Monday 5 February 2007

The Amateur Philosophy Society

Anthony,

Many thanks for your invitation to join your blog.

I have been interested in the phenomena you call Daemon for many years now and have been used to calling it the voice of the 'Higher Mind'. This term is used to describe the inner reosurce we go to for advice and help when faced with difficult decisions or traumatic situations. Just for clarity I am a Leadership Consultant and have studied Psychology [cognitive] for many years now.

What interests me about this faculty of taking advice, or ignoring it, from somewhere or someone inside our own consciousness is that it links directly to what congnitive psychologists call the 'Working Self'. This is a model of memory that includes a central executive, short term and long term memory. The working self is described as almost the 'doorman' that lets certain information in and out of long term memory and as such shapes our sence of self based on past experience.

My question is, what if the working self not only controlled past experiences coming to the surface of our consciousness through recall and recognition, but also controlled our future memory? This working self is explained in an evolutionary light as being the arbiter of selecting memories for recall that will help us achieve our goal state.

However, it is fallible and this can be demonstrated through 'flash bulb' memories that can occuer in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD]. How could we open up an unsupervised door to our memory of the future?

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