The decider is the ego

[coberst]

The ego controls anxiety for the creature by limiting experience and it limits experience by skew perceptions and by such stratagems as finding a science to be negative even though there is little of no knowledge of that science. Early in an infants life the infant learns that to receive approval the infant must limit its natural inclination to explore its body and abide by the symbolic world of the mother. The infant quickly develops strategies of self-delusion.

The ego stands between the instincts of the id and it also stands between the creature and its own ego ideal when such might develop into anxiety.

I think that anti-intellectualism that so permeates life in the United States is a good example of the ego’s effort to limit the experience of the creature.

[luckyme]

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The ego stands between the instincts of the id and it also stands between the creature and its own ego ideal when such might develop into anxiety.

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Do you have a clip?

( or any evidence, actually)?

luckyme

[coberst]

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I often post about psychology and often I get such negative responses and always I discover that they are just sophomoric bluff and bluster.

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Try picking a different flavor of psychology, like cognitive for example. The nonsense you are slinging around was junked many moons ago by reasonable psychologists... at least that is what my therapist told me [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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This is the type of negative responses I often receive and when I examine the matter I find that the source is ignorance rather than insight.

[luckyme]

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This is the type of negative responses I often receive and when I examine the matter I find that the source is ignorance rather than insight.

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You've studied cognitive psychology? good on ya, coberst, I'm impressed. Care to post a bit on it?

luckyme

[coberst]

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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.

[tpir]

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I often post about psychology and often I get such negative responses and always I discover that they are just sophomoric bluff and bluster.

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Try picking a different flavor of psychology, like cognitive for example. The nonsense you are slinging around was junked many moons ago by reasonable psychologists... at least that is what my therapist told me [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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This is the type of negative responses I often receive and when I examine the matter I find that the source is ignorance rather than insight.

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You claim that people in general are negative about psychology. I am merely pointing out that it's your brand of psychology that is drawing fire, not all psychology. If you want to dabble in the astrology of the field, go for it. It is kind of true in a roundabout way, but really needs a good shaving from Occam.

[coberst]

I am not versed in these other types of psychology you mention. I would be interested in a description of such matters.

[tpir]

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I am not versed in these other types of psychology you mention. I would be interested in a description of such matters.

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I have my doubts you will be open-minded to this at stands directly opposed to Freud.

"[Cognitive psychology] accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike phenomenological methods such as Freudian psychology."

You said you like exploring new areas of thought though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychology

[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!

[m_the0ry]

I disagree, simply because the subconscious is the controller of what we see. Our egos can only even begin to perceive a situation until after our subconscious has processed it. Think about how our eyesight uses what it sees to group things into 'objects'. It uses a multitude of techniques - from depth perception to detecting sharp lines to referencing old memory - to take a bunch of specks of light and discriminate them as objects , and represent those objects in our mind as three dimensional players in our environment. In this sense it's a lot like voting in the United States - you think you are making a decision, but really any chance of you truly expressing yourself has been ended by the narrow range of options handed to you.