Rand Quote About the Subconscious
Discussion started by Dennis Hackethal
Ayn Rand writes:
Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted.
Your subconscious is like a computer […]
She says “like” so the sentence is technically correct, but it would have been better if she had said the subconscious is a program (or an amalgamation of programs). What she’s presumably getting at here is that the subconscious is automatic like a computer and unlike the conscious, which can stop and reflect and criticize and so on.
Wouldn't the more correct framing be the mind has automatic programs and consciousness? In other words, the mind has a dual process of explicit thoughts and conscious reflection on the one hand, and ingrained habits or "mental programs" on the other.
You marked your idea as a criticism but I don’t see where it conflicts with its parent. Explain?
I misread your text. I originally read it as the whole mind is a program (or programs).
I do think the whole mind is a program (or programs).
I know. But we don’t don't know if consciousness can emerge as a byproduct of computation, so I think Rands distinction is useful until proven false. Programs run according to their rules, while consciousness seems to transcend "its own rules", which is why it can be creative. To create rules with self-awareness isn’t an incremental improvement that logically follows from what we know of rules and programs today (as I can see it). I see there was another thread on this topic though, so I’ll go in and drop my comments there!
But we don’t don't know if consciousness can emerge as a byproduct of computation […]
We do know that. From the laws of physics. From BoI ch. 6:
[E]xpecting a computer to be able to do whatever neurons can is not a metaphor: it is a known and proven property of the laws of physics as best we know them.
on the other
This part should be preceded by ‘on the one hand’. As in: ‘In other words, the mind has a dual process of explicit thoughts and conscious reflection on the one hand, and ingrained habits or "mental programs" on the other.’
[…] more complex a computer than men can build […]
Unclear what exactly “can” means here. More complex than we can build today? True. More complex than we could build in principle? Not true: we could build it, given the right knowledge.
[…] more complex a computer than men can build […]
It’s not clear to me that the basic building blocks of the subconscious (as opposed to its components at runtime) are necessarily all that complex. Why couldn’t they be simple?
[The] main function [of your subconscious] is the integration of your ideas.
Isn’t it the conscious mind that does the integrating, and then the subconscious stores the integrated ideas and executes them in applicable contexts?
[…] your subconscious is programmed by chance […]
This sounds as if chance was the programmer. The word ‘randomly’ might have been better. But that presumably still isn’t quite what she meant; I think she meant something like ‘haphazardly’, with no clear direction, by uncritical integration, ie osmosis, of ideas from the surrounding culture, as I believe she put it elsewhere.