Unterbewusste hat offenbar stark an Faszination eingebüsst. Man fragt sich, ob es dereinst bewusste Maschinen geben wird. Ob diese auch ein Un- oder Unterbewusstes haben werden, auf die Frage scheint noch niemand gekommen zu sein. Cormag McCarthy ist auf Nautilus  dem Unterbewussten  nachgegangen, und welche Rolle die Sprache spielt.

Kekulé hat die Form des Benzol-Rings entdeckt, im Schlaf während eines Traums, in Form des Uroburos, der Schlange, die sich in den Schwanz beisst. Da war das Unterbewusste aktiv, aber es hat sich nicht mit einer sprachlichen Aussage gemeldet, sondern mit einem Bild, einem Symbol. Das ist typisch für das Unterbewusste, schreibt McCarthy. Es habe nämlich eine Abneigung gegen Sprache, die ihm aufgepfropft wurde. Zudem ist die Sprache kein evolutionäres Produkt, sondern eine Erfindung. Warum aber das UB die Sprache nicht benützt, ist das eigentliche K-Problem. Zur Sprache schreibt er: 

The sort of isolation that gave us tall and short and light and dark and other variations in our species was no protection against the advance of language. It crossed mountains and oceans as if they werent there. Did it meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it. But useful? Oh yes. We might further point out that when it arrived it had no place to go. The brain was not expecting it and had made no plans for its arrival. It simply invaded those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. I suggested once in conversation at the Santa Fe Institute that language had acted very much like a parasitic invasion and David Krakauer—our president—said that the same idea had occurred to him. Which pleased me a good deal because David is very smart. This is not to say of course that the human brain was not in any way structured for the reception of language. Where else would it go? If nothing else we have the evidence of history. The difference between the history of a virus and that of language is that the virus has arrived by way of Darwinian selection and language has not. The virus comes nicely machined. Offer it up. Turn it slightly. Push it in. Click. Nice fit. But the scrap heap will be found to contain any number of viruses that did not fit.

Das Kekulé-Problem hat McCarthy übrigens auch gelöst.

I’d been thinking about the Kekulé problem off and on for a couple of years without making much progress. Then one morning after George Zweig and I had had one of our ten hour lunches I came down in the morning with the wastebasket from my bedroom and as I was emptying it into the kitchen trash I suddenly knew the answer. Or I knew that I knew the answer. It took me a minute or so to put it together. I reflected that while George and I had spent the first couple of hours at cognition and neuroscience we had not talked about Kekulé and the problem. But something in our conversation might very well have triggered our reflections—mine and those of the Night Shift—on this issue. The answer of course is simple once you know it. The unconscious is just not used to giving verbal instructions and is not happy doing so. Habits of two million years duration are hard to break. When later I told George what I’d come up with he mulled it over for a minute or so and then nodded and said: “That sounds about right.” Which pleased me a good deal because George is very smart.

Artikel Nautilus