Managing the Mind

Roger Haines contemplates how we consciously manage our minds.

- Roger Haine

A Martian, I’m told, recently visited a terrestrial garment factory. He was surprised to see that the boss never touched a sewing machine. Even when she asked someone to order new material, it was only after other minions had brought her details of stock levels, work-inprogress, and garment orders. This woman who calls herself ‘the boss’, the Martian concluded, is a mere puppet, her every action being manipulated by these minions. Her only creative input was to make up a story justifying her instructions.

Students of the literature about the mind may recognize this fable as a metaphor for the way a certain school of neuroscientists describe the conscious mind as a helpless bystander manipulated by unconscious processes – because conscious decisions are always preceded by unconscious activity that shapes the conscious outcome.

Of course, we know the factory boss was only given the information she needed because she’d previously asked for it. I want to argue that, in the same way, the pre-conscious inputs to conscious processes very often arise only because previous conscious activity has served to define issues for unconscious processes to answer. Thus the ‘pre-conscious’ is also ‘postconscious’.

Choosing Words

Consider what happens when we choose a word. Many accounts of this process are inadequate.