Consciousness, Subconsciousness, and Instinct

A thought was once planted into my head, and it was so long ago that I can’t remember where it came from, but it has remained there, and I’ve ran the implications of it around and around ever since.

The thought is an offshoot of a scenario in which a person can simply tell that there is someone standing behind them, despite not being able to see or hear them, with a certainty lacking in scientific fact and akin to instinct.

Basically, the idea is that although the person cannot be seen or heard, tiny, infinitesimally small changes in air temperature caused by the warm body, and equally tiny changes in air pressure, air circulation, background noise being blocked out etc. all contributed small amounts of data that indicated a person was indeed standing behind, despite not having been seen or heard.

These small amounts of data were so infinitesimally tiny that they didn’t register on the conscious brain, i.e. you are not consciously aware of all the pockets of air around you, their density, temperature, circulation, how sound travels through them etc. However, you ARE aware of them on some, subconscious level. And that’s the key to the argument – subconsciousness. [What do you mean that’s not a word? I’m adding it to dictionary, I don’t care that it’s not a word yet].

If the brain is divided into the conscious mind, which deals with decision making, and the subconscious mind, which deals with making your heart beat, your fingernails grow etc, then I believe there is an overlapping part that we call ‘instinct’. When you have no conscious data to apply to a scenario, but you find yourself ‘just knowing’ the answer, odds are that (unless you’re simply taking a stab in the dark) your subconscious mind knows more than your conscious mind, i.e. in the scenario earlier described, although you weren’t consciously aware of the person standing behind you, the tiny fragments of data picked up by your subconscious contributed to figuring that out, and this idea was forwarded to you with a feeling, rather than a knowing, that someone was behind you, i.e. you instinctively (or rather, subconsciously) knew that someone was behind you, without consciously knowing it.

What implications and applications does this idea of ‘instinct’ have? Well, you may have at some point been involved in a scenario where you did something, i.e. made a CONSCIOUS decision to do something, and that event turned sour, and you found yourself saying ‘I knew that was going to happen’. Really? How did you know? Was it instinct? And is instinct merely the collective word we use to describe the function of the subconscious mind, i.e. the tiny fragments of data that go seemingly unnoticed by the conscious mind? Is instinct actually just as valid as tangible, conscious thought?

Furthermore, this idea has applications for just about all human decision making that, at first glance, appear to be based on something less than logical. Spontaneous decisions, for example, often appear to have little due thought process. But do they really? Or, when we make a spontaneous decision, are we simply acting on the tiny fragments of data stored in the vast chasm of our subconscious? Is a spontaneous decision actually much more thought out than we first realise, the only difference being that the thought process took place in the subconscious mind rather than the conscious one?

This is basically what I’m getting at: If there’s a scientific and methodical approach to conscious decision making, and we call this consciousness, then does the scientific and methodical approach taken by our subconscious brains constitute subconsciousness? Does it even exist, or am I making this up?

Philosophy Google search.

I've just google'd 'philosophy', and the first link is sponsored:
'PhilosophyR Free Delivery | philosophyskincare.co.uk
'www.philosophyskincare.co.uk
'Free delivery on all orders. Hurry, shop now. Offer ends 6th February!'

Hmmm. So Google thinks that sponsored links are more important than Philosophy. Oh dear. This is one of the biggest corporations on the face of the planet, with the largest say in whatever happens on the internet, which is in turn the largest and potentially most powerful tool for human existance ever. So how Google organizes the information could be considered a reflection on the internet, which in turn is a reflection on us, i.e. the entire human species (that uses the internet at least). I could talk here about corporate greed, that the bottom line is Google considers advertisements more important for their bottom line, i.e. profit, than their service. But then it's only one ad, and I don't want to get into that argument because it makes me angry. It's also worth noting that this sponsored ad gets the tiniest of pink tints, just making it that little more noticeable and important than the other links. There's a science to this, no doubt, where scientists get together and study psychology to maximise the impact of advertising. It's the same science behind that all too familiar sentence at the end - 'offers end soon! Buy now!!' I don't want to get into this argument either.


The second link is Wikipedia:
'Philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
'en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
'Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.'

The second link is Wikipedia, which of course aims to be a repository for all human knowledge. It is often criticised by academics for being inaccurate, but it's difficult to guage whether this is merely because it renders academic study virtually obsolete, meaning academics have an adgenda against Wikipedia. Should knowledge be so cheaply available like this, since it devalues the worth of a true, dedicated scholar, turning the Wikipedia user into a simple drone to be told what to think? Can we trust what is written on Wikipedia? And even if we make the move to the next stage of human evolution, and all of our knowledge is held on a single site, consider the consequences of what happens when that site fails. I do use Wikipedia, so I know I'm a hypocrit, but everyone is, so deal with it. That first sentence, the summary, is an accurate enough description, isn't it? That's as much faith as I put in Wikipedia to be honest. I trust it for a brief overview, and that's it.


The third link is:
'philosophy official site | skin care products | bath & beauty | perfume
'www.philosophy.com/
'philosophy celebrates feeling well and living joyously - hope in a jar skin moisturizer, amazing grace bath & body, purity made simple, & more beauty products...'

The third link physically disgusts me. Humans are vain. Disgustingly fucking vain.
That we need products to feel beautiful basically shits on people's values of what we consider beautiful. And then to tie this shallow artificial beauty bullshit with PHILOSOPHY!? What if beauty is a philosophy? What if the conclusion, for some people, to 'the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language' is that BEAUTY is the answer? Fucking vain. I'd vomit with disgust if the toilet wasn't already occupied by an attractive, high heeled, bullimic waste of space. Careful love, you'll get vomit on your beauty products, and then what will make you beautiful?


The fourth, FOURTH link is:
'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
'www.iep.utm.edu/
'An open access resource hosted by the University of Tennesseeat Martin.'

The fourth link, finally, brings us to a University Encyclopedia. Now that's more like it. But fucking FOURTH? Fourth in the list, really? Humanity is fucking screwed.