# Is there any evidence for the subconscious? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2011, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442 "2011-12-16T19:44:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/41 "2011-12-17T17:55:11Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > It’s a simple question to ask to figure out whether the subconscious exists or not. > > Did the human subconscious exist 70 mil years ago, 5 mil years before that fateful asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs? > > No? > > I thought so. > > There’s no subconscious. Yes, the human subconscious was carried to earth by that very asteroid (cite=this post). ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/42 "2011-12-17T18:12:32Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I know that is what you were referring to, and that (which is a quote from **Shagnasty** ’s post, not from any sort of authoritative source) is what I am asserting is not true. They _can_ articulate it, and the principles can be taught by instruction, and not just by example. > > I have now found the relevant cite, which relates how the principles of vent sexing were obtained by interviewing an expert, and then successfully taught to naive subjects: > Sexing day-old chicks: A case study and expert systems analysis of a difficult perceptual-learning task. > Biederman, Irving; Shiffrar, Margaret M., _Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition_, Vol 13(4), Oct 1987. [PDF here](http://geon.usc.edu/~biederman/publications/Biederman_Shiffrar_1987.pdf) I knew I was just quoting a post, it was just an attempt to explain why I included that activity in the “pattern matching” thought. I do not have knowledge or opinion about sexing and I probably should have said “sexing sounds like it’s one of those pattern matching activities”. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/43 "2011-12-17T22:11:38Z")
> [@Bellwood1030](#): > > I’ve always thought that the subconscious was a separate function of the human mind, sort of a basement unit that was separate from but had connections to the conscious mind… Nice post and one, I think, that captures how “the subconscious” and “conscious thought” have evolved as concepts. That separate function concept you reference is not too dissimilar, it seems to me, to the old school psychiatry characterization of Freud, Jung, and others. Psychiatry is now however in the age of neurotransmitters and holds little interest in such things. Oh sure there are still places [training people to psychoanalyze](http://www.chicagoanalysis.org/), but most therapy is accomplished without it (and most psychiatrists are more interested in psychopharmacological approaches). Neurobiology research today approaches “consciousness” and “self-awareness” as a small part of human brain function. The approach is less to figure out what is contained within “the subconscious” but what of all that processing gets experienced as conscious awareness. For example, you have [this neural networks model by Stephen Grossberg](http://cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg/Gro1999ConCog.pdf) (warning pdf): > [@](#): > > The processes whereby our brains continue to learn about a changing world in a stable fashion throughout life are proposed to lead to conscious experiences. These processes include the learning of top-down expectations, the matching of these expectations against bottom-up data, the focusing of attention upon the expected clusters of information, and the development of resonant states between bottom-up and top-down processes as they reach an attentive consensus between what is expected and what is there in the outside world. It is suggested that all conscious states in the brain are resonant states, and that these resonant states trigger learning of sensory and cognitive representations. The models which summarize these concepts are therefore called Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, models. Some think of this as attempting to identify [“neural correlates of consciousness”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness). _Implicit_ in these discussions however is that that which does not meet such a level may be both the foundation of that which does and not perceived as conscious thought, i.e. is subconscious, but the effort is less to define the subconscious than it is to define what forms consciousness. > [@](#): > > Seemingly complex visual processing (such as detecting animals in natural, cluttered scenes) can be accomplished by the human cortex within 130–150 ms,[29][30] far too brief for eye movements and conscious perception to occur. Furthermore, reflexes such as the oculovestibular reflex take place at even more rapid time-scales. It is quite plausible that such behaviors are mediated by a purely feed-forward moving wave of spiking activity that passes from the retina through V1, into V4, IT and prefrontal cortex, until it affects motorneurons in the spinal cord that control the finger press (as in a typical laboratory experiment). The hypothesis that the basic processing of information is feedforward is supported most directly by the short times (approx. 100 ms) required for a selective response to appear in IT cells. > Conversely, conscious perception is believed to require more sustained, reverberatory neural activity, most likely via global feedback from frontal regions of neocortex back to sensory cortical areas[16] that builds up over time until it exceeds a critical threshold. At this point, the sustained neural activity rapidly propagates to parietal, prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortical regions, thalamus, claustrum and related structures that support short-term memory, multi-modality integration, planning, speech, and other processes intimately related to consciousness. Competition prevents more than one or a very small number of percepts to be simultaneously and actively represented. In that model (very similar to Grossberg’s) that reverberatory neural activity is subconscious until it exceeds that critical threshold, wins the competition between other reverberatory assemblages, and propagates. It seems to me that most processing is not done consciously but that our conscious selves are instead more involved in longer range higher order planning and in making up stories to explain to ourselves the decisions lower level processing (“the subconscious”) has already made. Fun stuff even if it _is_ as mythical as my big toe. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/44 "2011-12-17T23:49:52Z")
Great post **DSeid**. In case people think that subconscious thought is merely being redefined as mundane things that we all know about such as routine motor tasks, that isn’t the case either. Someone reported above that one way to solve a hard problem is just to step away from it and let the brain process information in the background until the solution just appears. I have done that many times while programming something really difficult and lots of other people including scientists and artists report the same thing. Sometimes the answer comes to you in a dead sleep so I just made sure to keep a notepad beside the bed. There have been scientists who made major breakthroughs using that technique and they felt guilty for taking credit for their discovery because they thought it wasn’t really ‘theirs’ but I don’t see it that way. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/45 "2011-12-19T03:53:11Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > By that logic the human big toe does not exist either. > > Give it up man. Logic and reason just aren’t your strengths. Look at it, it exists. The human big toe had a definite evolutionary purpose to exist, so it exists. The subconscious is an invention, an abstract idea, that claims to explain how the human brain works. It was a legitimate guess, but now that we can detect the physiological changes in the brain, we know better. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/46 "2011-12-19T04:11:40Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > The subconscious is an invention, an abstract idea, that claims to explain how the human brain works. It was never anything but a concept, just like consciousness. > [@](#): > > It was a legitimate guess, but now that we can detect the physiological changes in the brain, we know better. Sorry, you’re still guessing. We still don’t know the details. Nothing has changed to invalidate the concept of the subconscious. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/47 "2011-12-19T04:23:18Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Sorry, you’re still guessing. We still don’t know the details. Nothing has changed to invalidate the concept of the subconscious. I’m not guessing. I leave everything to the scientific process, rather than human unsubstantiated claims. Eventually we will figure out what conscious and subconscious is… all of it will be physiologically based and amenable to scientific research. There are no spirits. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/48 "2011-12-19T04:41:03Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > I’m not guessing. > > I leave everything to the scientific process, rather than human unsubstantiated claims. > > **Eventually we will figure out what conscious and subconscious is** … all of it will be physiologically based and amenable to scientific research. > > There are no spirits. (bolding mine) Yes, eventually. In the mean time it’s all guessing. So you have no idea. Even when we understand the process, the concept of the subconcious won’t go away. We’ll just know how it works. It may not have any significance in the end, but that won’t eliminate the concept. And it still might have tremendous significance. We don’t have enough information to make any such determination now. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/49 "2011-12-19T05:03:25Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > (bolding mine) > > Yes, eventually. In the mean time it’s all guessing. So you have no idea. Even when we understand the process, the concept of the subconcious won’t go away. We’ll just know how it works. It may not have any significance in the end, but that won’t eliminate the concept. And it still might have tremendous significance. We don’t have enough information to make any such determination now. All that is irrelevant to reality. Reality exists independently of the human capacity to comprehend it. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/50 "2011-12-19T05:25:58Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > All that is irrelevant to reality. > > Reality exists independently of the human capacity to comprehend it. That is arguable, and another discussion, and I wouldn’t take the other side anyway. Do you have any comments germane to this topic? ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/51 "2011-12-19T07:08:43Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > That is arguable, and another discussion, and I wouldn’t take the other side anyway. Do you have any comments germane to this topic? I did. Humans are irrelevant to nature. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/52 "2011-12-19T08:27:08Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > There are no spirits. Why are you talking about spirits? We are discussing brain function. ---
**Author:** ![wayward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a87d85/32.png) [@wayward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wayward)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2011, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/53 "2011-12-19T09:10:25Z")
Uh yeah, **Naxos** , I think it’s be useful if you could share the definition of “subconscious” that you’re working with here. 'Cos I’m pretty sure it’s different from how everyone else in the thread is using it. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/54 "2011-12-20T18:27:05Z")
[moderator note] **Naxos** , this is the GQ forum. When you make assertions, they need to be backed up with citations. If you wish to argue the subject based on opinions, please take it to IMHO. [/moderator note] ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2011, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442/55 "2011-12-27T02:23:28Z")
Don’t know if anybody else noticed this yet, but there’s this article in the on-line news today (12/26/2011) on this subject: The mystery of expertise Lede: “There is a chasm between what the brain knows, says David Eagleman, and what our minds can fathom” [http://theweek.com/article/index/222755/the-mystery-of-expertise](http://theweek.com/article/index/222755/the-mystery-of-expertise) Also at: [http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-expertise-160206868.html](http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-expertise-160206868.html) [QUOTE=Opening paragraph:] CONSIDER THE SIMPLE act of changing lanes while driving a car. Try this: Close your eyes, grip an imaginary steering wheel, and go through the motions of a lane change. Imagine that you are driving in the left lane and you would like to move over to the right lane. Before reading on, actually try it. [/quote] Reader comment posted by **James Eric** : [QUOTE=James Eric] My brain read this article, but my mind wasn’t aware of it. I wonder if I found it interesting. [/quote] (Footnote to article says this is re-published from someplace else, so maybe everybody but me has seen this already.) ETA: Yes, this article talks about chick sexing and that school in Japan, and friendly vs. enemy incoming aircraft, and brain damage that can leave the victim debilitated yet not know he’s debilitated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-subconscious/606442.md?page=2)