Are there hierarchies of dissociation? Bernardo Kastrup on mind at large, alters and thought

In a profound discussion, Bernardo Kastrup delves into the concept of dissociation, explaining it as the disconnection of cognitive associations that integrate mental states, forming a coherent self. He explores various dissociative phenomena, including dissociative identity disorder, and the role of language and metacognition in human experience. Kastrup contrasts human linguistic capabilities with animal consciousness, highlighting the unique human ability to create narratives and model reality. He warns of the double-edged nature of linguistic reasoning, which can lead to both scientific advancements and societal issues like fascism. Kastrup also emphasizes the importance of understanding dissociation in fostering a community of idealism ambassadors.

• Dissociation involves the absence of cognitive bridges, which are associations that connect different mental contents.
• Cognitive bridges are essential for integrating mental states, providing a sense of a unified self.
• Dissociation occurs when these connections are lost, leading to fragmented mental states.
• Different forms of dissociation include memory loss, ownership dissociation, and asymmetric dissociation, as seen in dissociative identity disorder (DID).

"Dissociation is when those connections are not there; when they may have been there but they no longer there."

• Dissociation represents a disconnect in mental associations, leading to fragmented experiences.

"You are dissociated from yourself because you identify with your dream Avatar but not with the mind that is creating all the rest of the dream."

• Dreaming illustrates dissociation, where one identifies with a dream avatar, separate from the dreaming mind.

"Ownership dissociation happens when some people have a traffic accident and they suffer head trauma...they remember their memories as if they were from somebody else."

• Ownership dissociation involves experiencing one's memories as belonging to another, often due to trauma.

• DID is an extreme form of dissociation where different alters have separate mental contents.
• Asymmetric dissociation occurs when one alter has access to another's mental states, but not vice versa.
• This condition demonstrates complex dissociative dynamics, impacting identity and self-perception.

"You can have people with dissociative identity disorder...different dissociated centers of awareness cannot access each other's mental contents."

• DID involves multiple dissociated identities with restricted access to each other's mental states.

"B knows nothing about A, but A has direct access to the inner life of B. It's asymmetric."

• Asymmetric dissociation in DID shows one alter's access to another's mental life, highlighting complex identity dynamics.

• Thought experiments illustrate dissociation by imagining experiencing another's life through virtual reality.
• These experiments demonstrate how dissociation can lead to identifying with another's mental states.
• They highlight the role of dissociation in shaping identity and self-awareness.

"Imagine you're fitted with a virtual reality headset...you see what that person sees, you hear what that person hears, but you know it's not you."

• Thought experiments using VR illustrate dissociation by simulating another's experiences while maintaining self-awareness.

"Now you forget your own...you think you really are the other person even though it's still your subjectivity."

• Forgetting one's identity in thought experiments emphasizes how dissociation can alter self-perception and identity.

• Metacognition involves higher-level mental functions, such as self-awareness and reflection.
• Evidence suggests some animals, like elephants and corvids, may possess degrees of metacognition.
• Metacognition is linked to social behaviors, such as mourning and recognizing faces.

"Elephants probably have some degree of metacognition. They mourn their dead, which requires a degree of metacognition."

• Elephants' mourning behaviors suggest a level of metacognition, indicating complex mental functions.

"Corvids do the same...they also seem to recognize human faces."

• Corvids' ability to recognize faces and engage in rituals points to potential metacognitive abilities.

• Language is a defining feature of human cognition, enabling symbolic processing and metacognition.
• Symbolic processing requires recognizing oneself as an agent within an external world.
• Language facilitates modeling the external world internally, supporting advanced cognitive functions.

"Language...symbolic processing requires that you replace contents of empirical reality with concepts in your own mind."

• Language involves symbolic processing, allowing humans to conceptualize and manipulate reality internally.

"Without some form of metacognition, there is no outside...there isn't a recognition of an outside world that needs to be modeled."

• Metacognition is essential for recognizing and modeling the external world, a process facilitated by language.

• Human experience of reality is mediated by personal narratives and linguistic frameworks, which often fail to capture the world accurately.
• Individuals perceive the same stimuli differently based on their psychological complexes and narratives, leading to subjective realities.
• Science and philosophy are seen as operations on conceptual constructs rather than direct interactions with the world.

"What we experience is our own narrative about the world, is our own linguistic architecture that is supposed to capture the world, but it doesn't do that accurately."

• This quote highlights the inherent limitations of human perception and understanding, emphasizing that our narratives and linguistic constructs shape our experience of reality, often inaccurately.

• Human capacity for conceptualization allows for scientific prediction and philosophical reasoning, enabling collaboration and societal constructs like money.
• The conceptual world can both reflect and distort reality, leading to positive outcomes like scientific progress and negative outcomes like fascism and self-torture.

"We can predict stuff, we can come up with theories, we can come up with accounts for events, we can explain the past, anticipate the future."

• The quote underscores the power of human conceptualization in advancing knowledge and understanding, enabling predictions and explanations of the world.

• Linguistic reasoning allows nature to self-contemplate, offering a form of consciousness that transcends instinctual flows.
• This reasoning also brings risks such as thermonuclear warfare and environmental crises, reflecting the gamble nature takes with human cognition.

"Linguistic reasoning in the context of metacognition is nature's greatest gamble."

• This quote captures the dual-edged nature of linguistic reasoning, which provides profound insights and capabilities but also poses significant existential risks.

• Maintaining moral clarity is crucial, particularly in recognizing ongoing ethical issues such as animal suffering, which parallels historical atrocities.
• The speaker emphasizes the importance of not becoming complacent or accepting unethical practices as normal due to their prevalence.

"We have to maintain moral clarity about what's happening."

• The quote stresses the necessity of ethical vigilance and awareness, urging individuals to remain conscious of moral issues despite societal norms.

• Unlike humans, animals may not construct complex narratives, operating more on immediate perceptions without prolonged grudges or conceptual interpretations.
• The speaker suggests that while animals experience emotions and reactions, they likely do not engage in narrative-making to the extent humans do.

"He did not create a narrative in his head about Berardo disrespecting him and him being inferior in the hierarchy."

• This quote illustrates the difference between human and animal perception, noting the absence of complex narrative-making in animal cognition.

• Experience can arise internally without external stimuli, as seen in dreaming or sensory deprivation, indicating the possibility of endogenous mental states.
• Thoughts and certain mental states are fundamentally internal, not reliant on external perception, highlighting the mind's capacity for self-generated experiences.

"If you're dreaming at night, and you're properly deep dreaming...everything you're experiencing is endogenous."

• The quote explains how experiences can be purely internal, demonstrating the mind's ability to generate perceptions and thoughts independently of external input.

• Emotions are primarily endogenous, originating within rather than triggered externally.
• Negative emotions can arise from negative thoughts without external stimuli.
• Many experiential states do not require perception, unlike perceptual states that require dissociation.

"Emotions are largely endogenous; they can be triggered by perception, but they do not require that to be the case."

• Emotions originate internally and do not necessarily depend on external triggers.

"A great many types of experiential states do not require perception and therefore do not require dissociation."

• Experiential states can exist without the need for perception or dissociation, highlighting their endogenous nature.

• Perception requires a dissociative boundary, creating two alters: the perceiver and the perceived.
• The first living organism introduced dissociation, with the organism as one alter and the rest of the universe as another.
• Mind at large, though encompassing, is technically an alter and perceives the universe differently.

"For perception, you do need a dissociative boundary, and you were correct that a dissociative boundary strictly speaking always creates two alters."

• Perception is dependent on dissociation, which inherently creates a division between the perceiver and the perceived.

"When the first living organism arose in the universe, there was that organism as one alter and the rest of the universe, in other words, mind at large, as the other alter."

• The emergence of life introduced a dissociative boundary, separating living beings from the universe.

• Thoughts and emotions may not cross dissociative boundaries but exist within endogenous boundaries.
• Internal Family Systems therapy suggests different parts of the self, indicating internal dissociative boundaries.
• Meditation and dreams may reflect interactions across these boundaries, exploring subconscious layers.

"I've been curious whether thoughts and emotions were across a dissociative boundary, an endogenous boundary."

• Internal boundaries may exist within the mind, separating thoughts and emotions from other mental states.

"With the dreaming, I'd wondered whether yes, it's endogenous, but it's an exploration into the subconscious."

• Dreams might represent interactions with subconscious parts of the mind, reflecting internal boundaries.

• Dissociative boundaries are not perfect; endogenous mental states can cross them.
• Nature's processes are not foolproof, leading to inevitable permeability in boundaries.
• The human mind consists of layers, with varying degrees of dissociation and permeability.

"Dissociation cannot be perfect; there will still be commerce of endogenous mental states across the dissociative boundary."

• Dissociative boundaries are not impermeable, allowing for the exchange of mental states.

"The human mind in layers, which clinical evidence overwhelmingly indicates, is the appropriate way of regarding the human mind."

• The mind's layered structure suggests varying levels of dissociation and interaction across boundaries.

• Dissociation within the self is hierarchical, with layers separating different mental and bodily functions.
• Autonomous functions, like heartbeat and breathing, operate independently of conscious control.
• Learning new skills involves transitioning control from conscious to autonomous processes.

"Under analytic idealism, your entire body is what mental states look like, but you cannot access whatever mental state it is that looks like your liver or your kidney."

• Certain mental states are dissociated to allow autonomous bodily functions to operate without conscious intervention.

"When you learn to drive, you have to attend to every movement of your hands and your feet; a couple of years later, it has become autonomous."

• Skills transition from conscious control to autonomous processes, illustrating internal dissociation.

• Dissociation is evolutionarily advantageous, allowing for efficient operation of autonomous functions.
• Internal dissociation prevents cognitive overload by delegating tasks to subconscious processes.
• Emotions and pain can be dissociated, with awareness only arising under certain conditions.

"We are internally dissociated, and that's for extremely good reason; if you were not dissociated from the mental dynamics that constitute your autonomous functions, you would need to attend to every aspect."

• Dissociation allows for efficient functioning by delegating control to autonomous processes.

"I can feel pain for days without knowing that I am in pain until something triggers me and I realize, oh, I have been having this pain for a while now."

• Awareness of emotions or pain can be delayed due to internal dissociation, highlighting its evolutionary role.

• Discusses the constant dynamics of dissociation and reassociation of mental complexes within layers of sub-alters.
• Highlights the boiling collective of lower levels of dissociation in the hierarchy.
• Differentiates between spontaneous dissociations and those that are actively enforced.

"If you had asked me a day before, 'Are you in pain?' I'd say no very sincerely."

• The speaker introduces the concept of dissociation, indicating an unawareness of pain due to dissociative processes.

"There is a constant dynamics of dissociation and reassociation of mental complexes within this alar that we are."

• Describes the ongoing process where mental complexes dissociate and reassociate, forming a dynamic system.

• Explains how shedding loosely integrated parts can lead to higher information integration and increased consciousness.
• Describes the theoretical mechanism that supports spontaneous dissociations and associations.

"A certain complex can integrate more information if it sheds off parts of itself that are loosely integrated."

• Shedding loosely integrated parts enhances the integration of information, increasing consciousness levels.

"There is a theoretical mechanism very well empirically substantiated that shows that by necessity that happens."

• Empirical evidence supports the necessity of spontaneous dissociation and reassociation for information integration.

• Distinguishes between spontaneous and actively enforced dissociation, with life being actively enforced.
• Discusses evolutionary reasons for the active enforcement of life as a dissociative boundary.

"Life is actively enforced because, for evolutionary reasons, that made sense."

• Life is an actively enforced dissociative process due to evolutionary advantages.

"The altars that actively resisted that reassociation are the ones that are still around."

• Active resistance to reassociation is a survival mechanism that has persisted through evolution.

• Introduces the concept of "Mind At Large" before life, with spontaneous dissociation dynamics.
• Describes ontological dust as fragmented experiences in the mind of nature.

"Mind At Large has a spontaneous dynamics of dissociation and reassociation based on degrees of information integration."

• Before life, the mind experienced spontaneous dissociation and reassociation without active enforcement.

"Julio calls it ontological dust, meaning there may be many parallel small spontaneously dissociated processes."

• Ontological dust refers to fragmented, spontaneous dissociative processes in the mind of nature.

• Discusses how meditation and perception relate to the construction of self.
• Considers thought as another form of perception, constructed by the brain.

"Your sense of self is another perception; it's constructed by the brain."

• The sense of self is seen as a perception, constructed from disparate data by the brain.

"If you're perceiving it, it's not you."

• Perception is distinct from self, suggesting a separation between the experiencer and the experience.

• Mentions the absence of detailed discussions on dissociative hierarchies in existing writings.
• Plans to explore these themes in future works on analytic idealism.

"All these nuances about the dissociative hierarchy... this is not to be found in anything I have written."

• The speaker acknowledges that the detailed discussion on dissociative hierarchies is not yet published.

"This video becomes an important one because it has no other sources."

• The current discussion is unique and not documented elsewhere, highlighting its significance.

• Describes the motivation to create a community around idealism for deeper understanding and dissemination.
• Emphasizes the desire to cultivate ambassadors of idealism for broader impact.

"Creating a community in which a deeper understanding of idealism in general... that truly and deeply understands what it is."

• The goal is to build a community with a profound understanding of idealism beyond general knowledge.

"I would like to help foment a community of ambassadors of idealism."

• Aspires to develop a community of individuals equipped to spread and clarify idealism concepts.