Thanks to anonymous reviewers for this journal, the audience at the 2021 San Raffaele School of Philosophy, and, especially, to Jakub Mihalik for comments and discussion which aided me in this work.
- 1 This conception of mind arguably has its roots in Descartes. Qualitative character, or qualia, are (...)
1Brentano claims that intentionality is mentality’s mark. Other philosophers say mind’s ‘essence’ lies instead in phenomenal-qualitative character, or qualia.1 Elsewhere, proponents of ‘phenomenal intentionality theory’ (PIT) promise to reconcile these conceptions by arguing that intentionality is grounded in phenomenal-qualitative character. PIT proponents claim that positing such ‘phenomenal intentionality’ solves longstanding difficulties afflicting accounts of mental content (Strawson, 1994; Mendelovici, 2018; Kriegel, 2011). Setting this consideration aside, what PIT evidently has in its favour regarding the quest for the mark of the mental is its capacity to do justice to the Brentanians as well as the friends of phenomenal-qualitative-character-qua-essentially-mental. Unification is a powerful theoretical driver.
2But then along comes Freud, and in his wake the leviathan of modern cognitive science, with the powerful denial that mentality is exclusively conscious. According to Freud and the scientific program he inspired, much mental-contentful activity in fact occurs below the threshold of consciousness. To explain action, Freud urges, we need more than the incomplete chains of mental-contentful processes which consciousness reveals: unconscious mental-contentful processes are posited to complete the story.
- 2 To simplify, I subsume in PIT philosophers who stress phenomenal-qualitative character as quintess (...)
3If one agreed with Brentano about intentionality as mentality’s essence, and with PIT that intentionality is based in phenomenal-qualitative character or qualia,2 acknowledging Freud’s insight might naturally lead one to infer that phenomenal qualities, the mental content bearers, must also be capable of unconscious existence, and indeed that much of mental life consists of processes involving such unconscious mental qualities or ‘unconscious qualia’, as we could, courting paradox, call them.
4In effect, one would be swayed by this argument:
P1. Mentality is essentially intentional. (Brentano’s thesis)
P2. Intentionality is essentially based in phenomenal qualities. (PIT)
P3. Some mentality is unconscious. (Freud’s Thesis)
So: The essence of mentality is mental qualities-of-content, which can exist in phenomenally conscious form, but also unconsciously.
- 3 Pitt (2004) holds that thought content consists in phenomenal qualities. Other theorists might say (...)
- 4 Whenever I use the unqualified term ‘consciousness’ I mean phenomenal consciousness.
5Thus, a Grand Unification (GU) over mentality’s nature would seem to be within reach. Acknowledging the insights of these three camps, we might propose that the mental mark consists in a kind of mental content, or intentionality, carried – or constituted3 – by mental qualities, but mental qualities that can be phenomenally conscious,4 or unconscious. Hence they can provide the basis of the Freudian unconscious-mental as much as of conscious mentality.
- 5 This is signaled by their tendency to refer to mental qualities as phenomenal qualities, connoting (...)
6GU faces just one main obstacle: All the concerned parties deny that any such properties are possible. Brentano claims that all intentionality, hence mentality, is conscious. PIT proponents deny that qualitative character, hence mental content – hence, effectively, mentality – can exist unconsciously in any more than a dispositional, i.e. potential, sense.5 Even Freud, despite acknowledging unconscious mental processes, denies that they resemble the phenomenally conscious processes we recognise as mental quality-involving. As a result, he embraces mysterianism about the unconscious, and a displeasing parallelism regarding the relation of unconscious to conscious mental processes (Wakefield, 2018).
7My aim is to clear the road to GU, the thesis that mentality’s essence consists in mental qualities-of-content that can exist consciously or unconsciously. To this end, I will examine and rebut the major philosophical arguments against unconscious mental qualities. These arguments flow from different directions, including from Brentano himself, PIT proponents, and others. §1 clarifies the operative notion of unconscious mental qualities. §2 tackles objections to unconscious mental qualities. With this resistance overcome, §3 elaborates the merits of GU.
8So far I have used terms like ‘phenomenal qualities’, ‘mental qualities’, and ‘qualia’ without clear distinction, as if they were more or less interchangeable. Of course they are not. It is pretty clear that phenomenal qualities, given the sense of ‘phenomenal’, are conscious, and so this is not a useful term with which to conduct an investigation into whether any such properties could be unconscious. ‘Qualia’, though it does not have consciousness as it were ostensibly built-in, is standardly used to refer to consciously experienced mental qualities. And, indeed, many writers do define qualia thus. Do such definitions rule out unconscious qualia as an incoherent notion from the start? It would seem not. For one thing, the terminology of qualia is disputed, or disputable: C. I. Lewis introduced qualia as properties of sense-data, and on some views sense-data could exist unconsciously (e.g. Broad, 1919, p. 128). But even if ‘qualia’ is inseparable from connotations of consciousness, that still leaves the substantive issue open, viz.: whether awareness, or experience, is essential to the distinctive qualitative properties that we, admittedly, know most directly from consciousness. I have reservations about conceding the term ‘qualia’ to those who claim that qualia are conscious by definition: I do not number this among the harmless stipulations in the world. But, since it is only a term, I will talk hereon about mental qualities, in a way that leaves open prima facie whether these properties can be conscious and unconscious. What we are interested in, as philosophers, is putative arguments that mental qualities, or qualitative character, must be conscious. Whether or not it is legitimate for theorists to coin a term denoting mental qualities that are exclusively conscious, that does not address the deeper issue we wish to confront here.
9Nevertheless, given the standard usage of terms like ‘qualia’ and ‘phenomenal qualities’, especially by PIT proponents, it is fair to request clarification about unconscious mental qualities. Just what is the relevant understanding that leaves open whether mental qualities are conscious or not? Answering this request will also help the reader to judge what is at stake, and to assess the efficacy of my responses, regarding the arguments against unconscious mental qualities to be surveyed below.
- 6 See, notably, Rosenthal (2005).
- 7 Bracketing, that is, any functionality due merely to their being conscious. For example, perhaps c (...)
10What are unconscious mental qualities? Let us start from conscious mental qualities. Some identify these with ‘intrinsic’ qualitative properties knowable through introspection or ‘acquaintance’. Others identify mental qualities by their functional roles, especially in subjects’ perception/perception-based activities.6 I will not adjudicate between these approaches. Indeed, I am inclined to combine them, and say that mental qualities are individuated by functional role, while still only fully knowable in a first-person way, via consciousness of them. But in this paper I will be ecumenical, taking either of the aforementioned aspects as criterial for mental qualities. The thesis of unconscious mental qualities is then that either the ‘intrinsic’ qualitative properties we know from consciousness and introspection can exist when we are consciously unaware of them, i.e. phenomenally unconsciously, or there are unconscious properties with the distinctive functional profiles of conscious mental qualities.7
11Two images may assist the reader in grasping unconscious mental qualities in more intuitive fashion:
- 8 See Lockwood’s (1989) ‘inner direct realism’ – his view being that consciousness only serves to ‘d (...)
12First, naïve realists often take it that colours (which, they say, inhere in external-world surfaces/volumes) can exist just as colourfully when unperceived, e.g. when we close our eyes on a sunset. Mental qualities are naturally taken as internal mental properties, but the analogy with naïve realism otherwise sheds light. One might view internal mental colour qualities as capable of surviving, in full colourful form, the lapse of the subject’s awareness – the closing of the ‘inner-eye’. And what goes for these mental qualities is said by purveyors of unconscious mental qualities to go for others too, such as pains, qualities of thought, if such there be, etc.8
13Second, Leopold Stubenberg (1998) has distinguished ‘silver-screen’ and ‘celluloid’ conceptions of qualia. Advocates of the former say that mental qualities exclusively appear on the ‘big-screen’ of consciousness. But purveyors of the latter conception imagine mental qualities somewhat like the colours of old-fashioned cinema reel, which are just as colourful when the projector (consciousness) is not illuminating them.
- 9 As contrasted with extrinsic resemblances, e.g. time/date. Some cite intentional content as anothe (...)
- 10 Nagelian ‘what-it-is-like-ness’ is another perilous term in this domain (Nagel, 1974). Sometimes i (...)
14Two specific roles of mental qualities are also worth focusing on. If we can make sense of these being played by unconscious properties that will help us grasp the notion of unconscious mental qualities. First, mental qualities are the primary properties in virtue of which experiences resemble and differ.9 If there can be such resemblances among unconscious states, of which we are by hypothesis unaware, we can say there are unconscious mental qualities. Second, when an experience features mental qualities, they are properties that fix what the experience is like, or what it’s like to be aware of the mental state given that we are aware of it. This understanding leaves open the possibility of unconscious mental qualities. It is just not obvious that the role of fixing what mental states are like when we are aware of them requires mental qualities to be eternally conscious, like lightbulbs that are never switched off.10
15We can encapsulate the thesis of unconscious mental qualities by appealing to Kripkean ideas about natural kinds. Kripke’s influential thought is that many of a kind’s most striking properties may be only contingently possessed by a salient sample, and used to fix the reference of our terms to a deeper essence which is shared by the salient sample with other samples of the kind. So, although we standardly think of water as transparent, potable, etc., water lacking these properties will still count provided that it shares the essence of the salient sample – being H2O (Kripke, 1980). In these terms, the claim about mental qualities, or qualitative character, is that consciousness/awareness may turn out to be a reference-fixing property contingently possessed by the salient sample – those mental qualities we directly experience. With this clarification out of the way, we can turn to consider arguments against unconscious mental qualities.
- 11 But see Leibniz (1714), Rosenthal (2005), Lockwood (1989), Feigl (1975).
- 12 E.g. Byrne (2013) and Tye & Wright (2011) infer that propositional attitudes, since they are (as s (...)
16Opposition to unconscious mental qualities is longstanding.11 An indicator of its current default status is that the rejection of unconscious mental qualities often features only as an implicit premise within wider chains of reasoning.12
17Two further things are striking about this opposition. First, few theorists argue that mental qualities cannot be unconscious. Most stipulate, or pronounce, qualitative characters to be exclusively conscious (e.g. Kriegel, 2011, p. 86; Mendelovici, 2018; Foster, 1982, p. 101). I ignore such stipulations and pronouncements. Second, the arguments against unconscious mental qualities are surprisingly weak. I survey them below, and show that they are unpersuasive. This survey is intended, but is unlikely, to be exhaustive. I will likely have omitted an argument against unconscious mental qualities worth considering. I hope, however, that the range of responses available to purveyors of unconscious mental qualities suggests how further such arguments might be resisted, and evinces the (perhaps surprising) robustness of the posit of unconscious mental qualities.
- 13 This ‘argument’ might perhaps be fairly numbered among the stipulations about mental qualities. An (...)
1. Galen Strawson (2008) argues that mental qualities (‘experiential what-it-is-like-ness’, in his terms) can no more exist without consciousness than a branch-bending can exist without a branch. But this argument assumes that mental qualities are modifications of consciousness, as a branch-bending modifies a branch, and the believer in unconscious mental qualities might well deny this. Indeed, if the operative claim in Strawson’s argument is that mental qualities are exclusively modifications of consciousness, then this is exactly what his opponent will deny. That would make Strawson’s argument question-begging. And it does appear that no weaker thesis would serve Strawson’s purposes. For even if we grant that mental qualities are modifications of conscious mentality, it does not follow that they cannot also be modifications of unconscious mentality – just as many non-branches can bend. Strawson’s argument therefore requires the stronger, and question-begging, thesis that mental qualities are exclusively modifications of consciousness.13
2. John Searle (1992) claims that positing unconscious mental qualities entails dualism. But that conclusion, if it is unwelcome, follows only given Searle’s stated assumption that the unconscious brain exclusively features neurophysiological processes, plus the thesis, which he does not defend, that unconscious mental qualities cannot be realised by any such processes. It is unclear why Searle believes that unconscious mental qualities cannot be realised by neurophysiological process. Granted, there is a sense of ‘neurophysiological processes’ which one can hear as excluding such properties as mental qualities. But this would guarantee the dualistic result, and the focus would switch to Searle’s entitlement to that sense of ‘neurophysiological processes’ in his argument. Given the variety of reductive accounts of mental qualities in ultimately neurophysiological terms, we require reasons why unconscious mental qualities, specifically, cannot be neurophysiologically realised.
It might be thought that what is really operative here is Searle’s independent argument that conscious mental qualities are irreducible to any conventional neurophysiological processes. Searle might judge unconscious mental qualities to be irreducible for the same reason, the thought would go. But we can see this reasoning is incorrect, from the fact that Searle does not believe his argument shows that conscious mental qualities entail dualism: Searle considers consciousness a distinctive (‘higher-level’) neurophysiological process. Therefore, Searle must have special reasons for holding that unconscious mental qualities in particular are neurophysiologically irreducible, so as to entail dualism. But nowhere does he say what these reasons are, nor, hence, why we should accept his argument.
- 14 This is indeed the sort of answer proponents of unconscious mental qualities often give – e.g. Ros (...)
- 15 Lockwood’s (1989) term. Note that an ‘extrinsic’ account of the consciousness of mental qualities (...)
- 16 Notably, Shani (2020) and Chalmers (2013) – both of whom are unsympathetic with theories that posi (...)
- 17 Another reading of Foster’s argument might make more of his distinction between sensing and concei (...)
3. John Foster (1982) distinguishes consciousness of a mental quality from ‘conceiving’ it. In consciousness, or sensation, he says, a mental quality – say of navy blue – is present (‘realized’), whereas in recollection or imagination it is only ‘represented’. This, he suggests, explains the phenomenological difference between sensation and recollection. Foster then assumes, for reductio, that the navy-blue mental quality can exist unexperienced, and asks in virtue of what it is that the quality can then be present-as-experienced, or instantiated, in an episode of sensation. The answer the friend of unconscious mental qualities must give, Foster claims, is that the mental quality is sensed by being the object of the subject’s awareness.14 But Foster rejects as incoherent the proposal that such an act of awareness could actually constitute the mental quality’s instantiation. The alternative, he argues, is to frame matters conversely: it is a quality’s sheer presence that provides awareness of itself – mental qualities are ‘self-revealing’, hence essentially conscious.
This ingenious argument ultimately seems guilty of begging the question. The key move is that awareness cannot constitute the presence, or instantiation, of a mental quality in experience. Foster does not explain why he finds this proposal incoherent. But we need not dwell on that, because it just isn’t what proponents of unconscious mental qualities say. In fact, it directly contradicts their doctrine. The purveyor of unconscious mental qualities claims that mental qualities can be present/instantiated, whether or not they are objects of awareness: that is their core doctrine. So they are far from holding that awareness itself ever constitutes a mental quality’s instantiation. What they say is that awareness – to state the obvious – makes us aware of, or discloses,15 mental qualities that are (or can be) present anyway. The purveyor of unconscious mental qualities certainly owes an account of awareness, to complete their picture. And perhaps all existing models of this sort fail (Shani, 2020; Mihalik, 2019). But that is no objection to unconscious mental qualities as such,16 nor is it the line Foster takes.
Behind Foster’s argument there seems to be an assumption that mental qualities have no genuine existence except as sensed. If one thought that, one might well want to ask how awareness conjures a mental quality into being, and to dismiss the suggestion that it could. But that assumption flatly contradicts the doctrine of unconscious mental qualities. This makes Foster’s argument, ultimately, question-begging.17
4. Charles Siewert identifies the issue over unconscious mental qualities as being whether unconscious states could resemble and differ in the qualitative ways that conscious states do. Could a blindsighter’s discrimination of yellow and blue conceivably involve states that differ as our visual experiences of yellow and blue do? He argues (1998, p. 88):
These experiences differ as nothing could differ without being an episode of consciousness. The differences in question are these: the way it seems to you for it to look as if something is yellow differs from the way it seems to you for it to look as if something is blue.
Siewert stresses that mental qualities are properties bound up in experiential appearances to us. Plausibly, a blindsighter’s states present no appearance to her: specifically, they do not differ regarding how things look to her. So there is a way the subject’s experiences of yellow and blue differ that cannot carry over to the blindsighter. Nonetheless, the believer in unconscious mental qualities will likely view these ‘how-things-look-colourwise’ properties as conjunctions of a mental colour quality and the subject’s awareness of this quality. In which case the bases of conscious differences, the properties in virtue of which yellow and blue differ looks-wise when the subject is aware of them, namely a certain constellation of qualitative features, might well be taken to exist unconsciously. And these might be taken to resemble and differ in just the right qualitative ways to ground the relevant resemblances among the conscious appearings. If Siewert now claims that these qualitative differences can obtain only when things look or seem some way to the subject, i.e. consciously, he would seem to beg the question. In sum, though Siewert may be right in isolating a difference between conscious qualitative states that cannot be present among unconscious states (exemplified by the ‘how-things-look-colourwise’ property), this does not show that mental qualities cannot exist unconsciously. I think at root Siewert may be expressing the intuition that a colour quality cannot be present without something’s looking some way to someone (i.e. consciously). But in the context that is only an intuition, and it clearly loads the dice against the advocate of unconscious mental qualities. It requires far more in the way of support than Siewert provides, to be the basis of a persuasive argument against unconscious mental qualities.
- 18 See e.g. Rosenthal (2005), Lycan (1996). But see Coleman (2015; 2018), Lockwood (1989).
- 19 Brentano presents it as following from the infinite regress objection, but it is only one solution (...)
5. Brentano (1870) claims that every mental phenomenon presents something – this is his thesis of intentionality as mentality’s mark. He additionally claims that every mental phenomenon is also the object of a presentation. Further, every presentation of an intentional object has an ‘intensity’, or strength, he affirms. For example, the hearing of a sound presents the sound with a certain intensity. The intensity of the object must be matched by its presentation, he says; since inner-perception – Brentano’s construal of consciousness – is infallible, it cannot present a strong sound as a weak one, say. It follows that the presentation of a presentation of an object must share intensity with the first-order presentation – the latter is now the object, and its representation must share its intensity. Thus, when I hear a sound with a certain intensity, the presentation of the hearing, which must accompany it since all mental phenomena are by hypothesis presented, shares its intensity – i.e. represents the hearing of the sound with the same intensity as the hearing presents the sound itself.
Brentano can now infer that every mental phenomenon is presented with non-zero intensity – after all, objects or presentations of objects with zero intensity will presumably not constitute intentional states. And he concludes that every mental phenomenon is therefore conscious, by virtue of being represented with positive intensity by another mental phenomenon.
In reply, one might doubt that a mental phenomenon’s being mentally represented entails consciousness (Wakefield, 2018). But if one posits unconscious mentality, one is likely to hold that consciousness consists in being suitably mentally represented.18 Given this dialectic, if Brentano can show that every mental phenomenon is represented with non-zero strength, it plausibly follows that all mental phenomena are conscious. After all, the fiercest objection he considers to his thesis of the pervasive consciousness of mental phenomena is that consciousness-as-mental-representation, plus the pervasive consciousness thesis, provokes an infinite regress of states. Brentano blocks this regress by positing unitary, self-referential, mental acts. But the thesis that mental representation enables consciousness is assumed by his objector, whose argument is that the train of mental representation must end in an unconscious state. So Brentano’s opponent arguably accepts that mental representation enables consciousness.
But there are other places to attack Brentano’s argument. Even granting that all mental phenomena are intentional, it is unclear why all must also be intentional objects. This does follow from Brentano’s thesis that intentionality involves self-representational states. But opponents need not accept that thesis.19 Vulnerable, too, is Brentano’s claim that the intensity of presentations of intentional objects must match their object’s intensity, and the claim he thinks entails this, that inner-perception (aka consciousness) is infallible. That all mental phenomena are represented themselves, and that consciousness is infallible, seem just the sorts of claims that advocates of unconscious mentality would reject (Rosenthal 2005, Freud 1953). I tend to grant consciousness’s accuracy, for my part. But this still leaves Brentano’s claim that all mental phenomena are not only intentional but are intentional objects. Given the proximity of the theses that a mental phenomenon is mentally represented, and that consciousness consists in mental representation of a mental phenomenon, this is not a claim I am disposed to accept. And Brentano supplies no good reason to accept it. So his argument against unconscious mentality fails.
The surveyed arguments are unpersuasive. We cannot decisively rule out the existence, or future production, of a sound argument against unconscious mental qualities. But for now we are free to pursue the Grand Unification concerning the mark of the mental.
18At issue is mentality’s boundaries: which phenomena to include, and which to reject, as belonging to the mind. Accordingly, we seek a characteristic – a mark – borne by those phenomena that are most plausibly considered mental, and lacked by those that are not. Furthermore, if a mark unifies phenomena that i) garner widespread support regarding their mental status, while ii) being prima facie, or often considered, distinct, that speaks powerfully in its favour. This section argues that the posit of unconscious mental qualities possesses this virtue of unifying ostensibly disparate, nonetheless plausibly mental, phenomena, providing a strikingly coherent overall conception of mind.
19First, there is the obvious point that if one takes seriously Brentano, PIT, and Freud on the mind’s nature, then positing unconscious mental qualities seems to be the route forward. This is the have-your-cake-and-eat-it motivation. This move is not congenial to those theoretical camps, but we have examined the arguments of Brentano, PIT proponents, and others, against unconscious mental qualities, and found them wanting.
- 20 For further development of this argument, in specific connection with the issue of conscious and u (...)
20Regarding Freud things are more interesting. He does not explicitly argue for his thesis that, though there is unconscious mentality, it does not resemble conscious qualitative goings-on. Like Brentano, he construes consciousness as inner perception. Unlike Brentano, he deems the neurophysiological processes underlying consciousness to be genuinely mental, with conscious mental qualities constituting in effect inner perceptions of these processes (Wakefield, 2018). This stance involves Freud in various difficulties. For instance, he sometimes claims that the unconscious is just like conscious mentality only with consciousness removed. But that cannot be literally true unless the unconscious involves unconscious mental qualities, given that the stream of consciousness undoubtedly features mental qualities. Further, he posits unconscious mental processes because of the ‘incompleteness’ of ‘conscious sequences’, especially those leading to action. Given this incompleteness, Freud infers, consciousness is ‘dependent on something else’, and he holds that the real mental processes productive of action, etc., are unconscious, hence neurophysiological. This move excludes conscious mentality, including mental qualities, from behaviour-generating mental sequences – hence epiphenomenalism about such properties as pain, feelings of anger, conscious thoughts, etc., threatens. This is a distinctly unwelcome result for Freud’s project of a realistic empirical psychology. That conscious mental qualities contribute to our activities is surely a premise about as certain as any in psychology. Such difficulties can be dismissed by ruling that unconscious mentality and conscious mentality are of one kind – mental quality-involving. Then Freud can cleave to his dictum that the unconscious is like consciousness only with awareness removed. And the puzzle concerning the role of feelings in action is solved: mental qualities can be said to contribute to action whether conscious or unconscious. The mind is of a single unified nature, only we are unaware of all the mental qualities our minds contain. Thus the ‘incomplete’ chains Freud observes at the conscious level are filled in by unconscious mental-qualitative processes, instead of being made redundant by wholly unconscious, mental quality-free, parallel processes. Freud should posit unconscious mental qualities.20
- 21 The locus classicus of this view is Searle (1992), but he has been largely followed by those conte (...)
- 22 One might seem to be able to reply that mental content simply comes in two radically different kin (...)
- 23 Does this thesis commit one to any view about the physicality/reducibility of mental qualities, or (...)
21The lesson for Freud generalises. Those PIT proponents who acknowledge unconscious mentality must say strange things about it and its interactions with consciousness, on account of their rejection of unconscious mental qualities. For instance they say that unconscious mentality has intentionality only potentially, or, more bizarrely, that unconscious states do themselves possess content, in some sense, by virtue of being disposed to produce bona-fide conscious, mental quality-based, content.21 This is analogous to claiming that a bomb with its fuse intact is exploding right now, in a sense, thanks to its disposition to explode if lit. What the relevant sense is, nobody has explained, and it seems unintelligible. It appears to require equating dispositional property p with occurrent property p – an equivalence of which no PIT proponent has provided a single other example or precedent.22 Nor is it really intelligible how unconscious mentality, if it lacks mental qualities, hence – for PIT – genuine content, interacts with conscious mentality in chains of thought, to yield actions and inferences. This is another reincarnation of Descartes’ interaction problem, which has long plagued the philosophy of mind, and which led Freud and his contemporaries to their inelegant parallelism. All this perplexity disappears if we say that unconscious mentality has the same nature as conscious mentality – mental qualities-of-content.23
22The outcome is this. As Freud noted, the stream of consciousness is incomplete, in failing wholly to account for the outputs of reasoning, and action. These chains, I say, are completed by unconscious content-qualities. When we reason, converse, think, act, this is due to mental sequences partly spanning the conscious and the unconscious mind, and which are all the while mental quality-involving. So, since the stream of consciousness is incomplete, we must posit also a stream of unconsciousness – of unconscious-but-mental-quality-involving contentful processes of essentially the same kind as their conscious counterparts. Indeed, given the intimate interplay of conscious with unconscious mental processes in human activity, we must ultimately posit a single mental content-quality stream, partly conscious and partly not. This is the mind’s true nature.
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