The Progression of Insights in the Guidebook Project
The Behavioral Nature of Consciousness: I began to think in this direction about 40 years ago when I first thought of the things we do as unconsciously generated acts initiated by our greater selves. In reconsidering the problem of anxiety, I formulated the concept of feedback emotions as corrective signals whenever we acted in ways that went against our greater selves. I saw the greater self as unknowable and thus spiritual. It took another twenty years to see the consciousness has a behavioral form that is no different in kind from any other line of action. (All of the ideas that follow flow from these initial insights.)
The Whole Self and Thinking Processes: I realized that the thoughts we express in consciousness are generated by unknowable thinking processes in our brain-body system that I thought of as the whole self. These processes take place outside of conscious awareness. I saw then that thoughts can be used as tools to prompt thinking processes, and I identified techniques for using consciousness as a tool in what I called the consciousness toolbox. (These insights were the basis for the first guidebook I completed 16 years ago, and I have continued to use the techniques I developed.)
Perceptual Consciousness: I was at that time committed to a behavioral conception of brain functioning that retained a strong sense of the unknowable, and thus spiritual realm. I did not see how perceptual consciousness could be behavioral until I discovered the later work of J. J. Gibson and his theory of affordances about 13 years ago. I saw that perceptions were shaped into images by sensory guided movement sequences. (I now had thoughts and perceptions in my behavioral formulation, and I needed to incorporate the third component of conscious experience, feelings.)
Affect Theory and Emotion: I had a longstanding interest in the role of emotion in thinking processes, and at one point I proposed a cortical level substrate for emotion the frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex. I thought of myself as engaged in a thought experiment in which I would apply the idea that consciousness is behavioral to each aspect of consciousness, and I did this for emotion. I associated conscious feelings with the inclinations and preferences that are implicit in our choices and ensure that they enable us to meet our wants and needs. I saw the visceral processes of the body as the source of our inclinations and preferences and embodied as affects in the forces we exert in the direction of the choices we make. (Affect theory was the result of a deliberate attempt to incorporate emotion into the behavioral system I was developing.)
An Asymmetry in Conscious Awareness: I realized that we are automatically aware of what we are doing but must notice and explore the affects embodied in what we are doing to become consciously aware of why. This asymmetry in awareness is the basis for many of the idiosyncratic characteristics of the human condition. (I was extremely excited when I became aware of this asymmetry because I could see that it had broad implications for why we are the way we are.)
Synaptic Probabilities: The neuronal synapses in the cerebral cortex of the brain develop an increased probability of response with use. This enables them to build a structure that incorporates experience without creating a “hardwired” system that stymies flexibility. These neurons continuously update their structural probabilities to guide our future actions. (I like this idea because it encodes experience while retaining adaptive flexibility.)
Three Guidance Systems: Sensory and visceral inputs continuously access the structures of experience and activate neuronal networks within those structures. The thoughts and actions we initiate are thus guided by sensory inputs from the external world, visceral inputs from the physiological systems and organs of the body and brain structures accumulated through experience. (The concepts of access and activation connect the two continuous sources of input guidance with the synaptic probability structures of experience.)
Inhibition and Delay: The behavioral sequences generated continuously by the brain-body system are either initiated in action or expressed in consciousness depending on whether we inhibit their motor outflow. Consciousness is made possible by a motor inhibition system from the medulla in the brainstem to the lower motor neurons in the spinal cord that enables us to express behavioral sequences without initiating them in action. We are able to delay responding indefinitely as we consider and reconsider what we are doing in conscious thoughts and perceptual possibilities. (The concepts of inhibition and delay associated with prefrontal cortical functioning have been in the background of my thinking from the beginning.)
Two Tiers of Conscious Awareness: Just as an infant, without words or concepts, is able to navigate through its surroundings, our physical grounding in the first tier of consciousness provides a core of experience and an awareness of presence the development of the verbal-symbolic tier of consciousness. This second tier of consciousness lacks the physicality that grounds our physical core, and it is created from our experience in accordance with our own assumptions. (This insight is only about fourteen months old, and I am still trying to assimilate its implications.)
The Physical Core of Experience: Although I characterized the first tier in The Two Tiers of Consciousness as perceptual, I described its physicality clearly. It is the physical core of experience that is the basis for everything we do. We may name and describe our actions in the verbal-symbolic tier, but we carry them out the movement sequences involved with the guidance of the physical core. We encounter reality physically, and the movement sequences we develop take place without conscious involvement and prior to the differentiation of entities and events at the verbal-symbolic tier. They are pre-behavioral and thus pre-empirical. The physical core of experience we accumulate, both continuous and unknowable, conveys a sense of the infinite as well as the spiritual. (This understanding of the first tier as the physical core of experience is important in ways that I have only just begun to consider.)
Core Affects and Innate Propensities: The physical core of experience is constrained within the physiological paradigm outlined in Two Tiers, and it is the basis for our encounters with reality. Its components are innately given, yet they establish the basis for both the affects we later differentiate and the personalities we gradually develop. The shaping forces for the former are the core affects and for the latter the innate propensities. I will present more on these very new concepts as I develop them more completely. (It is interesting that the feedback emotions that were central to my early manuscript books from thirty years ago, retained their importance to me in Two Tiers as signal affects and now take their place as core affects.)
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