[Phil153]

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Intuitively (as opposed to a result of relevant study or experience) I would venture that "ego" is an emergent property that has occured only as a result of us being able to somewhat observe and articulate our (instinctual?) thought processes.

I think that we could not possibly know whether we ever actually make a concious decision, or if we are just able to observe our (deterministic) thought process, under the illusion that we are somehow helping it along.

I think that if the main processes of a computer gave a running commentary of its calculations to a very simple chipset that was designed to listen to them in the 1st person, this could somehow lead to it calulating that it had conciousness. (And to that chipset "believing" it was key to the process, since it is hearing the messages in the form "now I think I will do this...")

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I often explore domains of knowledge that are new to me and I find that I must place on hold my common sense judgment of the new domain until I have studied it long enough to comprehend its fundamentals. I think that this attempt to judge a new doman of knowledge by common sense standards is one of the tricks used by the ego to inhibit the creature from exploring new knowledge which might prove to be anxiety producing.

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What are your thoughts on scientology? On the philosophies of NAMBLA? On astrology, time cubes, WTC conspiracies and homeopathy?

Common sense is a fantastic guide through this nonsense. If you suspend judgment until you've fully comprehended and learnt the theory, which is what you're advocating, you will never have time in your life to have an opinion on more than a few domains of knowledge. Am I correct in assuming that you reject absolutely none of these things? If so, why are you not a scientologist/muslim/fundamentalist christian/user of homeopathy? All of these make extremely important claims about reality that should not be ignored if there's a reasonable chance they're true.

So I hope you can see that this is not "ego defense" at all, merely practicality. For example, I can rigorously reject homeopathy by observing two things:

- Homeopathy is based on the principle that something that causes the symptoms of the disease in large doses, cures it in tiny doses. This is a classic example of something called sympathetic magic, and at odds with common sense.

- Scientific trials of homeopathy show zero effect

In fact, the first is almost sufficient by itself.

Similarly with the theories of Freud and Jung. I can rigorously reject them as nonsense for three reasons:

- They are extremely imprecise in their language and presentation, even given the vagueness of the subject matter.

- They frequently assert all manner of claims without providing supporting evidence and without looking for either contradictions or evidence that disproves their theories. This tells me the authors were probably wankers.

- Their claims rely on definitions of various meta-concepts that evaporate when looked at through any other branch of knowledge.

These are sufficient to reject the claims of Freud and ten thousand other quacks with a high level of certainty.

If you don't agree, then I suggest you start reading Dianetics and the Koran immediately!