Unconscious and Conscious Processes

We propose a rigorous mathematical framework for modeling the interaction between the unconscious and conscious mind, inspired by Jungian analytical psychology. The unconscious is represented as a complex unit disk containing archetypal and shadow content, modeled via Ramanujan-type q-series. Consciousness is represented as the upper half-plane of complex numbers. A conformal mapping transforms unconscious content into conscious representation, establishing a structured pathway for individuation. Set-theoretical considerations guarantee bijection and cardinality consistency, while an embodied, recursive transfer function captures feedback and self-referential (...) structures analogous to Gödel, Escher, Bach. (shrink)

This glossary introduces key terms from the BAL-looping framework, explained in detail in Seven Dialogs between Haplous and Synergos. According to this functional framework, every mode of subjective experience begins when the brain learns to attend to the natural resonance created by incipient activity in its own speech output channel. This is a special case of what neuroscientists call neural reuse; in this framework, it is defined as BAL-looping. Grounded in evolutionary theory, the BAL-looping framework makes falsifiable predictions and treats (...) every term as functional and material, never abstract. It begins with the brain at large (BAL), the overall brain-body system whose cybernetic goal-seeking behavior relies on an internal model of the environment. Elements of that model that stand in for entities, qualities, or relationships in the external environment are called neuronal proxies. To communicate these proxies, humans have an additional component which in functional terms acts as a proxy transfer device (PTD) – commonly called the language faculty – enabling the transfer of proxy configurations from one brain to another. The PTD’s outgoing channel for speech carries activity that creates a corresponding resonance in the receptive channel. The BAL discovers that it can attend to this resonance while withholding the final motor act of speech, allowing it to activate proxies internally. This can be described as a repurposing of the PTD – not by rewiring it, but by applying its natural resonance for a new function. This process underlies every mode of subjective experience. The glossary can be read independently as an introduction or alongside the Seven Dialogs as a review. Readers seeking a fuller treatment – building from cybernetic and evolutionary first principles into a consistent account of subjective experience – are encouraged to consult the Seven Dialogs. (Updated as of September 4, 2025 – This version refines the description of looping. The neural reuse in looping is now more precisely explained: it first arises when the BAL learns to pay attention to the natural resonance between the PTD’s output and input channels, a process fundamental to language acquisition and use.). (shrink)

This book-length series of dialogues presents a functional model of consciousness called the BAL-looping framework, which accounts for all forms of subjective experience – including recollection, imagination, and conscious perception. The model begins with a basic principle: any functioning brain, even a nonhuman animal brain, must build an internal model of its environment, using internal stand-ins called neuronal proxies to represent things in the world and guide goal-directed behavior. In humans, language adds a new capability by allowing these proxy configurations (...) to be transferred from one person to another, activating in the listener the same internal patterns that would arise through real-world interaction. This bidirectional channel of expression and reception is called the proxy transfer device (PTD). In infants, a further step emerges: through the scientifically validated process known as neuronal reuse, the brain gradually begins to anticipate its own expressive output. When this happens, the brain at large can access the meaning of that potential expression through proxy activation – just as it would when grasping the gist of a PTD-transmitted message from another person. The result of this shortcut from potential expression to experienced meaning is what we normally refer to as conscious experience. About the format of presentation: because the framework involves a sequence of tightly interdependent concepts, it is developed through a fictional dialogue between two interlocutors – a method used by thinkers like Plato, Galileo, and Berkeley to hone new ideas with more precision than is possible through expository prose, as it allows ideas to be approached from multiple angles, naturally. The seven dialogues unfold in sequence: I. Basic Mechanics – how animal brains model the world and pursue goals, and a brief introduction to the PTD; II. The Gateway Opens – how the human brain gains and uses an added function: predictive reuse of expressive output; III. Dreams and Reconstruction/Construction – how dream phenomena validate the model; IV. The Hardest Questions Become Clear – more validations from split-brain cases, blindsight, and various previously hard-to-explain phenomena from daily life; V. They Saw It Before – how ancient thinkers caught glimpses of the framework, expressing their insights through myth, religion, and philosophy; VI. An Emergent Realm – an extension of the model to society; VII. Ethics and Integration – applying the framework to ethics, meaning, and eudaimonia. (Updated as of September 4, 2025 – The neural reuse in looping is now more precisely explained: it first arises when the BAL learns to pay attention to the natural resonance between the PTD’s output and input channels, a process fundamental to language acquisition and use.) . (shrink)

Reflective reasoning has been central to philosophy and cognitive science more generally. However, scholars lack a unified empirical explication of ‘reflection’. This paper synthesizes a cross-disciplinary account from philosophers, scientists, and centuries of English speakers: ‘reflection’ often refers to—among other things—conscious and deliberate reconsideration of an initial intuition. This two-factor account of reflection empirically distinguishes reflection from often conflated phenomena such as rumination; it also tidily classifies self-conscious reflection as a subset of reflection. This account also accommodates mounting evidence that (...) reflection is neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality. The two-factor account has implications for philosophy (e.g., that both practical and theoretical reasoning can benefit from reflection) and science (e.g., that reflection can be a solution to rather than just a symptom of negative rumination). So the two-factor account should be preferred to accounts that do less to unify, make sense of, and guide philosophy and science. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of free will has endured through centuries of enquiry. There is reason to believe that new factors must be integrated into the analysis in order to make progress. In the current physicalist approach, emergence and the physical limits of information representation are found to play crucial roles in the ontological dependence of volitional processes on their neural basis. The commonly invoked characterization of free will as 'being able to act differently' is shown to be problematic and is (...) reframed as a more precise explicatum conducive to formal analysis. Subsequently, it is found that the mind operates as an ontologically open system — a causal high-level entity whose dynamics resist reduction to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, even under conditions of physical closure. An affirmative stance on free will for conscious agents is outlined. (shrink)

A Rejoinder to the Least Charitable Interpretation of Meursault's Narrative Self-Portrait as Anti-Social Passive-Aggressive Reactive Self-Destructive. Not worth your time. Perhaps the worst thing I have written yet.

In recent decades, various sources of scientific evidence have been used to disprove the idea that we have free will. Conceptual confusion has tended to lurk behind such claims, however, for it often turns out that what researchers mean by “free will” is something extremely implausible. A similar problem persists in the literature on the causal role of consciousness. Various sources of psychological evidence have been used to show that consciousness is not among the causes of our behaviour. However, consciousness (...) is often assumed to be both non-physical and non-functional, and causation is often poorly understood or not defined at all. The aim of this paper is to clear up these issues by urging that (1) future research on this topic remains neutral on the metaphysics of consciousness, (2) avoids assuming that phenomenal consciousness is functionless, (3) is more precise in specifying what is doing the causal work when discussing conscious mental states, and (4) adopts the practice of being clearer on what it takes for something to count as a cause. Much unwarranted scepticism about whether consciousness is causally efficacious has resulted from this fragmented thinking, and much is to be gained by clearing it up. (shrink)

Increasingly used in social and behavioral science research, implicit measures aim to assess attitudes that respondents may not be willing to report directly, or of which they may not even be aware. This timely book brings together leading investigators to review currently available procedures and offer practical recommendations for their implementation and interpretation. The theoretical bases of the various approaches are explored and their respective strengths and limitations are critically examined. The volume also discusses current controversies facing the field and (...) highlights promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

This is a review of the article in which the author attempted to state the long-standing (but often ignored) problem of consciousness definition, in which there are a slew of notions that purport to define the same phenomenon or, conversely, different phenomena labelled with the same notion of consciousness. We think that the felt qualities of our internal, phenomenological experience is exactly the point where the deepest essence of the consciousness phenomenon reveals itself.

Can agents overcome unconscious psychological influences without being aware of them? Some philosophers and psychologists assume that agents need to be aware of psychological influences to successfully control behavior. The aim of this text is to argue that when agents engage in a proactive control strategy, they can successfully shield their behavior from some unconscious influences. If agents actively check for conflicts between their actions and mental states, they engage in reactive control. For engaging in reactive control, agents need awareness (...) of those mental states which are in conflict with an action. In contrast, if agents are actively maintaining a goal in consciousness, they engage in proactive control. Proactive control does not consist of conflict detection or conflict resolution. I argue that proactive control explains how agents overcome unconscious psychological influences. In doing so, I claim that consciousness is important for engaging in reactive and proactive control. (shrink)

Learning how to interpret feedback (any feedback 'loop') (recursion) (reality) (to your continual advantage)… Explaining attention management, consciousness, subconsciousness, intention, action. The singularity called Nature. The metaverse called Mind.

This book attempts to advance Donald Griffin's vision of the "final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution" by developing a philosophy for the science of animal consciousness. It advocates a Darwinian bottom-up approach that treats consciousness as a complex, evolved, and multidimensional phenomenon in nature rather than a mysterious all-or-nothing property immune to the tools of science and restricted to a single species. -/- The so-called emergence of a science of consciousness in the 1990s has at best been a science (...) of human consciousness. This book aims to advance a true Darwinian science of consciousness in which its evolutionary origin, function, and phylogenetic diversity are moved from the field’s periphery to its very centre, thus enabling us to integrate consciousness into an evolutionary view of life. Accordingly, this book has two objectives: (i) to argue for the need and possibility of an evolutionary bottom-up approach that addresses the problem of consciousness in terms of the evolutionary origins of a new ecological lifestyle that made consciousness worth having and (ii) to articulate a thesis and beginnings of a theory of the place of consciousness as a complex evolved phenomenon in nature that can help us to answer the question of what it is like to be a bat, an octopus, or a crow. -/- A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in advancing our understanding of animal minds as well as anyone with a keen interest in how we can develop a science of animal consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter presents the perceptual reality monitoring theory of consciousness (PRM). PRM is a higher-order theory of consciousness. It holds that consciousness involves monitoring the reliability of one’s own sensory signals. I explain how a perceptual reality monitoring mechanism computes the higher order representations that are crucial for consciousness. While PRM accounts for the difference between conscious and unconscious states, it does not explain, on its own, why experiences feel the way they do—the phenomenal character of experience. PRM is compatible (...) with multiple theories of phenomenal character. Here, I show how to combine it with ‘Mental Quality Space’ theory. I finish by presenting empirical evidence for PRM, as well as some of its predictions. (shrink)

Unprecedented advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) have given rise to ethical questions about how to recognize and respect autonomy and a sense of agency of the personhood when those capacities are themselves disordered, as they typically are in patients with DoC. At the intersection of these questions rests the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Indeed, evaluations of consciousness levels and capacity for recovery have a significant impact on decisions regarding whether to discontinue (...) or prolong life-sustaining therapy for DoC patients. However, in the unconsciousness domain, there is the confusing array of terms that are regularly used interchangeably, making it quite challenging to comprehend what unconsciousness is and how it might be empirically grounded. In this opinion paper, we will provide a brief overview of the state of the field of unconsciousness and show how a rapidly evolving electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroimaging technique may offer empirical, theoretical, and practical tools to approach unconsciousness and to improve our ability to distinguish consciousness from unconsciousness and also nonconsciousness with greater precision, particularly in cases that are borderline (as is typical in patients with DoC). Furthermore, we will provide a clear description of three distant notions of (un)consciousness (unconsciousness, nonconsciousness, and subconsciousness) and discuss how they relate to the experiential selfhood which is essential for comprehending the moral significance of what makes life worth living. (shrink)

Freud’s discussion of uncanny [unheimlich] experiences focuses on their peculiar ambivalence. On his view, the uncanny is a paradoxical feeling of both familiarity and alienation. While Freud’s analysis of this paradoxical feeling does succeed in explaining it away, it does little to explain it. One might expect a psychoanalytical demystification of the real experience that is hidden behind the superstitious overtones of uncanny experiences. Instead, the uncanny is attributed rather anti- climactically to the combination of a previous superstition (maintained unconsciously) (...) and an entirely coincidental verification of that superstition. The implication is that there is no uncanny per se. There is no distinctive category of experience, the unique character of which tends to cause or encourage superstitious beliefs; rather, such beliefs are prerequisite to having the experience. In other words, the experience suits the belief, and not vice-versa. The uncanny is the fantasized verification of a repressed fantasy. It involves a breakdown of the reality principle and the projection of beliefs into the external world, rather than a peculiarity of feeling that can be linked intrinsically to a specific category of experience. I do not intend to reject this analysis in its entirety. The basic structure, repression and return, is sound. However, Freud’s analysis of the uncanny, which resolves uncanny ambivalence into the separate categories of consciousness and unconsciousness, merely reinstates the problematical opposition of das heimliche and das unheimliche, familiar and unfamiliar, within the mind rather than in the external world. The coincidence of the two feelings in uncanny experience cannot be explained without an intervening stage between repression and return. I will suggest that Freud’s characterization of uncanniness as the return, in superstition, of the repressed is a misplacement of the experience of uncanniness. The aesthetical feeling is the cause of, but not identical to, the projected superstitions and ideas which surround it. An explanation of the feeling of uncanniness must fall not on the side of the repressed, but on the side of consciousness. The import of my position is that the feeling of uncanniness refers, in a manner of speaking, to something “real,” rather than merely to infantile ideas projected upon the external world. Freud’s explanation makes the unconscious a kind of scapegoat to be blamed for imposing fundamentally irrational beliefs into our interpretation of present experience, in that way preserving a model of the conscious ego as autonomous, fundamentally attuned to reality and ultimately independent of the unconscious. I will argue, on the contrary, that the experience of the uncanny is not merely a falling back into irrational or infantile beliefs, but an experience of a deep disunity in personhood that rightly causes us to question our everyday confidence in the unity, independence, and rationality of our conscious sense of self. The ambivalence of the feeling has its source in an irresolvable ambivalence that can exist in consciousness, and not simply in an analytically resolvable psychical ambivalence between consciousness and the unconscious. (shrink)

We suggest that there is confusion between why consciousness developed and what additional functions, through continued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory developed to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good system. We (...) argue that consciousness originally developed as part of the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accomplish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound implications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness. Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contributes to this conscious memory system. (shrink)

Volume 1. The Origins of psychology and the study of consciousness -- Volume 2. Cognitive and neuropsychological approaches to the study of consciousness Part 1 -- Volume 3. Cognitive and neuropsychological approaches to the study of consciousness Part 2 -- Volume 4. New directions: psychogenesis, transformations of consciousness and non-reductive, integrative theories.

Recently, psychologists have developed indirect measurement procedures to predict suicidal behavior. A prominent example is the Death/Suicide Implicit Association Test (DS-IAT). In this paper, I argue that there is something special about the DS-IAT which distinguishes it from different IAT measures. I argue that the DS-IAT does not measure weak or strong associations between the implicit self-concept and the abstract concept of death. In contrast, assuming a goal-system approach, I suggest that sorting death-related to self-related words takes effort because death-related (...) words trigger avoidance-impulses, which suicide ideation weakens. The DS-IAT taps into weakened automatic responses from the self-preservation system. Additionally, the suggested cognitive structure, illuminated with the selfish-goal theory, explains predictable suicidal behavior. (shrink)

Unconscious processes are mental states that occur in the absence of subjective awareness. We offer a focused historical survey of the robust debate about the nature of unconscious mental processing, from ancient and medieval theories that allow for bodily functions without subjective awareness to the 20th century acceptance of autonomous unconscious processing. The background introduction culminates with the rise of cognitive science in the latter half of the 20th century, as dual systems theories claimed that the mind had two forms (...) of processing: an unconscious system that is associative, fast, and automatic and a conscious system that performs sequential, deliberative, and slow mental functions. More recently, the “cognitive unconscious” has been discovered to perform most if not all cognitive functions including higher-level cognitive processing, such as addition and subtraction. Despite a rich history of experimental methods and findings, recent criticisms are forcing scientists to reexamine these advancements. We are optimistic that the field will develop novel techniques that answer these criticisms, including measures for studying subjective reports in the absence of subjective awareness of the content of the unconscious state and the act of reporting. (shrink)

Previous studies have provided evidence that automatic emotion regulation, which is primed by control goals, can change emotion trajectory unconsciously. However, the cognitive mechanism and associated changes in depression remain unclear. The current study aimed to examine whether subliminal goal priming could change the emotional response inhibition among patients with major depressive disorder and their healthy controls. A group of patients with depression and a healthy control group were both primed subliminally by playing control goal related or neutral words for (...) 20 ms each; afterward, they judged the gender of happy or angry faces in an emotional Go/No-Go task. A group of depressed patients and a healthy control group both were both primed subliminally with control goal-related words or neutral words, and they judged the gender of happy or angry faces in an emotional Go/No-Go task. Among patients with depression, there were fewer false alarms of the No-Go response to emotional stimulus after priming with control goal rather than neutral words. Meanwhile, patients with MDD in the subliminal regulation goal priming condition reacted faster to happy rather than angry faces; no significant difference was found in the subliminal neutral priming condition. These findings suggest the malleability of inhibitory control in depression using subliminal priming goals. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s attitude to psychoanalysis was ambiguous. On the one hand, he realized that the phenomena psychoanalysis deals with require to go beyond the area of ​​act intentionality, and that, from a different angle, psychoanalysis addresses the same problem as Gestalt psychology, which played the central role in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical project. On the other hand, he explicitly rejected the terms used by Freud for conveying his discoveries. Merleau-Ponty replaced unconscious mental contents, which act on conscious behavior, by ambiguous consciousness. In the (...) Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, he used the terms “habit,” “bad faith,” “bodily expression,” “affective intentionality,” and “body schema” to specify his notion of experiential “ambiguity.” This paper aims to present the key concepts of Merleau-Ponty’s early interpretation of the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious. A partial task is to show how Merleau-Ponty’s concept of bad faith differs from that of Sartre, and to distinguish existential ambiguity from the psychoanalytic concept of overdetermination. (shrink)

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive (...) biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. -/- Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic. (shrink)

Ci chiediamo come l'affettività nella società di massa possa venire considerata, come sia vissuta e con quali possibili valenze e prospettive, da un soggetto che ha visto attenuarsi la sua credenza irriflessivamente adesiva in un esistente fondato e fondante e, conseguentemente, ridimensionata la monoliticità della propria identità soggettuale.

We want here to suggest the hypothesis that the finalistic process inherent in the psyche as Jung describes it, is eminently of spiritual nature and "based" on the quantum-psychoid connection between the instinct of religiosity and the Self archetype. Which in our hypothesis evokes the possibility of a plausible extension of the Self quantum psychoid conception, with a series of consequences such as to believe it possible a development in quantum psychoid dimension of the analytical psychology itself.

Qualitative consciousness is conscious experience marked by the presence of sensory qualities, like the experienced painfulness of having a piano dropped on your foot, or the consciousness of seeing the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset. Over his career, philosopher David Rosenthal has defended an influential theoretical approach to explaining qualitative consciousness. This approach involves the development of two theories – the higher-order thought theory of mental state consciousness and the quality space theory of sensory quality. If the problem (...) of explaining qualitative consciousness is divided into two more manageable pieces, the door opens to a satisfying explanation of what is seen by some to be an intractable explanatory puzzle. This interdisciplinary collection develops, criticizes, and expands upon themes inspired by Rosenthal's work. The result is an exciting collection of new essays by philosophers and scientists, which will be of interest to all those engaged in consciousness studies. (shrink)

This paper is aiming to investigate the physical substrate of conscious process. It will attempt to find out: How does conscious process establish relations between their external stimuli and internal stimuli in order to create reality? How does consciousness devoid of new sensory input result to its new quantum effects? And how does conscious process gain mass in brain? This paper will also try to locate the origins of consciousness at the level of neurons along with the quantum effects of (...) conscious process. (shrink)

This paper tries to identify the missing link in between human consciousness and unconsciousness processes as precursors of self-development. Further through boundless and countless holistic representation to reality projecting upon the worst humanitarian crisis it offers an insight to derive the desirable solution to it, mainly with human-environment consciousness.

As for most measurement procedures in the course of their development, measures of consciousness face the problem of coordination, i.e., the problem of knowing whether a measurement procedure actually measures what it is intended to measure. I focus on the case of the Perceptual Awareness Scale to illustrate how ignoring this problem leads to ambiguous interpretations of subjective reports in consciousness science. In turn, I show that empirical results based on this measurement procedure might be systematically misinterpreted.