Rockfish

The one property of sentience that continues to confound philosophers, psychiatrists and neuroscientists alike is consciousness. While we are learning a lot about how it manifests itself, very little is known about the origin, seat or actual properties of this phenomena. (or noumenon?)

Cartesian Dualism

If you follow western philosophy then you’re probably aware of everyone’s favorite whipping dog, Cartesian dualism.

Rene Descartes was among the first to acknowledge consciousness in his now classic, demon-in-the-mind hypothesis. While his rationalisations may have been admirable (in his time and society) he also effectively created what is today called the mind-body divide. The general idea of this hypothesis is that the mind does not have access to the physical world and vice-versa.

I don’t think Descartes suspected for a bit the outcome of his rationalisations. His views seem to have spawned loads of quicketyquack psyche related ’sciences’ that profit off of the perceived mind-body divide. While Philosophy of mind proponents have repeatedly debunked Cartesian duality, it is very hard to erase from popular social thought. Even today it’s possible to hear people talk of body & mind as if they were two separate entities. Why is this a problem? Read an earlier rant here.

Marketing and Psychology

Traditional marketing which made psychology the poster boy of modern scientific thought, still uses this model to arrive at key decisions. The term, Psychography which relates to psychological profiling is a key exhibit of how this logic still rules the roost. I propose a rather different and a much more modern approach.

Neuroresearch and Marketing

I propose that marketeers look at human conciousness from the point of modern neuro-research and less from the vantage point of psychological case studies. Themodern view of conciousness including untested theories such as Operational Architectonics suggest that we have perhaps lesser ‘control’ over perception than we originally thought. Age old arguments against so called ‘free-will’ by Sufis, Gnostics and Mystics are begining to make much more sense in the light of modern research.

Our system, is finely tuned in to the environment in which we live. Throughout the day our bodies alter temperatures, maintain hormones and generate or discard cells without our being the least bit aware of it. This is good, because having to maintain attention across the board will leave very little focus for meaningful activity. Having established that, the next question is that of attention, or to be anal, Selective Attention.

It’s worth quickly quoting the venerable wiki, quoting William James…

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German…

How people pay attention

The ability to pay attention also seems to be dependant on one’s nature. Some people can be more attentive than others. Attention in itself is useless without one other component. Memory!

The word memory is increasingly becoming redundant as a term to classify new discoveries on memory. It’s implications far overshoot the popular understanding of this phenomena and the discussion of memory in itself is perhaps material for another post because of it’s rather humungous framework. In this area, memory seems to play an important role of ‘holding-up’ to attention, pieces of information from the subject’s past.

This process combined with attention itself allows the subject to make rational choices. The system seems to rapidly shift attention based on sensory data and then almost immediately looks for a memory that it can base the incoming data upon. If such a memory exists then depending on the nature of the person the follow-up action takes place. In the absence of data there is either confusion or the subject abruptly abandons the data… or if certain historians are to be believed, do not even see the data currently being offered. (Such as the early Incans who could not see the ships of the spaniards only because they had never seen ships before.)

Consciousness in Indian Vedic Philosophy

The very same model can also be found in Indian Vedic philosophy. The theory of consciousness points out that Manas and Buddhi work pretty much in the same sense. Manas (as the carrier of attention) shifts the attention constantly and Buddhi (Metaphorically explained as a mirror) holds up the data to cross-reference with past information. The classical example used is that of someone who mistakes a rope for a snake in bad-light and then who realises his mistake is a good example of how Buddhi and Manas operate.

Applying the model

This model firstly stops seperating customers from their minds and looks at people as individuals. Second, brand managers who look at a campaign (Print, web, retail or whatever) as a single stretch of a marketing initiative should relook at their strategies. Rather than one-shot spends to ‘create a splash’, managers should look at the brand’s environment as pin points of many little areas of customer engagement.

You dont hold one’s attention for a sustained period of time, rather you create multiple experiences points that both reinforce as well as add to the subject’s slowly accumulating knowledge of the brand. Over time, repetition and an increase in the brand’s personality (through sensory devices) creates familiarity in the customer’s mind.

- George Supreeth

Bibliography and Books you can borrow from me if you’re in Bangalore

Consciousness explained : Daniel Dennet
The Hindu Sound: William Corlett & John Moore
The Undiscovered Mind: John Horgan
Psychology Today: A Random House Textbook
Patanjali’s Yogasutras: Taimini
Fooled by Randomness: Nassim Nicholas Taleb