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549 points orcul | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.41s | source
1. bmacho ◴[] No.41894314[source]
There is a non-verbal me. E.g. who moves my limbs, feels the feelings (hunger, happiness, ..), and sometimes helps my verbal me to think (in math or in chess the answer just appears for the verbal me), or in sudden situations it takes over, and it makes decisions very fast.

Since it controls my limbs, I consider it to be the real me. My inner monologue is a bit frustrated that it can't control my limbs, and it can't really communicate with whoever controls my limbs.

Then there is my inner monologue, which does my thinking almost always, in an auditory way: imagine the sound of spoken words in an ~5 sec long duration, and let the answer appear. I consider it as an auditory deducing thingy, and also an intelligence on its own.

I am mostly fine with this, tho I am curious about my non-verbal me, and I wish I'd know more about it.

replies(1): >>41894654 #
2. ryandv ◴[] No.41894654[source]
Julian Jaynes has written on this verbal/non-verbal dichotomy in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which he literally defines god to mean those phenomena related to right hemispheric structures and activities in the brain that are communicated over the anterior commissures and interpreted by left hemispheric language centers as speech; hence the many mystical reports of "hearing the voice of god" as passed down through the aeons. Such phenomena have gone by many other names: gods, the genius, the higher self, the HGA... though this metaphysical and spiritual terminology is best understood as referring to non-verbal, non-rational, non-linear forms of cognition that are closer to free association and intuitive pattern matching (similar to Kahneman's "System 1" thinking). There even exist certain mystical traditions which purport to facilitate deeper connections with this subsystem of the mind; see for instance Eshelman's accounting of the western esoteric tradition in The Mystical and Magical System of the A.'.A.'. at [0] (currently defunct pending the restoration of the Internet Archive).

[0] https://archive.org/details/a-a-the-mystical-and-magical-sys...