[I cannot resist a speculative aside: if the autonomy of our conscious really is illusory, why does it exist? Surely anything it can do the unconscious can do better (indeed probably already has done perfectly well)? Could consciousness be a chance and accidental by-product of building a brain to a certain ‘spec.’ and then using it in particular and novel ways? Perhaps the potential in a brain the size of ours to reverberate within itself in such a way as to generate foci of excitement in such a particular way as to induce awareness is fortuitous? Might this weird, and possibly biologically pointless, potential have become actual only once we developed language, that essential tool for reflection and synthesis? Perhaps, in other words, consciousness did not evolve biologically, but socially? And if that were true, you have to wonder what other fantastic, but as yet unrealised, potential aptitudes might be lurking in there.]

We are discussing our conscious and unconscious as if they were quite separate and absolutely different creatures. Are consciousness and unconsciousness distinct and different or are they just two aspects of the same array of mental procedures, two parts of the same psychological animal? Bearing dutifully in mind the important proviso that the psychology of consciousness is in its very early infancy, and ‘facts’ are thin on the ground, we can nonetheless begin to discern likelihoods and possibilities. And it does seem that the conscious and the unconscious really are radically different. They seem to use radically different processing paradigms, and they seem to have radically different processing capacities. They seem to do things differently, and to be differently effective in different domains.

Estimates have been made of the relative abilities of the conscious and the unconscious (and see Nørretranders 1998). We should not take them too seriously, but they are probably of rather approximately the right order, probably near enough to a truth of some kind to be valid general thought fodder. The unconscious, when going well, probably processes some eleven million ‘bits’ of information per second, expressed in computer speak. The conscious, at full stretch, may manage about sixteen. The unconscious may, in other words, be able to deploy about seven hundred thousand times the power of the conscious. The processing capacity of the conscious may be only about 0.0000014 that of the unconscious!

Not only that, but the two mental ‘organs’ use different processing paradigms. We know that the conscious processes information slowly and serially, one item at a time, one plodding snippet after another. We also know that the unconscious, in contrast, processes information rapidly, in a parallel, all-over-the-brain-at-the-same-time, hugely multiple and incalculably interconnected way. The conscious, to draw an imperfect analogy, functions like a single, and rather basic, computer whereas the unconscious behaves more like a huge number of computers connected together at all times and able to operate and communicate simultaneously.

Your conscious, and your unconscious, in other words, seem to be very different creatures. The unconscious is fast, global, holistic and smart. The conscious is embarrassingly ponderous, serial, local and limited. The unconscious probably supplies and manages the conscious, but, if they really are radically different then they probably operate radically different learning paradigms and learn in radically different ways. They probably even learn radically different things and it is possible that they evolved to do exactly this.

To summarise thus far: The notion that our P conscious directs, & carries out, all important mental business is a very natural illusion. The brain is almost entirely an unconscious organ, it does everything unconsciously first. Consciousness is a rather small and imperfect add-on of rather unclear purpose. Logic dictates this and experiment concurs, showing that the unconscious does the business a small half second ahead of the conscious. Consciousness is possibly the result of reverberation, feedback among the brain’s circuitry, perhaps among thalamo-cortical loops. Consciousness may be a re-experience experience; material from within the unconscious travelling round feedback loops and being somehow re-presented to mind. Consciousness and unconsciousness seem to be radically different, with radically different behaviours and capacities. The one is swift, huge and global, the other ponderous, small and local. The unconscious mind is parallel, while the conscious mind is serial. The unconscious probably deploys consciousness for its own purposes, at times of its own choosing and in its own preferred ways (unless, of course, the whole thing is accidental).

How might all this affect learning? Since consciousness is small, sluggish and serial it seems to me that it may be unnatural and restrictive to demand that it be set to assimilating detail, learning facts; that may not be what it’s for. Perhaps there are two kinds of learning – the understanding of conceptual ideas and the assimilation of facts. Perhaps meta-cognitive understanding demands consciousness while the unconscious is the genius of assimilation. Perhaps, once structures are understood, ‘facts’ are merely exemplars, nonchalantly absorbed without our having to know how?