So the question that's been on my mind recently, and that I'd like to ask the group this week is "where is the I-function"? We hear lots about our consciousness (and our subconsciousness for that matter) both inside this classroom and out of it. If you've ever read any Freud then you've heard about the subconscious spoken about like some Pandora's box inside the brain. Or perhaps more like an attic where you shove all your forgotten memories. But is this conception of a localized consciousness reasonable? The I-function doesn't seem like the sort of thing you can point to, really. I can't imagine some med-student working on an autopsy somewhere being instructed "Good. No remove the consciousness" in the same way they as I can imagine the instructor saying "Now remove the pituitary gland".
We've been referring to boxes (and boxes within boxes, and boxes within boxes within boxes...) in this class, and most of the time these boxes have proved to be actual physical boxes in the brain. (For a very loose interpretation of the term 'box') But is the I-function or the subconscious the sort of phenomena which a manifestation within a physical box? If we want to say that we are brains (the way Emily Dickinson has) then it seems like we should be able to locate "I" or even the "unconscious I" the same way we can locate the pituitary gland, but I don't feel like the I-function is a spatially extended phenomenon. I know we've been playing around with the term 'emergent phenomena', but I guess I'd like to look further into what that really means.