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Paul Grobstein's picture

mental health: towards a bipartite brain

I'm not inclined to go quite so far as to say "it doesn't matter if there's anything 'really out there'," but you've put your finger on a really important distinction, and some of its implications. Yes, what we've been talked about "are all questions of the conscious mind." And there is indeed more to the brain than that, much more. As we'll talk about this coming Monday.

"Reality is the facts about the world that I cannot have not yet convinced ny unconscious mind to believe is false" is a nice way to put it, maybe slightly revised as "Reality is what one part of the brain has yet to persuade another part of the brain could be different." Maybe we could rephrase "to my uncconsious mind, those things are true," as "it doesn't occur to my unconscious mind that they might be otherwise"?

Regardless, science (and culture) is certainly "more than just finding comonalities between our conscious interpretations of the world ." Finding commonalities" between our unconsciousnesses is at least as significant. And "until we make our conscious thoughts" affect our unconscious "we are not actually effecting change in ourselves." At least not stable change.

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