot of ways quite profound with many exceptions of course.

I suppose the idea that subconscious is predominantly autonomic and automatic is one way of looking at it. The conscious decisions being a more manual version of the same.

Any way I am sure you have your own ideas and I’d enjoy hearing them.

You know what? forget it. Here's the most random thing i can possibly think of, on this topic, in 3 minutes. We do not have a subconcious. What we believe to be our subconcious is nothing more than the 90% of our brain in which we do not use. But tapping into a small portion of this 90% void in our mind we access new ideas and wonders which cannot normally be contrieved from our own concious. By professing this as a subconcious is completely irrevelant in the matter. Infact i believe that we DO use more than 10% of our brain since a small portion of that mind power is used to control automic body functions such as the heart liver blah blah blah blah blah. The fact we cannot use more than 10% of our brain is because if we did, WE WOULD DIE. We cannot control normal automatic bodily function if we are concious of such things therefor the 10% of our brain power is for our own safety. In other words we will never ever be able to use all of our brain.

That was probably complete garbage and i am sorry for not reading your posts, i will do so the first chance i get.