We use our minds, not knowing how they work. Conscious thoughts tell us little about what gives rise to them. Minsky portrays many conscious thoughts as signals that start complicated processing of which we are not aware: "Our conscious thoughts use signal-signs to steer the engines in our minds, controlling countless processes of which we're never much aware. Not understanding how it's done, we learn to gain our ends by sending signals to those greate machines, much as the sorcerers of older times used rituals to cast their spells."
(NB: This reminds me of a key point in a Pylyshyn (1981) Psych. Review paper -- we are aware of the content of thoughts, but not of the machinery that represents this content.)
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