Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 2

[Soupie]

If when he's not aware of the pain, there is still pain ... then what word do we use to discriminate the conscious awareness of an unpleasant sensation from an unpleasant sensation that you are not aware of ... ?

(get ready ... you're going to have to come up with a lot of these new words)

I don't think we need a new word. Pain is pain whether we're (meta) aware of it or not.

But that did make me think of a phenomenon that happens with smell:

If you are in an environment with a really strong smell, it is very noticeable to your conscious awareness.

However after a few moments, the smell will no longer be in your awareness.

I'll have to look for a description of this phenomenon.

In any case, ones body and nose are still experiencing the smell, it's just no longer in ones conscious awareness.

 

[smcder]

I think it's hard for (some) humans to recognize that animals - such as cats - are having qualitative experiences because we don't recognize the physiological cues.

So, seeing a happy child smile or someone in pain grimace is easier to grok.

If you noticed, I said I thought I could recall having been experiencing pain even when it wasn't in my conscious awareness.

I say this because my physiological response to pain continued even when I wasn't consciously aware if it.

Speaking of, how funny is it when very angry (but unaware) people angrily shout: I'm not angry!

Spend a lot of time around cats, do you? The cat, by definition, is an animal that can make it's "qualitative experiences" known.

I did notice ... I still don't see how you can recall having been experiencing pain even when it wasn't in your conscious awareness. Tell me about both the pain that you weren't aware of ... what was that like ... and also what were these physiological responses to pain that you weren't consciously aware of but claim to be able to remember?

I'm fine with saying that you're not consciously aware of the pain but that there are nonetheless physiological responses to a stimuli that would cause pain if you were aware of it.

 

[smcder]

I don't think we need a new word. Pain is pain whether we're (meta) aware of it or not.

But that did make me think of a phenomenon that happens with smell:

If you are in an environment with a really strong smell, it is very noticeable to your conscious awareness.

However after a few moments, the smell will no longer be in your awareness.

I'll have to look for a description of this phenomenon.

In any case, ones body and nose are still experiencing the smell, it's just no longer in ones conscious awareness.

I think the receptors fatigue ... so you actually aren't smelling it any longer ... but look it up.

 

[smcder]

So if phenomenal consciousness isn't physical, the hard problem is a red herring, right.

Btw the information philosophy of mind is a physicalist account of phenomenal conscious. To me, it's a form of CRP3, which is a physical account by way of property dualism.

Do your own research - but it doesn't appear clear cut that it is a physical account ... one thing the Neo-Russellian took pains to distinguish on their view was to eliminate any hint of idealism. Check out the discussion of P3 on the Wikipedia article on physicalism too. Maybe it is a physical account, but the theorists aren't aware of it ....

 

[smcder]

My prednisone is wearing off and with it, my patience ... so if you've got a point, now is the time to head towards it.

Also, can you use your multiple layer model to discuss the pheneomena of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder)?

 

[Soupie]

My prednisone is wearing off and with it, my patience ... so if you've got a point, now is the time to head towards it.

Also, can you use your multiple layer model to discuss the pheneomena of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder)?

No, I can't, but I can end with a joke that captures your position!

I man goes to the doctor and complains that all the bones in his body are broken. The doctor checks him over and says, no, they're not.

The mans says but it hurts everywhere I touch!?

The doctor says, that's because you finger is broken.

 

[smcder]

I don't think we need a new word. Pain is pain whether we're (meta) aware of it or not.

But that did make me think of a phenomenon that happens with smell:

If you are in an environment with a really strong smell, it is very noticeable to your conscious awareness.

However after a few moments, the smell will no longer be in your awareness.

I'll have to look for a description of this phenomenon.

In any case, ones body and nose are still experiencing the smell, it's just no longer in ones conscious awareness.

Olfactory fatigue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Olfactory fatigue is an example of neural adaptation or sensory adaptation. The body becomes desensitized to stimuli to prevent the overloading of the nervous system, thus allowing it to respond to new stimuli that are ‘out of the ordinary’.

Pain relief through distraction: It's not all in your head -- ScienceDaily

The findings based on high-resolution spinal fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) as people experienced painful levels of heat show that mental distractions actually inhibit the response to incoming pain signals at the earliest stage of central pain processing.
"The results demonstrate that this phenomenon is not just a psychological phenomenon, but an active neuronal mechanism reducing the amount of pain signals ascending from the spinal cord to higher-order brain regions," said Christian Sprenger of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Those effects involve endogenous opioids, which are naturally produced by the brain and play a key role in the relief of pain, the new evidence shows.

SCIENCE!

 

[smcder]

No, I can't, but I can end with a joke that captures your position!

I man goes to the doctor and complains that all the bones in his body are broken. The doctor checks him over and says, no, they're not.

The mans says but it hurts everywhere I touch!?

The doctor says, that's because you finger is broken.

What is my position?

I don't seem to be the only one that has trouble following your posts - I think partly due to terminology ... but maybe I am. If so, someone else can explain it to me.

I have tried, but I just don't get the overall picture you are trying to paint.

I get that the brain can be active in terms of a stimuli even if someone is not aware of that stimuli and so doesn't consciously experience pain, the way I say it, if I'm not aware of pain, I'm not in pain, and I can't seem to go back and remember the pain I was never aware of in the first place - I get absorbed in activities, but if I can remember it at all, all I have access to is the memory of the experience ... you've got to factor memory into the description ... I get that children have responses and experience things in way that aren't the same as full grown adults and that animals experience pain without thinking of themselves as an "I" the way we (perhaps erroneously) do ... I get all that, I understand CRP3 as Chalmers describes it in the papers we have read, I don't think there is a little man inside of "me" (and another little man inside of him) although every day language might seem to convey that ... what else am I missing here?

 

[Constance]

So if phenomenal consciousness isn't physical, the hard problem is a red herring, right.

Btw the information philosophy of mind is a physicalist account of phenomenal conscious. To me, it's a form of CRP3, which is a physical account by way of property dualism.

No, [the hard problem] is not intended to be misleading ... it's only presented as a problem to a physicalist account.

I think Chalmers categorizes Russellian monism as F-type monism, about which he says:

This view has elements in common with both materialism and dualism. From one perspective, it can be seen as a sort of materialism. If one holds that physical terms refer not to dispositional properties but the underlying intrinsic properties, then the protophenomenal properties can be seen as physical properties, thus preserving a sort of materialism.

From another perspective, it can be seen as a sort of dualism. The view acknowledges phenomenal or protophenomenal properties as ontologically fundamental, and it retains an underlying duality between structural-dispositional properties (those directly characterized in physical theory) and intrinsic protophenomenal properties (those responsible for consciousness).

One might suggest that while the view arguably fits the letter of materialism, it shares the spirit of antimaterialism.

In his paper Consciousness and Its Place in Nature
Consciousness and its Place in Nature

.... he writes of it:

"Overall, type-F monism promises a deeply integrated and elegant view of nature. No-one has yet developed any sort of detailed theory in this class, and it is not yet clear whether such a theory can be developed. But at the same time, there appear to be no strong reasons to reject the view. As such, type-F monism is likely to provide fertile grounds for further investigation, and it may ultimately provide the best integration of the physical and the phenomenal within the natural world."

Excellent point and citation, Steve. When I read Chalmers's paper distinguishing the various monistic and dualistic positions on consciousness some years ago I identified myself as a Type-F monist and I still am. I think his extension of Russellian monism to CRP3 is the closest approximation in contemporary philosophy of mind to an understanding of how consciousness and mind operate with and within the world as physically described.

Soupie, while I think your recent (and not so recent) posts have brought us closer to the metaphorical bone of consciousness, you still seem unwilling to follow some of the philosophers, cognitive neuroscientists, dissipative systems theorists, meditative guides, and poets we've read who take us to the brink of recognizing the integral and holistic nature of consciousness as it arises within experience of the world . . . and capable of seeing/sensing in moments of insight the hairline fracture separating the being of consciousness from the being of all that is. That hairline fracture is hard to see until it suddenly parts, opens, and then is quickly resealed in our ordinary stream of consciousness. Of course there is a poem by Wallace Stevens (actually more than one) that expresses this realization, which those of us who have experienced it can't forget but still have to keep reminding ourselves of.*

Here's the poem that came to mind while reading your posts today and following Steve's questions about them. It won't give way to an initial reading, and it has taken years for me to understand it:

Angel Surrounded by Paysans

One of the countrymen :
There is
A welcome at the door to which no one comes?

The angel :
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for the moment standing in the door.

I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole,

Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.

I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.

Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,

Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set,
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone

Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings
Like watery words awash; like meanings said

By repetitions of half meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half of a figure of a sort,

A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition apparelled in

Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulder and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?




*{I've stopped being surprised by the way my subconscious mind has held on for more than 30 years to parts and wholes of thousands of poems by Stevens and brings them to the surface of my conscious mind during these discussions of the key problems and issues in consciousness studies. And I no longer wonder why that has happened for years now while I've continued to read philosophy of mind and research in consciousenss studies. It's because all these questions, issues, and problems we discover in these fields were recognized by Stevens in his philosophical poetry, submitted to the long meditations he expressed in his poetry, and gradually resolved in the subtlety of his view of mind and world as "an amassing harmony." Before he wrote that line he wrote this one: "It must be that in time the real will from its crude compoundings come."

 

[Constance]

What is my position?

I don't seem to be the only one that has trouble following your posts - I think partly due to terminology ... but maybe I am. If so, someone else can explain it to me.

I have tried, but I just don't get the overall picture you are trying to paint.

You're not the only one.

Soupie, your writing here, especially the terms and word choices you use [which seem to change frequently in their meaning], exhibit a great deal of 'slippage of the text' resulting from ambiguities in the language you use. My general impression is that, like the physicalists and computational 'information' theorists you prefer, you are at pains to avoid accepting that everything we know comes to us through embodied consciousness, which includes subconsciousness, collective unconsciousness and collective consciousness, and even a level of supraconsciousness discerned by mystics and practitioners of meditation. Why else spend as much time as you have arguing a) against the reality of the 'self' as the biographical subject of lifelong experience in and of the world taking place in a continuum of experience and intention dropping in and out at various levels and registering many shifts of attention), and b) in attempts such as these today (and in the past here) to make a case that the lack of metacognition at all moments of our lives reduces consciousness to dependence on solely physical or informational sources originating beneath and outside of consciousness. Your resistance to reading phenomenological investigations of experience and consciousness/mind is an expression of your desire to avoid the existentiality of meaning.

I get that the brain can be active in terms of a stimuli even if someone is not aware of that stimuli and so doesn't consciously experience pain, the way I say it, if I'm not aware of pain, I'm not in pain, and I can't seem to go back and remember the pain I was never aware of in the first place - I get absorbed in activities, but if I can remember it at all, all I have access to is the memory of the experience ... you've got to factor memory into the description ... I get that children have responses and experience things in way that aren't the same as full grown adults and that animals experience pain without thinking of themselves as an "I" the way we (perhaps erroneously) do ... I get all that, I understand CRP3 as Chalmers describes it in the papers we have read, I don't think there is a little man inside of "me" (and another little man inside of him) although every day language might seem to convey that ... what else am I missing here?

You can find out by reading the various texts cited by Steve and me over this nearly 150 pages of discussion. In this last paragraph, again, you assert that you understand all that we have said and that's it all comprehensible within your theory. I don't think it is, and I'm sensing that Steve doesn't think so either. This is not a criticism of you but of your presuppositions, which I think have probably been taken up in your earlier major coursework and training. Thus some of your presuppositions are likely unconscious.

 

[marduk]

I think I'm getting there ...

We now have that there is no delineation between neurons firing and subjective experience (thanks to your freaked out dog above)

and we have:

"I see it as a loop. Your subjective experience is more that a little informed by your environment, and it can inform your body how to respond."
and, just to be sure, we have yes to both these questions:

1. subjective experience is a result of neurons firing
2. your hand moves as a result of neurons firing

Substituting, we get:
I see it as a loop. The (results of your neurons firing) is more than a little informed by your environment, and the (results of your neurons firing) can inform your body how to respond.

... which seems incoherent because we can just say "neurons firing" without reference to the other result (subjective experience) ...

So it really doesn't make sense to say that your subjective experience can inform your body how to respond ... or at least it's exactly the same thing as saying that neurons firing inform etc.

If all that is right, we just have neurons firing and so there is no room for free will.

So our job is to defend Raskolnikov and we have this statement for the jury:

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury ... I see it as a loop. Raskolnikov's neurons fired in such a way that fateful night that he did kill the old woman, but the neurons were more than a little informed by his environment, and in turn the neurons firing informed his body how to respond. The old woman's death was the result of a purely physical process, the end of a long, long chain of causality. Of course he said many wicked things to himself - but these were also the results of neurons firing, the many wicked things he said to himself were not the cause of her death, it was the firing of his hideous neurons!"

With apologies to Dostoyevsky and Poe ...

"In the meantime, is this another blow to the idea of free will generally? The research will certainly hearten hard determinists, but personally I remain a compatibilist. I think making a decision and becoming aware of having made that decision are two different things, and I have no deep problem with the idea that they may occur at different times. The delay between decision and awareness does not mean the decision wasn’t ours, any more than the short delay before we hear our own voice means we didn’t intend what we said. Others, I know, will feel that this relegates consciousness to the status of an epiphenomenon.[/I]"

I don't see it as a requirement that we have free will.

Why do you?

Besides, neurons firing could be how we have free will, if indeed we do.

I can show that neurons firing can cause my muscles to move. We can show in fMRI machines that subjective experiences can cause neurons to fire... or that neurons firing cause the subjective experience.

So they are involved in both.

 

[smcder]

I don't see it as a requirement that we have free will.

Why do you?

Besides, neurons firing could be how we have free will, if indeed we do.

I can show that neurons firing can cause my muscles to move. We can show in fMRI machines that subjective experiences can cause neurons to fire... or that neurons firing cause the subjective experience.

So they are involved in both.

Does it makes sense to say it's a requirement that we have free will ... if we don't what could we do about it? So I don't say it's a requirement.

I'm trying to understand various concepts of free will and consciousness and so I'm asking questions. I've been trying to understand your model and I began to see it might come to this:

Besides, neurons firing could be how we have free will, if indeed we do.

... which I think is interesting and in contrast to the idea of conscious free will:

(from the Libet article)

So, what can we make out of all this? Velmans points out that a physical reductionism, that proposes the conscious experience is identical with neural activity, is not acceptable. Yet, he assumes that the processes giving rise to conscious experience follow deterministic physical laws. Velmans then offers the view that the unconscious neural processes that lead to a conscious wish to act could be regarded as an expression of free will, because we feel that we have free choice and control over the act.

Clearly, such a view does not represent a genuine free will. The voluntary act is, in this view, not free of the inexorable adherence to deterministic physical processes. In this view, the feeling of an independent freedom of choice and control is merely an illusion.

I thought this was very interesting:

"We can show in fMRI machines that subjective experiences can cause neurons to fire... or that neurons firing cause the subjective experience."

This is mental causation, right? ... But how does subjective experience cause neurons to fire? How do you avoid dualism here?

 

[marduk]

"We can show in fMRI machines that subjective experiences can cause neurons to fire... or that neurons firing cause the subjective experience."

This is mental causation, right? ... But how does subjective experience cause neurons to fire? How do you avoid dualism here?

Oh, man, are we back there?
That's just circular logic.

Neurons fire when we grow a brain. In the womb they make the heart beat, start to take in information when sight and hearing sensors grow, start to wiggle limbs around when they grow. Then we're born and shit really starts to happen.

Eventually, our neurons take in the world to a sufficient degree of learning that they become aware that things don't cease to exist when they are hidden (object permanence).

Eventually as well they learn that they are different from their environment.

Then they learn that they can become aware of their internal state.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At every step along the path the pattern of neurons firing can both intake and output signals that cause muscles to fire.

They have to, because if they didn't, we'd be dead. And consciousness has to, because if it didn't, it wouldn't matter, and natural selection would end it as a metabolic waste of effort.

Saying a mind can't cause the body it's housed in to move is like saying a computer can take in information but can't output it. That's just pointless.

You guys seem to be hung up on some sort of existential debate here, that doesn't need to exist.

 

[Constance]

I don't see it as a requirement that we have free will.

Why do you?

Besides, neurons firing could be how we have free will, if indeed we do.

I can show that neurons firing can cause my muscles to move. We can show in fMRI machines that subjective experiences can cause neurons to fire... or that neurons firing cause the subjective experience.

So they are involved in both.

A profoundly big word, that little preposition 'or'. That neurons are "involved in" human experience and thought is a long way from saying, as Crick said (hypnotizing a generation or two of materialists), "You are your neurons." You seem unwilling to say that. Good show.

 

[Constance]

Oops, gotta take that back given your next following post [reproduced following my comment here], in which neurons become philosophers and eventually constitute the mind. If that were true, many of our philosophers of mind might be expected to be brains in a vat. What do we need experience for? Why did nature evolve organisms that experienced the world in increasing vividness and depth down the long line of evolution leading to us (and hopefully beyond us)?


Marduk just said:

"Oh, man, are we back there?
That's just circular logic.

Neurons fire when we grow a brain. In the womb they make the heart beat, start to take in information when sight and hearing sensors grow, start to wiggle limbs around when they grow. Then we're born and shit really starts to happen.

Eventually, our neurons take in the world to a sufficient degree of learning that they become aware that things don't cease to exist when they are hidden (object permanence).

Eventually as well they learn that they are different from their environment.

Then they learn that they can become aware of their internal state.

>>>{interpolation: Lo, we have found the homunculus in his den!!!}<<<

At every step along the path the pattern of neurons firing can both intake and output signals that cause muscles to fire.

They have to, because if they didn't, we'd be dead. And *consciousness has to, because if it didn't, it wouldn't matter, and natural selection would end it as a metabolic waste of effort.

Saying *a mind can't cause the body it's housed in to move is like saying a computer can take in information but can't output it. That's just pointless.

You guys seem to be hung up on some sort of existential debate here, that doesn't need to exist."


Marduk, you claim that we go around in circles, but actually it's you who are doing that, laying down the hydra-headed homunculus constituted of neurons that think and even philosophise and then immediately forgetting him/it/them by bringing consciousness and mind back into your description to serve the humble purposes of moving the body.

 

[smcder]

Oh, man, are we back there?
That's just circular logic.

Neurons fire when we grow a brain. In the womb they make the heart beat, start to take in information when sight and hearing sensors grow, start to wiggle limbs around when they grow. Then we're born and shit really starts to happen.

Eventually, our neurons take in the world to a sufficient degree of learning that they become aware that things don't cease to exist when they are hidden (object permanence).

Eventually as well they learn that they are different from their environment.

Then they learn that they can become aware of their internal state.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At every step along the path the pattern of neurons firing can both intake and output signals that cause muscles to fire.

They have to, because if they didn't, we'd be dead. And consciousness has to, because if it didn't, it wouldn't matter, and natural selection would end it as a metabolic waste of effort.

Saying a mind can't cause the body it's housed in to move is like saying a computer can take in information but can't output it. That's just pointless.

You guys seem to be hung up on some sort of existential debate here, that doesn't need to exist.

I don't know that I'd call it an existential debate ... but this thread exists and if that upsets you, just don't participate. We're just firing neurons here.

I'm just asking questions and so far, nobody has all the answers but most everyone is very confident. If you step back you begin to see where people don't see each other's points and mostly don't try to.

I got and get all of what you are saying and I appreciate your answers. You say you hope we have free will but from the answers you've given I don't see how that's possible with your model except for it somehow being in the neurons firing. I think that's interesting and worth exploring as is how ideas of moral responsibility could be based on this notion of free will.

Some people see the hard problem and some don't. Some see mental causation as separate and some don't. Some want conscious free will and some don't.

 

[Soupie]

What is my position?

As I understand it, you seem to feel, believe, and/or are arguing that unless one is consciously aware of a phenomenal experience, they are not having a phenomenal experience.

My position is that phenomenal experience is not contingent on conscious awareness. For example, an organism may experience green, pain, or anger and not be consciously aware of said experience. Yes, this may impact their ability to remember said experience.

I apologize if my explanations confuse you, or if I am not up to speed with all the philosophical positions and jargon.

You say that some people think they have all the answers. I don't think anybody in this discussion does. We have our own ideas about how reality is, and we're sharing them. Apologies if we're not aware of all the philosophical conundrums and "hard problems."

In the near future, I will write up a full description of my view. Will it address all the facets of the hard problem and other philosophical problems? No. Will I be able to align my view with certain philosophical schools of thought? No. Will I be reinventing the wheel and also failing to list influences? Yes.

 

[smcder]

As I understand it, you seem to feel, believe, and/or are arguing that unless one is consciously aware of a phenomenal experience, they are not having a phenomenal experience.

My position is that phenomenal experience is not contingent on conscious awareness. For example, an organism may experience green, pain, or anger and not be consciously aware of said experience. Yes, this may impact their ability to remember said experience.

I apologize if my explanations confuse you, or if I am not up to speed with all the philosophical positions and jargon.

You say that some people think they have all the answers. I don't think anybody in this discussion does. We have our own ideas about how reality is, and we're sharing them. Apologies if we're not aware of all the philosophical conundrums and "hard problems."

In the near future, I will write up a full description of my view. Will it address all the facets of the hard problem and other philosophical problems? No. Will I be able to align my view with certain philosophical schools of thought? No. Will I be reinventing the wheel and also failing to list influences? Yes.

As I understand it, you seem to feel, believe, and/or are arguing that unless one is consciously aware of a phenomenal experience, they are not having a phenomenal experience.

My position is that phenomenal experience is not contingent on conscious awareness. For example, an organism may experience green, pain, or anger and not be consciously aware of said experience. Yes, this may impact their ability to remember said experience.

Put aside what you understand about my view. Start over and tell me what it means when you say:

My position is that phenomenal experience is not contingent on conscious awareness. For example, an organism may experience green, pain, or anger and not be consciously aware of said experience. Yes, this may impact their ability to remember said experience.

Can we use your example?

A rock falls on a man's foot. It hurts and he is aware of the pain. The someone yells "Fire!" and he is distracted for ten seconds and has no awareness of the pain.

What is going on during that ten seconds?

When the ten seconds is up, what can he tell me about the pain during the time he is not consciously aware of it?

 

[smcder]

As I understand it, you seem to feel, believe, and/or are arguing that unless one is consciously aware of a phenomenal experience, they are not having a phenomenal experience.

My position is that phenomenal experience is not contingent on conscious awareness. For example, an organism may experience green, pain, or anger and not be consciously aware of said experience. Yes, this may impact their ability to remember said experience.

I apologize if my explanations confuse you, or if I am not up to speed with all the philosophical positions and jargon.

You say that some people think they have all the answers. I don't think anybody in this discussion does. We have our own ideas about how reality is, and we're sharing them. Apologies if we're not aware of all the philosophical conundrums and "hard problems."

In the near future, I will write up a full description of my view. Will it address all the facets of the hard problem and other philosophical problems? No. Will I be able to align my view with certain philosophical schools of thought? No. Will I be reinventing the wheel and also failing to list influences? Yes.

You say that some people think they have all the answers. I don't think anybody in this discussion does. We have our own ideas about how reality is, and we're sharing them. Apologies if we're not aware of all the philosophical conundrums and "hard problems."

Are you referring to this statement?

I'm just asking questions and so far, nobody has all the answers but most everyone is very confident. If you step back you begin to see where people don't see each other's points and mostly don't try to.

To say "some people think they have all the answers" has a connotation that:

"... nobody has all the answers but most everyone is very confident." does not. One says I think you are a know it all, the other says that I think you are very confident in your position.

In this statement:

If you step back you begin to see where people don't see each other's points and mostly don't try to.

The key is "If you step back ..."

I apologize if my explanations confuse you, or if I am not up to speed with all the philosophical positions and jargon.

It's very difficult to convey some of these ideas - and there is no standard vocabulary for philosophy that I am aware of - from what I have seen many philosophers do seem to create their own vocabulary as they create new concepts. First, you have to make sure you are creating new concepts, if you are then you may well have to create vocabulary. If you aren't, then it's probably going to be easier to talk about them with existing vocabulary.

What I've said that I think would be helpful is 1) some general reading on the history of philosophy 2) some specific reading to try and locate your ideas and the vocabulary used to discuss them.

 

[Soupie]

Can we use your example?

A rock falls on a man's foot. It hurts and he is aware of the pain. The someone yells "Fire!" and he is distracted for ten seconds and has no awareness of the pain.

What is going on during that ten seconds?

When the ten seconds is up, what can he tell me about the pain during the time he is not consciously aware of it?

During the ten seconds, his physical body is experiencing pain. His conscious mental self will be able to tell you very little about the pain his body was experiencing during those ten seconds.