Consciousness is the ONLY thing that is NOT an illusion.

At the end of the twelfth installment of his weekly series on the philosophical content and psychological significance of the Bible stories, Peterson said he’d probably keep doing it, but on a monthly basis rather than weekly. Well he has.

Here’s number XIII:

And number XIV:

The saga continues…

(darkstarastrology.com)

(TheShiftNetwork.com)

Everyone knows what it feels like to have consciousness: it’s that self-evident sense of personal awareness, which gives us a feeling of ownership and control over the thoughts, emotions, and experiences that we have every day.

Most experts think that consciousness can be divided into two parts: the experience of consciousness (or personal awareness), and the contents of consciousness, which include things such as thoughts, beliefs, sensations, perceptions, intentions, memories and emotions.

It’s easy to assume that these contents of consciousness are somehow chosen, caused or controlled by our personal awareness – after all, thoughts don’t exist until we think them. But in a new research paper in Frontiers of Psychology, we argue that this is a mistake.

We suggest that our personal awareness does not create, cause or choose our beliefs, feelings or perceptions. Instead, the contents of consciousness are generated “behind the scenes” by fast, efficient, non-conscious systems in our brains. All this happens without any interference from our personal awareness, which sits passively in the passenger seat while these processes occur.

Put simply, we don’t consciously choose our thoughts or our feelings – we become aware of them.

Not just a suggestion

If this sounds strange, consider how effortlessly we regain consciousness each morning after losing it the night before; how thoughts and emotions – welcome or otherwise – arrive already formed in our minds; how the colours and shapes we see are constructed into meaningful objects or memorable faces without any effort or input from our conscious mind.

Consider that all the neuropsychological processes responsible for moving your body or using words to form sentences take place without involving your personal awareness. We believe that the processes responsible for generating the contents of consciousness do the same.

Our thinking has been influenced by research into neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as more recent cognitive neuroscience studies using hypnosis. The studies using hypnosis show that a person’s mood, thoughts, and perceptions can be profoundly altered by suggestion.

In such studies, participants go through a hypnosis induction procedure, to help them to enter a mentally focused and absorbed state. Then, suggestions are made to change their perceptions and experiences.

For example, in one study, researchers recorded the brain activity of participants when they raised their arm intentionally, when it was lifted by a pulley, and when it moved in response to a hypnotic suggestion that it was being lifted by a pulley.

Similar areas of the brain were active during the involuntary and the suggested “alien” movement, while brain activity for the intentional action was different. So, hypnotic suggestion can be seen as a means of communicating an idea or belief that, when accepted, has the power to alter a person’s perceptions or behavior.

The personal narrative

All this may leave one wondering where our thoughts, emotions, and perceptions actually come from. We argue that the contents of consciousness are a subset of the experiences, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that are generated by non-conscious processes within our brains.

This subset takes the form of a personal narrative, which is constantly being updated. The personal narrative exists in parallel with our personal awareness, but the latter has no influence over the former.

The personal narrative is important because it provides information to be stored in your autobiographical memory (the story you tell yourself, about yourself), and gives human beings a way of communicating the things we have perceived and experienced to others.

This, in turn, allows us to generate survival strategies; for example, by learning to predict other people’s behavior. Interpersonal skills like this underpin the development of social and cultural structures, which have promoted the survival of humankind for millennia.

So, we argue that it is the ability to communicate the contents of one’s personal narrative –– and not personal awareness – that gives humans their unique evolutionary advantage.

What’s the point?

If the experience of consciousness does not confer any particular advantage, it’s not clear what its purpose is. But as a passive accompaniment to non-conscious processes, we don’t think that the phenomenon of personal awareness has a purpose, in much the same way that rainbows do not. Rainbows simply result from the reflection, refraction, and dispersion of sunlight through water droplets – none of which serves any particular purpose.

Our conclusions also raise questions about the notions of free will and personal responsibility. If our personal awareness does not control the contents of the personal narrative which reflects our thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, and decisions, then perhaps we should not be held responsible for them.

In response to this, we argue that free will and personal responsibility are notions that have been constructed by society. As such, they are built into the way we see and understand ourselves as individuals, and as a species. Because of this, they are represented within the non-conscious processes that create our personal narratives, and in the way we communicate those narratives to others.

Just because consciousness has been placed in the passenger seat, does not mean we need to dispense with important everyday notions such as free will and personal responsibility. In fact, they are embedded in the workings of our non-conscious brain systems. They have a powerful purpose in society and have a deep impact on the way we understand ourselves.

https://theconversation.com/what-if-consciousness-is-not-what-drives-the-human-mind

Clicking on a link included with “Carl Jung: What Are the Archetypes?” posted by Mike below, I found this section of a lecture by Peterson:

As my fellow “veterans” of FYL can probably imagine, I sat bolt upright in my chair when Peterson began talking about Herr S. and black magic (about halfway through, I think…).

Please note that this seems to be a less-than-complete video of lesson 6 of his 22 part series Personality and Its Transformations.  It is still mind-boggling.

A couple of comments off the top of my head – for what they’re worth:

Peterson seems surprised at the similarities between the ideas of Jung and Piaget.  There is a connection: namely, Dr Sabina Spielrein – a patient, then student, then colleague of Jung’s – who was also Piaget’s teacher/analyst and colleague.

I also feel compelled to stick up, yet again, for poor old Jean-Paul Sartre, who Peterson states was a member of the Communist Party, and stayed in that party for far too long.  In reality, though a philosophical/theoretical Marxist for most of his life, Sartre remained outside the Party, and was often highly – even vehemently – critical of the excesses and brutalities of the Leninist/Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union, including being one of the first in the West to expose the “corrective labor” camps of the Gulag.   Also, toward the end of his life, Sartre got so fed up with Marxism that he became an anarchist .  Maybe his process was less rapid than Peterson would like – and Peterson, as always, has a point – but Sartre still did find his way out.  And really, is it wrong to work with, and through, a set of ideas until one is sure one has exhausted them?  Perhaps it is to Sartre one should look for the best critique of Marxism, for who knew it better, or thought it through more thoroughly?