[goldenkey]

I tripped hard yesterday and realized that it is likely that the subsystems of our brain harbor other consciousnesses. If consciousness is an artifact of our brain's process of decision making, acting on sensory inputs -- then consciousness is like a black hole, it is marked by an event/information horizon. The outside world is higher dimensional and the conscious subject experiences a lower dimensional projection of it - forever trapped within a reality of qualia like vision and sound, formed by downsampling the actual phenomena.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaneron

[groby_b]

Are you sure the trip is over? ;)

But kidding aside, yes, what we're experience is lower-fidelity version of the outside world. First reference to that idea that I'm aware of is Plato's cave. Of course, that idea and Occam's razor together says that trips aren't deep insights, but merely differently distorted but still low-fidelity projections of the world around us.

I'm liking the thought of a brain as a time share, though. If nothing else, it makes for a rich subject for interesting stories. And a good metaphor for the existence of the subconscious (and heck, the limbic system)

[goldenkey]

I am pretty much back to normal except for the unsettling thoughts about alternate consciousnesses in the same being. Like you say, why wouldn't different parts of the brain have a will - the limbic system certainly has sway.

Do you know if there have ever been experiments done to investigate whether alternate subconscious will can 'show itself conscious' by way of asking a person for a demonstration? Of course, this would require the subconscious to both observe the instruction and follow it, and have some method of conveying action. I tend to think that only the main consciousness would be able to execute direct actions. So I would guess the experiments would be very hard to perform without some clever setup.

It sounds almost silly but I really do wonder if the other decision making / executive functional parts of the brain have some level of understanding about their relative capacity to influence the body they reside in? Sharing a mind seems like such a silly "alien body snatchers" kind of idea. But HTM seems to hint at it.

https://discourse.numenta.org/t/oscillatory-thousand-brains-...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory

[groby_b]

Since it's not entirely sure that we as a whole person have entirely free will (instead of a really elaborate after-the-fact-excuses machine), I'd think the concept of a "will" for individual systems needs to be very loosely defined to apply here.

If you're interested in the science, I'd suggest starting from the Libet experiments (who essentially thinks his experiments show that the subconscious makes decisions, and the conscious retains a veto right)

It's a fascinating thought to entertain. (But you will forever doubt if you our your subconscious made the decision to think about this ;)

If you care more for pop-sci, Kahnemann's "Thinking fast and slow" idea of system1/system2 thinking might be a good read.

That still doesn't mean that different consciousnesses share a mind. We certainly have different systems competing for attention, but what consciousness even means. (I'd recommend Popper as a starting point for that debate, but mostly because the science is still very much in the "Dunno, but what happens if we poke here?" stage, IMHO. Philosophy seems more apt)

[glenneroo]

Kurzgesagt[0] and CGP Grey[1] did a fun little 2-part intro into "split mindedness" i.e. the idea that we may have multiple consciousnesses(?) contending for control.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQVmkDUkZT4 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8