The greatest myth of all (the article)

December 2, 2000

Hi,

Thanks for posting the article in its entirety.

It was pretty interesting.

These are the central ideas of the article:

>The greatest myth of all,

>We suggest that all the

>thoughts, ideas, feelings, attitudes and beliefs traditionally considered to

>be the contents of consciousness are produced by unconscious processes-just

>like actions and perceptions. It's only later that we become aware of them

>as outputs when they enter our consciousness.

>In our model,

>we refer to these "unconscious" parts of the brain as >Level 2.

These unconscious parts controlling both visceral acitivites such as digestion

and breathing, blood pressure, water pressure in kidneys etc are controlled for

the main part by areas of the lower brain, the brain stem. Movement, reflexes

and a large part of our voluntary movement, is controlled by the cerebellum.

All these centers directly controlling visceral "automonomic" behavior and

activities in the body-mind, report their activity to higher centers, those of

the cortex (which makes up the largest part of the brain, the two hemispheres

with its folds), respinsible for registering the activity of the lower centers

and also for being able to exert a small degree of feedback to the centers

controlling visceral activities. The cortical centers may be seen as level 1,

and the brain stem centers directly controlling visceral activity may be called

level 0.

Additonal to the cortical centers controlling visceral activities, level 1,

there are

the cortical centers for control and understanding of language (a complex

behavior needing many centers to function at the same time), memory retrieval

and fully consciously controlled motor activities etc etc, which would

constitute level 2.

This distribution of work in levels, leaving most of the control of the body to

the lower brain centers is understandable. Most of the activity carried out by

the lower brain centers do not /necessitate/ conscious control. If it did, the

conscious mind might not have time to do much other than control digestion

(which is a complex process) and breathing, blood pressure etc and try to make

it all fit together and this would represent an inefficient organism.

Hence, it is understandable that much of the decision making in the body is only

reported to the conscious mind after it is carried out. One can also safely

assume that this seeming division of the brain centers in higher and lower level

of the brain, the two hemispheres with its folds), respinsible for registering

the activity of the lower centers and also for being able to exert a small

degree of feedback to the centers controlling visceral activities. The cortical

centers may be seen as level 1, and the brain stem centers directly controlling

visceral activity may be called level 0.