The Brain and the Unconscious

The Unconscious: A Neurobiologist's View

Paul Grobstein
30 October 2007
for Story Telling as Inquiry

"Tacit knowledge is like the ground we stand on" ... Rachel Lubitz

"I couldn’t help but thinking of vision ... can this tacit knowing be equated to peripheral vision (as opposed to focused vision)?" ... Ashton Shaffer

Looking at vision to find the unconscious

• What we see is made up
• Making things up depends on assumptions/processes of which we are unaware
• We can become aware of them but that may not change what we consciously see
• Makes life easier but ...

Vision beyond the blindspot

• What we see is a "story", reflecting an author of which we are unaware and revisable
• True not only of central but also of peripheral vision
• Unconscious/conscious interaction gives one the capability to create what has not been seen

The bipartite brain beyond vision

• Both the conscious and the unconscious are challengeable, revisable
• We need to recognize the existence/character of the unconscious to do so
• "The ground we stand on" .... is itself revisable if we want/choose to allow it to be so