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Then if because they have a personality they have a subconscious and if having a subconscious implies having a consciousness like you said so, robots have consciousness, shit, computer programs have consciousness.

I said that if it looks like a personality then it is one; nothing about consciousness here.

 

It is, there might be a common sense, but it's subjective, just go to the off-topic thread of intelhunter where he posts Albatross_ list of people he thinks are role-playing, a lot of trusted member are listed as role-players.

Then use your own discretion. Alternatively, just pick out any relevant account, reliable or not.

 

Deduction is a thing that only humans can do

Debatable. There is evidence of primates being able to use basic reasoning.

 

and are necessary to qualify something as conscious.

That's just untrue. You may be confusing 'intelligence' and 'consciousness'.

 

I'm not implying I know where the boundary is, I'm implying there is one. There is obviously a reason to think that there would be one. Babies (at least newborn ones) can't logically be conscious because if one has nothing to think of (no complex memory imput/no extended stimuli/no concepts of things and so on) he can't think anything.

That's not really true. If it were then no-one would be thinking, since gaining a concept of things and storing experience in memory both require consciousness. If a baby was not conscious, then it would never meet these criteria, even later.

Besides that, thinking doesn't define consciousness. Experience does, and that experience is present from birth. You can stop thinking (in a decision-making or considerate way) and still be conscious: much meditation is focused around this.

 

That's why scientists say that the language development was so important to develop intelligence, not only because people were able to share knowledge, but they were also able to make things into concepts, and think through this concepts (words, in this case).

Key word being 'intelligence'. The above is true for intelligence, but not consciousness.

 

I think you didn't understood it, what I meant is that you have to conceptualize things to actually be able to think. Now, as you read this, you're thinking through words, they could be either visual or audio concepts you're creating, before we could speak, we conceptualized things that we saw, and we are able to think through images. What this means is, if you have little stimuli with your five senses (i.e. you're a newborn) you can't think, because you have nothing to think of. You have no words in your brain, you have no images, you have nothing. And slowly you gain enough of them to be able to actually think and deduct. Animals have images and such, but they are not capable of making concepts as well as we.

If the baby was not conscious when it was born, then it wouldn't be able to form these concepts. Consciousness is what lays down experience, and it is conscious experience that goes into memory. Without consciousness, the concepts that you claim to be necessary for conscious thought would not form, and thus there would never be consciousness.

 

I have logically demonstrated why they having a consciousness is impossible. Give me evidence on why they are then.

Your demonstration relies on the necessity of abstract conceptualisation for conscious thought. This is wrong, for reasons I have stated and will again:

You don't have to be able to reason, or consciously think at all (which is what does require what you mention) to be conscious. You can do this yourself - it is often aimed for with meditation - stop thinking and you will not stop being conscious.

Without consciousness the concepts and memories that you say are necessary for conscious thought would never be created, since they are created by consciousness.

 

That aside, the baby is medically conscious. Usually the two definitions (medical and yours) do not differ, and there's no reason to think that they would here.

 

 

I imagine you quoted the wrong post? If not, explain, because I don't see how this answer anything.

"It's stimuli that makes memories"

"No, it's consciousness"

My point is that sensory input alone does not make memories; it is conscious experience that feeds into the memory.

 

Ok, there are so many quotes that I'm having a hard time working with pronoums, try to differentiate animals and babies without only using "they" or "them".

You took the pronoun out of nowhere a couple of quotes back; we were talking about general human ability to think without long-term memory. It wasn't going anywhere anyway.

 

Anyway, scientists don't consider animals conscious, and it's logically impossible that we were always conscious, because we didn't always had concepts before stimuli.

Err... citation definitely needed on this one. I'm not a huge reader of scientific literature but I'm fairly sure that the general consensus is that animals are conscious.

 

The ones you point to being signs of consciousness, and obviously are not.

I didn't give any examples of signs of consciousness in animals. I will now go into detail about why I think animals are conscious.

 

Personality and executive function:

If you have ever owned a pet then you will know that it seems as though animals have personalities. While it is typical for humans to ascribe human traits to non-humans, it is still valid since there is still a personality. Personality does tend to be a sign of consciousness; [Freud] while there are dominant subconscious aspects of the personality - predominantly the id in animals - there would be no executive function (overall control) nor would there be any management of the id without the mainly conscious ego; were this the case then training would be impossible as the animal would always act on its spur-of-the-moment desires. Here animal consciousness makes sense in evolutionary terms, too:

It is conscious function that allows for planning, restraint and other executive function, essential for survival. It is beneficial for a creature to be conscious right down the line until neural function starts to be really low.

 

Self-awareness:

Though there isn't anything approaching a standard test for consciousness, a good place to start is the self-awareness test. Self-awareness - the concept of self - is typically seen as a hallmark of consciousness. It can be tested with reflections:

Your subject is an intelligent animal - often a primate, though this has been known to work for dolphins, pigeons and elephants, among others - which has a part of its skin - usually not far from eye level - discoloured without its knowledge The animal is shown its own reflection, and is observed to attempt to interact with the corresponding part of its actual body. This result shows that the animal can consider the reflection as itself, and thus is self-aware.

 

While I think this is getting further and further from tulpas, that should suffice. Also, a few posts back you made a duplicate post; you may want to fix this now for clarity later on.

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I really like how you looked at this scientifically, so +1 for that.

 

However,perhaps you were a bit too cynical. I can see why many disagree with you.

 

I for one don't, as I like to look at this tulpa business rationally.

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I really like how you looked at this scientifically, so +1 for that.

 

However,perhaps you were a bit too cynical. I can see why many disagree with you.

 

I for one don't, as I like to look at this tulpa business rationally.

 

I'm really not trying to attack Alba's theory at every opportunity, but his approach was not scientific:

He didn't back anything up with any established facts or theories. Instead of giving examples of why he thinks that tulpas are based on deception, he just said that he thought it. This theory has no logical grounding; it is complete conjecture. Before you cite the explanations for various phenomena, they too are not based in actual evidence. Moreover Alba skips over parallel processing, instead of addressing it.

The point is that Alba doesn't say why this theory is better than any other, or even why we should believe it at all.

[the rest of this post was removed for being uncalled-for]

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Hello, I'm sorry to intrude on your one-on-one discussion session. I'm not even sure what I've just done — it seems I'm just responding to some arbitrarily picked parts of text — but here is the product.

I didn't bother with putting quoted text into those neat boxes, so you can't outright tell who wrote what, but what the hell, at least you'll have more fun remembering or seeking out what you wrote. As for other readers, well, too bad.

 

> The memory is fallible, and doesn't keep logs.

Actually, it sort of does, but it's a lack of a "log entry" that could potentially make a memory suspicious. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_distrust_syndrome)

However, you are basically right; people can always rationalise the source of a stray memory and there is no such thing as a complex memory system in the brain that monitors and logs its own activity.

 

> … entropy…

> Actually, if you think regularly about entropy and evolution…

I fail to assign your usage of the word entropy to any generally accepted concept— to me, it has no meaning. It appears you tried to include some paradigm of yours in your message. Although I have nothing against word misuse if it doesn't concern the central point or if I manage to figure out the meaning, this particular instance really baffles me, and I can't just overlook it. So, how about you elaborate on it? If you think it deviates from the topic too much, there's always the PM system.

 

> When it does not have connections (or have still "immature" ones, like you want to call them), it does not have abstract concepts of the world and therefore cannot have consciousness.

I think you meant concepts in general. First, concepts are already abstracted or generalised, and second, applying abstract as a qualifier to concept usually serves to distinguish it from a concrete concept, which is an idea reflecting concrete objects like chairs or books, as opposed to abstract ones such as velocity, an integral or love.

Moreover, the presence of a certain configuration of synaptic connections alone, assuming that's what you meant, doesn't encode much information. It's mainly their (chemical?) state that encodes information, since synaptogenesis is a rather slow process.

 

> You could argue that the consciousness and subconsciousness still can't be considered subconscious and consciousness without each other, but that's not how scientists see it.

Well, I don't know about psychologists, but most neuroscientists and neuropsychologists outright disregard the term conscious mind due to its vagueness. It's an interesting philosophical concept, but that's about it— to my knowledge, much of the scientific community in my country avoids it like the plague. Consciousness is used solely as the cognitive state (explained in the quoted text at the bottom). Consciously is often synonymous with voluntarily.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_consciousness

 

> memory before the age of three is probably down to a lack of physical neural development enabling long-term memories to be stored

There are two or three kinds of memory:

Procedural memory, broadly speaking, is an inherent attribute of most neural networks. As long as something has an adaptable neural network system, it also has the ability to form implicit memories.

Declarative memory — this is probably what you meant — is something that has eluded all attempts at determining its operation since its existence was established. It stores information without the need of repetitive stimulus feeding (training).

And working memory, which is unrelated to the topic at hand.

Despite their sharing a common word, memory, these terms describe very different capacities. It would be a great mistake to think of them as a single function.

Infants are able to memorise and retain memories for many days and as they grow older it becomes months, but for some reason, their explicit memories aren't preserved into subsequent stages of maturing.

Carolyn Rovee-Collier, a memory researcher, proved that infants do possess long-term memory. She published the article Evidence of long-term memory in infancy, but I don't think it's available on the internet. There's some info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory#Techniques_used_to_assess_infants.E2.80.99_memory.

 

> My point is that sensory input alone does not make memories; it is conscious experience that feeds into the memory.

Sensory input and its unconscious processing can affect the state of a neural network to so great a degree that the effect can be regarded as a formation of implicit memories. Visual pattern recognition is an example; the learned patterns constitute memories. Again, memory is an ambiguous word — also, the vagueness of consciousness strikes again. Obviously, consciousness (the state) is required for procedural learning, but is it the conscious mind, which motorheadlk probably meant, that carries out the learning? The answer depends on your meaning of conscious mind

 

> we were talking about general human ability to think without long-term memory. It wasn't going anywhere anyway.

Sorry to be blunt, but it appears to me that memory is something you two barely understand. And I don't mean just to the extent to which it is generally admitted that we don't understand many function of the brain.

Ah, motorheadlk's posts give me brain damage and waffles, you could really benefit from reading some sciencey articles, even if just on good old Wikipedia.

Then again, I only skimmed the conversation, so perhaps I misjudged you.

 

> You may be confusing 'intelligence' and 'consciousness'.

And you intelligence with cognition.

Nah, they both mean basically the same thing, but psychologists prefer cognition, possibly because intelligence is vaguer and too broad. Animals possess intelligence, but are incapable of cognition.

 

> logical grounding

Uh—— I don't understand this phrase. I don't seem to know what grounding is. Does it have the same meaning as basis?

By the way, the word logic and its forms are misused a lot nowadays, aren't they? I think you can even get away with saying something to this effect: "This radiator is illogical."

Grounding, as it seems, can be good or bad, premises can be right/true or wrong/false, but it's the process, reasoning or argumentation, that can be either (logically) valid or fallacious.

Okay, adding logic to the blacklist section of my mental lexicon. It's just too confusing.

 

Here's something I wrote a couple of months ago, so it might be outdated and off-topic, but I'll post it anyway. It seems you two, motorheadlk in particular, are struggling with some of the terms, and this is what I came up with when I was plagued by cognitive dissonance they gave me.

 

So a bunch of people (I bet it was the philosophers— it's always the philosophers) decided they needed another useless obscure abstraction and a term for it to conceptualise the things in their brains that react to various stimuli and situations (sentience) and that think and do all that fancy cognitive stuff most non-human animals can't imitate (sapience).

And so we now endeavour to ascribe a meaning to and interpret it in the conceptual framework of contemporary science. Are we met with any success? Well, a little, perhaps, but actual scientists seem to avoid terms like conscious mind, subconscious, definitely sapience, and to some extent even sentience. I've formed my own informal definitions, and even though I seldom use the terms, the concepts have proven helpful on a couple of occasions. I lay them out here.

Consciousness is a state of the mind. When a person is alert and aware and not unconscious; asleep, cataleptic or, heaven forbid, dead, etc…, then that person is conscious. That is the generally accepted meaning. More specifically, consciousness is the process occurring in the conscious mind as opposed to the unconscious. That is the meaning this community uses the most, I think. Sentience is the ability to utilise the conscious mind, which, of course, implies its existence or presence, and the manifestation or indication of its activity, no matter how primitive— you can regard sentience as a continuous attribute, and thus consider the hamster less sentient than the human, crudely said. That's why you can say, "this mindless automaton is acting as if it were sentient" — I don't think you'd use the word conscious. I think it goes without saying that sentience, as I formulated it, is measurable at least subjectively. So is sapience. Sapience, as hinted above, comprises the executive system and higher cognitive functions, which allow the human to use the powerful communication tool, language, and also read, learn, reason, understand complicated human ideas and apply knowledge, etc… you get the idea. Sapience seems to me to be of a similar class of concepts as sentience, except that it is more specific or restricted so as to set humans and perhaps other advanced beings apart from other animals. My idea of sapience is actually identical to cognition, which is the term I usually use. That said, sapience should never appear in my writing again.

I realise I'm probably slightly redefining (I mean refining :-)) the terms here, but they were, in my opinion, poorly defined in the first place, anyway.

 

I think the word cognition is possibly what you both are looking for. It's a really useful idea for these discussions. If you are not, well, never mind.

 

Incidentally, there is already an old thread that deals with consciousness to some degree: http://tulpa.info/forums/Thread-split-Consciousness-et-cetera

You might want to take a look at it.

 

Oh god, what am I doing with my life? This isn't science; this is philosophy. Dear sirs, I shall now lean back in my armchair, light a cigar, and enjoy the mood. And when I'm finished, I'll get out the trusty revolver my grandfather gave me and blow my brains out. Hmm—— if only I had some cartridges. I bet the damn thing doesn't even work any more.

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Oh my, it seems I'm going to have a hard time to reply to all of you.

I'm brazilian and my english is not really good, I'll do every mistake you imagine, but I'll try to avoid them.

 

Tulpa: Kuruminha

Age: Began on the middle of october.

Form: My avatar.

Sentience: Confirmed.

Mindvoice: Not yet.

Working on: Visualization and Mindspeaking.

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I guess I'll respond to what was aimed at me

 

Infants' memory. I was aware that infants do have long-term (this term is more useful here than naming specific kinds of memory) and I stated such in an earlier post.

 

Our being ignorant of memory: Maybe you did misread. As an example of memory, take a look right back at my second post in this thread. On the diagram I'm a lot more specific in memory, so that better outlines my understanding. For the other stuff about memory;

As a point on consciousness, I don't think that there is a real distinction between the medical and psychological view. You can't have one without the other.

For some memory - visual, motor and so on - that is not accessible at all to the consciousness except for practical use - conscious experience may not factor in. However, for those that are - semantic and episodic - it is my understanding that conscious experience lays down the memory (or perhaps the other way around).

 

Logical grounding: it means that the theory is extrapolated from known facts via logical deduction.

 

Cognition: it is my understanding that the field on cognitive psychology covers information processing, problem solving, and memory among other things. In this sense animals are capable of cognition, and the term isn't really useful. Perhaps you are using another definition of the term.

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I thought the short/long-term classification of memory was outdated. Even if it still isn't, there's too much dispute about its existence and no convincing evidence to confirm it. I don't like to use it at all.

 

The section concerning memory in infancy would've been much clearer, had you used the other classification.

Children learn language among other skills during that period, and they remember words and phrases after having heard them just once. Implicit memory, or some of its subtypes, is at its peak. So seems to be semantic memory, for knowledge is also rapidly acquired during these years (although I think much of it is replaced or buried in later years). These various types are undeniably considered long-term, and I think it was the episodic memory capability that was in question, I think, a memory which is long-term too.

 

You said without explanation that classifying memory by duration is useful in this instance, but try as I may, I fail to see how. I don't think this argument will be very productive, should you wish to pursue it, but meh. Personally, I'd like to drop this matter. It's off-topic, anyway.

 

> maybe you did misread

Ah, I thought as much. I was probably too quick to judge— I got the impression from your discussion style and that you used long-term memory. What a blundering fool I am when I try to comprehend text in a hurry

, and especially when I'm not in a hurry

. Still, it's not good enough just to know the terms (again, just an impression— chances are you didn't just read a bunch of Wikipedia articles, but actually studied it), but also be familiar with the research and aware of the limits and problems of the theories they come from.

I admit I know next to nothing about how declarative memory operates — I consider the most interesting and suggestive fact to be that there's a considerable latency between a stimulus and committing the information it carried to declarative memory — but who does? However I like to think I understand implicit memory comparatively well.

 

Anyway, if you have an intriguing theory of your own concerning memory, I'd be really eager to get to know it, but this might not be the best place to post it, even though the thread is pretty much dead.

 

> and I stated such in an earlier post.

I can't seem to find it, even though I reread your posts in this thread (including the parts containing “[Freud]” this time). Perhaps it is in another thread. Still, there were no contextual clues to indicate any reference to other text, so I assumed the reply itself was complete. Nevertheless, you used a qualifier conveying speculation, albeit not where it should've been, so there's nothing wrong there.

I think we're though with this one as well; let's not bring it up again.

 

> Cognition; Perhaps you are using another definition of the term.

I likely do; it's explained in the quoted text.

Animals certainly do possess a subset of mental faculties that make up cognition, but it's very limited, both in scope and degree. Animals don't even come close to the information-processing powers of the human mind, so I deem cognition to be (almost) exclusively a human ability. I realise this rigid way of looking at it might not be very good, and I'm willing to change it. As it stands, there are a number of people in the world, and not an insignificant number, that don't meet my criteria for cognition. I can't really explain why I treat the attribute of having this ability, or rather a set of abilities, as dichotomous. I'll be more careful next time.

As for its usefulness, I only meant the discussion. Motorheadlk in particular used some expressions in whose place cognition would be not only apter, but actually correct.

Speaking of which, cognitive psychology can offer many useful tools for determining differences between tulpas and hosts (the original conscious minds). Although it “can't really explain much”, it can provide some insight into differences in learning and memory and many other things. I've found it very helpful.

 

> logical grounding

Yeah, I had some idea, but it turns out it was wrong. Good thing I asked. Thanks for the clarification.

 

One more off-topic thing: I've seen parallel processing mentioned many times on this forum, and I even thought I vaguely knew what it meant, but I must admit that I haven't got a clue now. Frankly, it sounds to me like an unnecessary buzz-phrase. You seem to be good with words, so I'd like to know your interpretation of it.

 

Okay, there still remains one point, the many classifications of consciousness, which I'll try to address tomorrow, because I'm too tired now.

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As soon as this discussion included conscious, subconscious and unconscious altogether, I couldn't follow it anymore. Maybe it does make sense to you, but you seem to use completely different definitions of these terms, and move within borders of your own beliefs and/or theories.

 

One more off-topic thing: I've seen parallel processing mentioned many times on this forum, and I even thought I vaguely knew what it meant, but I must admit that I haven't got a clue now. Frankly, it sounds to me like an unnecessary buzz-phrase. You seem to be good with words, so I'd like to know your interpretation of it.

 

Parallel processing is when the host thinks of one thing and his Tulpa of another. E.g. Host and Tulpa can solve two different mathematical problems at the same time.

It's this community's dreadful habit to think of new fancy terms, instead of looking for more descriptive or existing words for something. Especially what people call 'frontloading' is nothing more than a placebo in application.

What is a Tulpa? Blog

Rainbow 'Alyx' Dash

Pronto

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memory etc.

Short/long-term memory is quick, easy and simple. I prefer to classify memory by purpose; by this measure the long term stretches to semantic, episodic, and so on. While infants cannot form very-long term episodic memories, most of the other functions are intact.

And it appears that I didn't say this. I thought I had.

I guess it isn't relevant in infants anyway. Forget memory for now then.

 

 

> Cognition; Perhaps you are using another definition of the term.

I likely do; it's explained in the quoted text.

Animals certainly do possess a subset of mental faculties that make up cognition, but it's very limited, both in scope and degree. Animals don't even come close to the information-processing powers of the human mind, so I deem cognition to be (almost) exclusively a human ability. I realise this rigid way of looking at it might not be very good, and I'm willing to change it. As it stands, there are a number of people in the world, and not an insignificant number, that don't meet my criteria for cognition. I can't really explain why I treat the attribute of having this ability, or rather a set of abilities, as dichotomous. I'll be more careful next time.

As for its usefulness, I only meant the discussion. Motorheadlk in particular used some expressions in whose place cognition would be not only apter, but actually correct.

Speaking of which, cognitive psychology can offer many useful tools for determining differences between tulpas and hosts (the original conscious minds). Although it “can't really explain much”, it can provide some insight into differences in learning and memory and many other things. I've found it very helpful.

I'm not so sure about your definitions there.

Tulpas' intelligence needn't really be judged because we know they have the same level of intelligence as humans. Saying that

 

 

> logical grounding

Yeah, I had some idea, but it turns out it was wrong. Good thing I asked. Thanks for the clarification.

 

One more off-topic thing: I've seen parallel processing mentioned many times on this forum, and I even thought I vaguely knew what it meant, but I must admit that I haven't got a clue now. Frankly, it sounds to me like an unnecessary buzz-phrase. You seem to be good with words, so I'd like to know your interpretation of it.

 

Okay, there still remains one point, the many classifications of consciousness, which I'll try to address tomorrow, because I'm too tired now.

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memory etc.

Short/long-term memory is quick, easy and simple. I prefer to classify memory by purpose; by this measure the long term stretches to semantic, episodic, and so on. While infants cannot form very-long term episodic memories, most of the other functions are intact.

And it appears that I didn't say this. I thought I had.

I guess it isn't relevant in infants anyway. Forget memory for now then.

 

 

> Cognition; Perhaps you are using another definition of the term.

I likely do; it's explained in the quoted text.

Animals certainly do possess a subset of mental faculties that make up cognition, but it's very limited, both in scope and degree. Animals don't even come close to the information-processing powers of the human mind, so I deem cognition to be (almost) exclusively a human ability. I realise this rigid way of looking at it might not be very good, and I'm willing to change it. As it stands, there are a number of people in the world, and not an insignificant number, that don't meet my criteria for cognition. I can't really explain why I treat the attribute of having this ability, or rather a set of abilities, as dichotomous. I'll be more careful next time.

As for its usefulness, I only meant the discussion. Motorheadlk in particular used some expressions in whose place cognition would be not only apter, but actually correct.

Speaking of which, cognitive psychology can offer many useful tools for determining differences between tulpas and hosts (the original conscious minds). Although it “can't really explain much”, it can provide some insight into differences in learning and memory and many other things. I've found it very helpful.

I'm not so sure about your definitions there.

Tulpas' intelligence needn't really be judged because we know they have the same level of intelligence as humans. The terms that exist to describe human-level intelligence (sapience, cognition, whatever) aren't so useful here, because they define sentience/whatever in a world where nothing imitates it. We can say that animals aren't as sentient as we are because they aren't capable of it, but the same doesn't apply to tulpas because they look sentient.

Sentience is the best term to use here because it basically means 'feeling'. To tulpas this means that they have conscious experience; while it seems as though they do there's no guarantee of this.

 

 

One more off-topic thing: I've seen parallel processing mentioned many times on this forum, and I even thought I vaguely knew what it meant, but I must admit that I haven't got a clue now. Frankly, it sounds to me like an unnecessary buzz-phrase. You seem to be good with words, so I'd like to know your interpretation of it.

Bluesleeve said it well.

It's when the host and tulpa think at the same time. With a not-so-developed tulpa, and perhaps a well-developed one too, a conversation is somewhat answer-response; at least, whenever the host is speaking or thinking the tulpa is not, and whenever the tulpa is speaking or thinking the host isn't. That's the absence of parallel processing.

Like Bluesleeve said, if a host and a tulpa were both given a problem to solve, and they could work on it at the same time as each other, then that would be parallel processing.

As for an alternate term, I don't know of one.

 


 

As soon as this discussion included conscious, subconscious and unconscious altogether, I couldn't follow it anymore. Maybe it does make sense to you, but you seem to use completely different definitions of these terms, and move within borders of your own beliefs and/or theories.

Err, yes; we may have been using slightly loose applications of the terms.

 


 

Seeing as how Alba isn't really going to defend his theory, I guess I'll put a new one out.

 

What a tulpa is:

It's basically another personality. When the host becomes accustomed to the tulpa 'responding' the mind - unconsciously - personifies thought by the tulpa. Whether or not the tulpa is conscious is debatable; it would seem that a fully-developed tulpa may well be.

 

How is tulpa formed?

When the host starts off, they define a personality. They, in the process, commit it to memory; and they know - consciously or otherwise - how their tulpa would respond to something.

Narration provides input that - through the host's acceptance of the tulpa being there - goes into this personality framework. As more input is given, greater imperative is placed on the mind to give a response. This step may also take place a la Fede with conscious parroting.

When the mind begins to formulate response via the tulpa's personality, the perceived sentience starts to appear. As the mind processes an input via the tulpa's personality and gives a response, the mind starts to get into the habit of it. By the time the tulpa can talk well, the habit of personifying thought by the tulpa's personality at prompt is ingrained into the mind. Here we get the fear of "I know what my tulpa's going to say before they say it"/'subconscious parroting'. You get this feeling because that's what's happening: the process of personifying via the tulpa is not yet fully autonomous.

When imposition starts, this helps to separate the tulpa from the host. As the personifying process moves further from the host's reach, the tulpa becomes more autonomous, and eventually becomes a fully-fledged personality itself.

 

Explanations:

Emotional response: early on the tulpa is sporadically used to process emotion; the result cannot be fed into the non-existent tulpa and so the emotion is felt by the host.

 

Headaches: the brain may well be forming new connections to form the routine of personifying the tulpa at a much faster rate than connections are usually formed. This may well go for why tulpas can come back, as some vestige of the connections may remain after the tulpa is gone.

 

Possession: a personality always has the ability to control the body. The tulpa learns to access motor centers like the host does instinctively. When the tulpa is not sentient, the decision-making output from personification is fed into the motor centers, possibly by the host.

 

Switching: the tulpa, once separate, can become the 'dominant' personality in the body. Similar to the process in DID, the personalities hand over control and function of the entire body.

 

Hallucination/memory access/other processes accessed by tulpa: when a personality is not dominant but still active, it connects with the mind as if it were a body. This means that a tulpa - and possibly a switched-out host - can access parts of the mind that are out-of-bounds to the dominant personality.

 

Parallel processing: as the tulpa becomes more separate, eventually it has its own dedicated thought process for personification. Once this is established as separate, it can work alongside the host's conscious process much like homeostatic processes do.

 

Fast computing: the tulpa, not being dominant, can access parts of the mind that are not accessible by the host. This includes the 'intuition' which can already be demonstrated to work through problems at a fast rate.

 

Why you should think this:

 

This theory is compatible with current models of the mind, and explains every phenomenon recorded here.

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