The Feeling of What Happens: Details and Patterns

October 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Feeling, Intuition, Pattern, Unconscious |

Our unconscious mind has a sensitivity to detail and pattern that our conscious mind does not have and is not capable of having. The complexity of many patterns and the fineness of much detail is beyond the relatively modest and linear computational abilities of conscious processes. The recognition of pattern and detail which is carried out non-consciously usually does not become part of our conscious awareness at all, but rather informs the various behaviours we carry out routinely without any necessity to think consciously about them. So, for example, when in conversation we may fall into a similar rhythmic pattern of speaking as the person we are speaking to without intending to do so or even consciously being aware of the fact. Although these behind-the-scenes computations do not present themselves to conscious awareness as rational facts about such details and patterns (obviously, or by definition they would then not be non-conscious), instead such computations and recognitions appear in consciousness as feelings, biases, hunches, and instincts. We often feel the way we do about a person, situation, event etc because our mind is processing large numbers of observations about that person, situation or event, noting details and discovering patterns which we are totally unaware of consciously. Our feelings are the experienced result of these computations.