Is there an "unconscious", or "subconscious", and if so why hold that such an entity exists.
I'm not sure what you mean by "unconcious". If something braodly Freudian, then I'm not in a position to answer this. But there is another notion of "unconscious" that figures heavily in comtemporary empirical psychology: It is the idea of processing or information that is inaccessible to conscious reflection. For example, the standard view in linguistics nowadays is that our ability to speak and understand our native languages depends upon all sorts of unconcious processing. The evidence for this view is the explanatory success of linguitic theory. It is possible, for example, to state an extremely general principle governing when a pronoun can be "bound by" an antecedent (that is, "refer back" to it) which will account for why the first but not the second of these can mean that John saw John in the mirror: John saw him in the mirror. John saw himself in the mirror. There are all kinds of similar contrasts that the principles explain. Compare, for example: Bill thinks it would be...
- Log in to post comments