WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES AND THE
UNCONSCIOUS MIND ?
Unconscious processing consists of all the things going on in your
head that you cannot introspect about because you are not aware of
the processes themselves . It leads to automatic reactions that
cannot be directly perceived . Everything that you do or feel is
controlled by these unconscious processes . For example seeing and
understanding .
The conscious mind is all the things that it is possible to
introspect on . This includes all the 'feelings' that you experience.
For example the feeling of being unwell , of being tired or of
wanting to perform an activity . However the unconscios mind implies
that you are not aware of these feelings .Thus it contradicts itself
by implying that you are experiencing 'feelingless feelings ' .
This introduces the homunculus problem . That is , in order for the
unconscious mind to be of any use there must be another mind
[conscious or not ]feeling the feelings for you .
However the homunculus does not explain 'HOW' it is done . it just
presents you with another mind which also has to be explained . In
order to avoid this problem , it is possible to say that unconsious
processes act as the homunculus for the unconscious mind .
Unconsious processes are experiencing and analysing the images or
feelings felt in the unconsious mind . And the way unconscious
processing does this , is the 'how ' question that reverse engineering
tries to answer , and what cognitive science is devoted to .
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