[SirensOfTitan]

> We have intellects, a sense of morality, and a will. Those allow us to drastically curtail what might otherwise be instinctive behaviors.

An excerpt from Julian Jaynes's 'Origin of Consciousness' comes to mind here:

> Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.

There exist a great deal of subconscious processes that effect behavior in ways that an 'individual' cannot necessarily perceive. Often, a person does something, then post-hoc uses narratization to fit those actions within their preexisting belief system and story of themselves. The important thing to note is that your perception of yourself is not you, and the world you perceive around you is not the world itself. Both act as very helpful mental models that help you navigate your world effectively. As with all models, however, they have holes, and the really damaging ones are the ones you're not aware you're not aware of (as you cannot even adjust for those weaknesses).

[vidarh]

Even though it's far from precise, I like Jonathan Haidt's suggestion in The Happiness Hypothesis that our conscious mind is like someone riding an elephant: He can nudge it in this direction or that, and a lot of the time that works. But if the elephant wants to go a different direction, it will, and you're just along for the ride. At which point you can acknowledge you're not in control, or decide where the elephant went is where you really wanted to go all along. Often we choose the latter to retain the illusion of control.

[Cybiote]

That a process is non-conscious does not necessitate that it is primitive or incapable of sophisticated inference and computation. Sophistication and conscious reportability are absolutely not anti-correlated. Indeed, if I were to lean one way, it would be against the things we consciously perceive as difficult, inferring from the Moravec Paradox.

Non-consciously accessible processes play an important role in our ability to reason, predict and control behavior in a manner Evolution could not anticipate. They are no less us.

[bykovich2]

One might go so far as to say that substance and sustenance of life dwells in those holes. I won't go so far, but someone (not me, of course) might.