mind – A philosopher's notes and thoughts – @stephens

entry 11

de-mystifying the term ‘unconscious ideology‘ – a term that may sound esoteric or meaningless or unscientific etc. – what it means and how it occurs:

Some material change occurs, and that change means that different strategies/behaviour patterns are now viable [to different degrees].

In these new circumstances, those agents have an advantage whose dispositions (which are unconscious structures of the mind) are better compatible with the new set of more viable behaviours.

And those agents who possess advantageous unconscious traits rise in success/power relative to others, and thereby those unconscious traits spread through [higher levels of] hierarchies of success/power/respect etc. .

And this proliferation constitutes an emergence of common/shared [similar] unconscious traits [- and a shift in the makeup of unconscious traits within certain social/hierarchical groups/levels].

And those shared unconscious dispositional traits at the same time are a shared causal foundation/base for common sets of rationalizations – in other words, now that minds with certain shared intuitive/unconscious aspects/traits have grouped together, this leads to certain [new] sets of rationalizations finding group appeal & acceptance and becoming prominent and standard.

This kind of complex of such sets of group rationalizations with a shared unconscious causal basis that comes about through material change interacting with unconscious mental traits is what I mean by ‘unconscious ideology’.

And of course such sets of rationalizations can build/produce more complex structures of rationalizations over time, thus more obviously becoming ideologies or systems/structures of common thinking.

entry 9

Minds that try to be rational nevertheless have some feelings/intuitive thoughts that lack a rational foundation/reason/justification. But under rationalism, it is not ok to have a purely emotionally or intuitively grounded conviction – to state a thought as true with no rational explanation/argument for it – with nothing to make it rational.

One of the natural and common reactions a mind that is trying to be rational has in this situation is to come up with* a rational reason which can replace the intuition – aka a rationalization. This lets the mind hold the originally emotionally/intuitively grounded thought/conviction [or a satisfyingly compatible one] in a rationally acceptable/permissible way.

Now, the original sub/un-conscious structures of mind – the ones that produced the feeling/intuition – are still there, and in fact become hardened and perpetuated [over time] by the presence of static rationalization that is fixed over them.

now to the main point of this note:

A potential problem arises for the mind here: If the current rationalization is rescinded/removed**, then rationalism dictates the mind negate/remove the conviction, which is a painful assault on that subconscious part of the mind that still supports the conviction.

And so, somewhat ironically, the mind trying to avoid this problem develops emotional attachment to rationalizations***, which then leads to fear, entrenchment and defensiveness…

And in my experience philosophical training implicitly shows that rationalization in this very broad sense is folly and that calmness & trust & patience & openness are more effective: one observes, in repetition ad nauseam, that even the seemingly strongest, most convincing arguments and rationalizations eventually turn out to be flawed.

And it is actually ok to have a purely emotional-intuitive [theoretical/philosophical] conviction as long as one sees and says it as such instead of rationalizing it… This is especially obvious when one considers that no conviction has a completely rational reason/justification/rationalization – if one logically follows reasons ever deeper to and into the foundations, one will always find something non-rational or a dogma…

This is part of an anti-rationalist or non-rationalist philosophy.

*which, by the way, is usually a completely intuitive/non-rational/unconscious process, and always has at least some unconscious components or base even if the [conscious] mind doesn’t notice this (the mechanism relies on the mind not noticing this, and the mind usually doesn’t.).

**and not in that moment replaced by a different rationalization with the same conclusion… hopefully I will write more related to such smooth rational transitions in later posts.

***to be clear: I use ‘rationalization’ here in a very broad and more value-neutral than usual sense, including rational theories in general – scientific theories that meet the standards of rationalist methodologies.

entry 3

a re-formulation:*

When one senses or feels an idea that isn’t quite here yet – in other words when one notices the subliminal presence of a coming idea that is as yet un-finished:

Instead of following the urge to [try to] pull it up into consciousness by force of will, one should patiently wait while it gradually fills itself out and one day pushes itself up [through one’s mind] into consciousness – sprouting up like a perfect young plant – & only then look at it directly, and unleash one’s curiosity on it.

And I think this is an important part of philosophical training: practicing remaining calm when one has an intuition of an unfinished idea instead of reacting by forcing some abstraction process in an attempt to quickly arrive at an explicit thought.

*Some of my notes are re-formulations of existing notes: just some subtly different formulation or aspect of an already noted idea.