0.14 The components of consciousness - mental and phenomenological  (Page 2/4)

Some stuff in life is obvious and can be more conscious than stuff that isn't obvious. That relates to how conscious or unconscious ideas or experiences are. How is an experience emotionally or intellectually absorbed? How else can an experience be processed by the mind? Maybe it can be stored more visually or more unconsciously - so it might be stored unconsciously but stored intellectually even though it might seem like the experience should be stored emotionally since the unconscious is emotional.

If an experience is processed emotionally what does that mean? Would that mean that it makes the person happier or is it possible to process pain in an emotional way - pain is more physical so I don't know if you could say that humans process pain emotionally. It is different to say that there is an emotional component to pain than to say that pain is processed emotionally. Obviously it is processed physically but that doesn't necessarily mean that it processed cognitively and felt more deeply. Clearly someone in physical pain is feeling a lot - but they probably aren't as emotional as when they are having fun or experiencing more pleasurable physical stimulation.

Subjective reality

What is an emotional reality? The physical reality is obvious - that would simply be what happens in the world physically - how that affects a persons mind is much more complicated, however.

A single physical reality can influence the different components of consciousness - how someone is aware of the different components of reality. Those components become a part of the persons mind in various ways - with the other major factor being what the persons mind is thinking and feeling independently and how that changes based upon the different inputs from reality.

People need to be aware of what the reality is otherwise their minds could simply determine how they interpret reality unconsciously - instead of it being something more under your control or that you are at least aware of.

So the question then is - how does someones mind influence the reality in their mind - or how does their understanding of reality or how they are influenced - influence their own mind?

Defining components of mind

In order to sort out the task of 'discovering the mental and physical reality' first the different components of mind and reality need to be defined.

Components of reality

• Unconsciousness or the elements of your unconscious that someone isn't aware of
• The feelings and thoughts that someone is aware of
• More complicated aspects of consciousness such as the ideas their reality is making them or leading ('influencing') them to think
• The conclusions people reach based off what they think the reality is - not just the 'background' ideas that are ideas that people have that influence them significantly that they aren't aware of - such as delusions or not-so-delusional delusions
• That means that there are different levels of ideas that people hold with different amounts of influence over their minds - some ideas are more delusional and they have different amounts of influence over their feelings and other cognitions
• The rest of physical and emotional processing and how that ties in with their higher cognitions - much of the physical stimulus might be obvious but it can be emotional or intellectual as well (like how the ideas that people hold and think about can be different degrees of emotional and cognitive)