Are Myths Valuable?

[Alan V]

That is way more meaningful than having an inner Batman who is tempered by an inner Alfred. I'm not say this isn't all that bad. I'm just saying that moderners need to start creating better gods.

Well, you could look at Batman as illustrating the duality of human nature, where someone acts in certain ways in ordinary society but in others when he is trying to live up to his own personal mythology.

So I guess I am of the school of thought that says the popularity of stories is determined by their perceived relevance, so it's no wonder we end up with long-lived myths with universal messages. To me, myths are still just literature, and not proof that such stories derive from a universal unconscious as Jung would have us believe. Yes, we all have our human nature, but is it unconscious? Some people write some stories which become myths. They are lucky in so doing.

But I take your point on Kali.

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I see what you're getting at but that may have been a weak example.  With practice, in our formative years, much of maths, e.g. simple addition, becomes automated. 'Novelty' is the criteria that determines which level of concentrated attention / awareness is required.

If you have ever slipped into a 'flow state' you'll know what it feels like to 'watch' your automated processes at work.

At this point of the discussion, I typically point out that not all habits make themselves.  Many require years of dedicated attention, after which they become habitual.  So consciousness is still a part of the process when considering habits, but at an earlier stage.

In a longer answer I could expound on a number of different processing-layers (syntactic, semantic etc.) that would make up Popper's World 2 (as described in the thread about Morality that's on-going).

I have not denied automated or habitual layers of information processing, but several of them require conscious monitoring to run smoothly.

Attention is key to reasonable behaviors because it makes careful observations and adjusts habitual reactions to them, or selects and employs entirely different strategies, depending on the situations. We are bundles of habits, some of which are contrary to others. We have to be sure to apply the best habits to the right situations, and we can't always depend on mechanical cues.

My alarm goes off and I wake up.  I was not paying attention to my alarm clock.

Here is the problem.  You have a habit.  You hear the alarm and jump out of bed because of your habit, not because you have thought "I must get out of bed now."  But then you realize it's a Sunday, so you turn off the alarm and climb back in bed.  It's typically only when habits misfire that we have do fall back on conscious processing.

Reductionists point out simple example to support their premise, but it is typically in much more complex examples where the obverse can be observed.

I'm arguing that the mental/information processes are the same at those different levels.

Yes, I realize.

If you are arguing for Cartesian Dualism - that the body and the mind are made from different substances, one physical and one magical - then we are on different pages.

I have tried to make it clear that I consider the mind to be virtual.  Spiritualists reify it into a substance.  But there is a very clear distinction I want to maintain between reasons and physical causes.  You are saying everything is reducible to merely physical cause-and-effect processes, and I am maintaining that some observably are not. Even if my examples are few and far between, I think I am demonstrating there are exceptions to your premise.