Thursday, July 7, 2011

Nested Questions

Thank you very much for the article which is indeed relevant to my work.

A few sincere questions regarding "primary" and "secondary" consciousness in that article: If "awareness" of feelings, let's say, requires some type of verbal representation (as in naming or definition, even in addressing oneself) is there always some distance between the immediate feeling (X) and the mental representation? In other words, how do I consciously know or recognize a truly unmediated, outwardly directed, feeling (as a feeling)? (Again honest questions; I'm not prone to employing overused figures.)

Also, if LeDoux (as I recall) posits the possibility of a "short circuit" between immediate perception and "procedural" response (in some cases), is the immediate affective response conscious or unconscious? To put it another way, when I am startled am I immediately aware of my response or does it, perhaps, seem so because conscious awareness follows fast on the heels of the initial "physiological" response?

Well, this may be all to close to that debate between Lane and Pankseep a few years ago, which (as Locke might have predicted) had a lot more to do with terminology than the interlocutors understood at first . . . .

But I appreciate "The Freudian xxx," and will review/revise my unpublished MS accordingly. (I have undoubtedly misrepresented Freud more than once.)

Regarding James, for whom I have a deep affection: Have you seen *The Mind & the Brain" by Jeffrey M. Schwartz or Henry Stapp's *Mindful Universe*?

Christine