= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
taryneast comments on Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (131)
Why don't you ask the scientists who've chosen to start using "other than conscious" and "non-conscious"? I imagine their insights would be useful. ;-)
My personal reason, though, is that the term "unconscious" implies a unity and coherence to these phenomena that does not exist, and is easily over-extended to a fallacy of grey -- an excuse not to dig, a "stop sign" for thinking about your preferences andpaying attention to your mental processes.
And I particularly dislike the notion of an unconscious "mind" because it primes all sorts of misleading anthropomorphic projections of intention, purpose, and independent behavior, as well as unknowableness (after all, how can you ever really know what's in a "mind" other than your own?).
I personally prefer the term "subconscious" for these situations. It gives the impression that a subconscious process is one that is right there, swimming beneath the surface - leaving it able to be accessed by the conscious mind with a greater or lesser degree of ease... while still being a word that people recognise and perhaps don't have as many incorrect cached thoughts for.
non-conscious sounds like something you are when you've been knocked unconscious... :)