There is a whole body of experimental-psychological work measuring the span of the "now" (or - "the psychological moment" as it is usually referred to in that literature). A common technique is to check the minimal (physical) time span at which two consecutive stimuli are perceived as two rather than one. The main lesson that this literature reveals is the the value of the span measured varies with practically all the factors one may think of: the sensory modality, the nature of the stimuli, the task, the specific technique of measurement. All this indicates that, indeed, psychological time is determined by psychological factors, and that it has no independent, absolute sense outside the specific context of action.
In case there is some interest in how Michael Jordan (and even normal subjects) can respond rapidly, let me review some facts. One thinks that a standard reaction time is 150-200 msec. Given those values it is difficult to understand some example of human performance. However, in my lab and those of others we have shown that one can make CHANGES in one's performance with a reaction time of 80-100 msec. That is sufficient to explain all behavior that I know of.
On the issue of whether consciousness precedes the performance, I know of no experiments that are relevant. I can't even think of any experiments that can decide that question so it may be one of those non-scientific questions that isn't that meaningful.
When the supreme basketball player Michael Jordan is playing well, flying to the hoop, contorting his body in numerous, seemingly impossible maneuvers to get through traffic, he has stated he is able to do this because, to him, "time slows down". This is consistent with consciousness being a series of discrete events whose occurrences (frequency) can change. If Michael Jordan has many more conscious events per objective time measurement, his subjective time would slow down.
This is one of the many instants that help support my position that consciousness, as such, is a construction of language and culture. There may "nothing outside the text" but that "nothing" can be full of either nothingness or activity. In meditation a state can be attained where one is aware--clear, shimmeringly aware--but not aware *of* anything. It would then be a mistake to call this state one of "consciousness". Similarly but very differently (yeah, it's a paradox, I know), great athletes such as Jordan or Gretzky or name-yer-own have such unusual reflexes that we find ourselves saying admiringly: "Man, he was *unconscious* in that play!", meaning that he seemed to just spontaneously do the right thing.
This is one of the many instants that help support my position that consciousness, as such, is a construction of language and culture.
No it doesn't. Although from the observer's point of view it seems so fast it must be an unconscious reflex, the athlete claims to be fully conscious, but in a slower-time frame.
In meditation a state can be attained where one is aware--clear, shimmeringly aware--but not aware *of* anything. It would then be a mistake to call this state one of "consciousness".
Why? It's the same subject that is aware of something most of the time and nothing at other times. It's only the unfamiliarity of the latter experience that makes you claim this. Let's not introduce another dualism (awareness, consciousness) to add to the Cartesian legacy.
"Like a dome of many-coloured glass, life stains the white radiance of eternity." (Percy B. Shelley)
[PB Shelley quote]
Precisely. As in the case of the spectrum of light, there is a continuum of consciousness and Greg's linguistic form is a modulation, rather than a construction.
As usual KS confuses the subject with the self with the ego. KS seems unable to even consider that the ego-subject or self-construction is something that we see-through, something which is not necessary for pure experience. The ego which thinks is not necessary the same as the being who acts. The former *is* consciousness; the latter is more associated with the active realm others have named the unconscious.
So all this confusion can be traced back to Freud? But even within this voodoo science paradigm the difference between conscious and unconscious processes is one of threshold rather than a dualism of substances (otherwise what would be the point of psychoanalysis?)
The "unconscious" I refer to is not that of Freud. It can even be empirically identified as correlating to certain brain activity. The unconscious is that "place" from which I act or perceive without consciously willing it. One need not lean on century old psychoanalysis for the notion of the unconscious. Jacques Lacan wrote of the "unconscious of language". Dreams derive from the unconscious. It sounds paradoxical, but I can be "unconsciously aware"; for example, I may be feeling consciously out of sorts because I'm unconsciously aware that my wife has been unfaithful or that the below-threshold pain in my side is attempting to cross the threshold into consciousness. The unconscious is here a metaphor for what we would otherwise call "animal awareness".
Regarding Michael Jordan's claim about "time slowing down": I used to play informal, pick-up basketball for many years and not very well but I know exactly what he's talking about. I have at least a half-dozen such "bionic" moments etched clearly in my memory. These instances were generally obvious -- the other players, who would say things like "How did you do that -- that was good?" (i.e. "how unlike you!"). (The only time it's happened to me outside of basketball was in an auto accident when I skidded on ice and hit a truck head-on -- luckily at low speed -- and it seemed to take so long to close the gap between the vehicles I felt I was living through a demonstration of Zeno's paradox.) Anyway, the curious thing about this phenomenon is that I remember having a very heightened visual awareness and at the same time being unconscious about what my body was doing. The closest I ever came to "dunking" the ball, I remember catching a rebound, I know I must have made a pivot around an off-balance defender, but after that I have no idea how I moved my feet, whether I dribbled once or twice, or what foot I jumped from. But I remember with amazing clarity looking up and seeing the rim right before my eyes -- startlingly close -- and it seemed that I just hung there for several seconds gazing at the basket and noticing the other players frozen far below and finally deciding at my leisure to release the ball from my hands and let it roll over the rim into the net, and then felt myself slowly drifting down to the floor and worrying about what the impact was going to feel like. I tried many times after that to recreate the same move, but without any luck.
Jonathan Shear wrote:
I've had what seemed to me to be the kinds of "slo-mo" experience that were being talked about, my normal (abstract, non-personal level of) consciousness was always there (indeed, if anything, much more conspicuously than usual), and the ordinary deliberative processes generally were, too-- often having what seemed like *plenty* of time to modulate my action in the desired directions. (There *were*, to be sure, some very interesting phenomenological differences in the way goals, the deliberative processes, and actions related, but that's another topic.)
I agree with Jonathan. For example I distinctly remember thinking, actually in words, "Oh, this is interesting, I appear to be falling down this crack in the sea ice, but it's all right, because it's not very deep here, we're too close to the shore [which was entirely wrong and very stupid]..But perhaps I should...[take a particular action]" and having *plenty* of time to do what was necessary to stop myself falling to what would actually have been certain death). It seemed almost leisurely, not upsetting at all, but objectively speaking it was over in a couple of seconds *maximum*. I'm sure this kind of experience is relatively common in any sort of physical emergency. I suspect it has something to do with adrenalin and it's probably related to the very common experience of not feeling any pain at all (until afterwards) when the most horrendous injuries happen - there's a mechanism in the spinal cord for gating out pain impulses when they would simply be a distraction from taking whatever action is necessary for the survival of the organism.
What I find interesting is the relation neural-mechanism-wise of the slo-mo experiences to normal time experience, and to the question of Libet's half second delay.
I'd be interested to know what Jonathan's phenomenological differences were too, as I haven't noticed any in these states.
Sue Pockett
pockett@scrc.umanitoba.ca
jcs-online
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