But if the term is defined to mean 'that part of the human mind to which we have no conscious access, of which we are not aware", then either it exists, or there are no mind-doings that we aren't aware of? — Pattern-chaser

Correct, with an emphasis on mind-doings.

Then I can only conclude that you think the human mind is the conscious mind, and nothing else?

I think TS’s objection is “why call it ‘mind’?” when the unconscious doings may not be anything like mind. At least we have no good reasons to believe so.

Yes, although in this case, primarily just because I see no evidence of an unconscious mind.

Right, though plenty of claims are made--by psychoanalysts, for example--that there are indeed desires and so on that we're not aware of.

I think TS’s objection is “why call it ‘mind’?” when the unconscious doings may not be anything like mind. — Noah Te Stroete

Perhaps we call it "mind" because that's the word we created to describe the thing we call 'the mind'?

Yes, although in this case, primarily just because I see no evidence of an unconscious mind. — Terrapin Station

Then what created my firmware designs, which often emerged, fully-formed a la Coleridge, into my conscious mind after a shower? I would've remembered if I'd created these designs consciously, and I didn't. Some other part of me, a part of whose doings I am not directly aware, must've done it. Or so I conclude.

Why would we assume the firmware designs were present in your mind as mental content prior to you being aware that you had a design in mind? In other words, there was a point when you were first aware of whatever design ideas. Well, why we assume that wasn't the start of your mental content to that effect?

Then it was a miracle, and I have God to thank? :wink:

You're making some assumption that it would have to be done in a particular series of steps, probably. Why are you assuming that?

Now I'm confused. Do you mean that I'm assuming that a design is created in steps, and not appear whole, in one spontaneous burst? :chin: [ I'm not clear that I have done such a thing....]

If you're not making an assumption like that, then what's the mystery you'd be trying to explain. Some solution appears in your consciousness in whatever form it appears in. It has to be something mental that you didn't know about prior to that because?

Because otherwise the source of my cogitations is external, and they're someone/something else's cogitations? :gasp:

You're assuming that they're "cogitations" prior to you being aware of them, right?

Why are you assuming that?

You misunderstand. I'm not assuming anything. I am using terms only because they describe the thing I'm trying to refer to. You didn't like "mental", so I tried "cogitations" instead. If I must, I will describe them as whatever-it-is-that-results-in-the-emergence-of-ideas-into-our-conscious-minds-without-the source-being-apparent, but it seemed a lot easier and simpler just to use such terms as have been used in the past to describe these things. :wink:

Couldn't what results in the emergence of ideas into our conscious minds be something that's quite different than the ideas that emerge in your conscious mind?

In other words, consider this. To have water, we need atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. When we have those atoms combined in a particular way, under particular conditions, we have water.

Prior to those atoms being combined that way, we could have a cache of hydrogen atoms and a cache of oxygen atoms held separately. Let's say they're in two separate rooms, A and B. In that guise, they're not water--and they're not anything like water, really. The atoms separately have quite different properties than they do when combined as water..

Then, in a different room, room C, where the atoms arrive via a delivery system into that room, we combine them in the right way, under the right conditions, and they're water.

Now, some people say, "The atoms are water prior to arrival and combination in room C." Other people say, "There's no evidence of them being water prior to arrival and combination in room C. They're something different than water prior to that."

In a similar way, couldn't it be that prior to being aware of an idea (a la water in the analogy) in your conscious mind (a la room C in the analogy), there's nothing like an idea (a la the prior rooms A and B in the analogy)? That doesn't imply there's nothing in rooms A and B, just that it's not anything like an idea in rooms A and B. Those states have very different properties.