Consciousness is understood in a variety of ways. In one belief, a person is conscious when awake, but unconscious when sleeping or comatose. Yet people also do things requiring perception and thought unconsciously even when they are awake. A person can be conscious of their physical surroundings, pain and even a wish or fantasy. In short a creature is conscious if it is aware of itself and that it is a physical and emotional being. Consciousness is a psychological condition defined by the English philosopher John Locke as "the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind".1
Consciousness is defined and perceived differently in many psychological view points. For instance the earlier views around the 19th century was diversely considered. Most perceived consciousness as a substance or "mental stuff" unlike an object from the physical world. Others deferred that the conscious mind was what separated man from lower forms of life. It is an attribute characterized by sensation and voluntary movement which described the difference between normal waking state of animals and men and their condition when asleep.2 Other descriptions included an analysis of consciousness as a form of relationship or act of the mind toward objects in nature, and a view that consciousness was a continuous field or stream of essentially mental "sense data."
The method believed by most early writers in determining consciousness was introspection—looking within one’s own mind to discover the laws of it’s operation. This belief was limited when it was apparent when observationalists could not agree on observations. Obviously due to the differences in one’s own idea of introspection and the underlying views they possessed.
The failure of introspection to reveal consistent laws led to the refection of all mental states as subjects of scientific study and thus psychology attached consciousness to its diversity.
The term consciousness is most often used by philosophers and psychologists as meaning "attention to the contents or workings of one’s own mind." This notion had little significance for the ancients, but it was emphasized in the 17th century by John Locke and Rene Descartes.
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... physical framework of reality.6 Smythies presents that everyone has a private space in addition to the shared, public version. Each individual’s personal framework intersects with the familiar dimensions while remaining distinct from them, and it provides an arena for all conscious sensations that have spatial extension or location–objects discernible by sight or touch.7 To understand Smythies’ theory see Appendix A.
In conclusion one can determine a variety of theories in the evolution of consciousness. As cited earlier, consciousness is viewed as being physical or material in some cases and yet in others it is viewed as a function of the inner mind or the minds eye. These theories have even been as radical as Smythies’ philosophy that the state of consciousness is a sort of physical plane.
If we were to collaborate these theories to form a conclusive view point, individuals would possibly be able to understand consciousness and the workings of consciousness. Perhaps the mystery of consciousness is to remain a mystery. Possibly this mystery is the key to cognitive thinking. And perhaps the key to our personal evolution.
Chapter 4 discusses the several states of consciousness: the nature of consciousness, sleep and dreams, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. Consciousness is a crucial part of human experience, it represents that private inner mind where we think, feel, plan, wish, pray, omagine, and quietly relive experiences. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images thoughts, and feelings. Consciousness has two major parts: awareness and arousal. Awareness includes the awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences. Arousal is the physiological state of being engaged with the environment. Theory of mind refers to individuals understanding that they and others think,
As there are many different schools of Buddhism, each with different principles, there are also many different views on consciousness. First, we'll turn to the "Consciousness-Only School" also known as Yogacara Buddhism. According to the Consciousness-Only school there are eight parts of the consciousness. The five sense-consciousnesses, those related to the senses. There is the sixth consciousness, called the sense-center consciousness, that which forms our conceptions. The seventh is called the thought-center, the consciousness related to will and reasoning. And the eighth consciousness, called the storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness basically "stores" our past experiences. The consciousness are in a constant state of change, the seed is constantly being influenced by the inward flow of perceptions, and the seed itself influences the perceptions (Chan 371). This train of thought is most similar to the existing model of cognition and memory encoding.
The notion of Consciousness took various definitions through time and even today it still doesn’t have a general accepted definition. A more universal one would be that Consciousness is a state of awareness of one’s surroundings, of the external objects around, or being aware of oneself. From a more psychological perspective, Consciousness represents a state characterized by perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts, where the individual is aware of what he sees, feels, thinks and observes himself, those around him and the environment.
Consciousness is a very common and much used word used to describe the condition of being awake and aware. In other words, being conscious means responding to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in coma. But in philosophical terms, consciousness is defined as the state in which humans are able to clearly distinguish between themselves and all other
I will commence by defining what makes a mental state conscious. This will be done aiming to distinguish what type of state we are addressing when we speak of a mental phenomenon and how is it, that can have a plausible explanation. By taking this first approach, we are able to build a base for our main argument to be clear enough and so that we can remain committed to.
Human beings are thought of as a combination of mind and body, and it is assumed that there is a union between them. Although the mind and body may or may not correspond and interact with each other, it is scientifically unclear whether it is true that they both affect each other. René Descartes, a famous French philosopher who gave grand contributions to the mind body problem, viewed the mind as distinct from matter, and so laid the groundwork on the controversy for interactionism, which dictated the mind and body were separate. Furthermore, the different sectors of the medical field and dualistic theories propose that the mind and the body are relatively distinct.
Whether we graduate from highschool or college we all hope to find a challenging career that will propel us forward in today's society. For those suffering from dyslexia this only adds to the frustration and fears associated with seeking employment. Many adults with dyslexia or other forms of learning disabilities never disclose their disability in interviews or once employed for fear of being discriminated against. Several investigators have noted, however, that many persons with learning disabilities adjust well to the demands and complexities of adulthood. (Greenbaum et al. 1996). The basic cause of dyslexia is still not known, however, much research is being done to determine the problems underlying dyslexia. In many cases, dyslexia is highly inherited. Studies have shown a number of genes that may set the stage for its development. Characteristics of dyslexia are now more apparent to educators than ever before. Early educational interventions are helping individuals to manage their dyslexia. There have been some studies that attend to accommodating persons with learning disabilities in post-secondary and occupational settings. Only a few articles will be reviewed having been found worthy of this subject. However, before reviewing the articles, in order to gain a greater understanding of the types of learning disabilities people face lets define one of the most significant learning problems: dyslexia. A Type of Learning Disability: What is Dyslexia? The word dyslexia is derived form the Greek "dys" (meaning poor or inadequate) and "lexis" (works or language). Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by problems in expressive or receptive, oral or written language. Problems may emerge in r...
[4] Guven Guzeldere (1995) 'Consciousness: What it is & how to study it' Journal of Consciousness Studies vol.2, no.1; pp. 30-51
The cognitive revolution in psychology was a period during the 1950’s and 1960’s which involved radical changes to two major concepts in psychology, consciousness and causality. It was also a period that saw the abolishment of traditional science values of dichotomy and the worship of atomisation in science, replacing reductive micro deterministic views of personhood with holistic top-down view (Overskeid, 2008). The aim of this essay is to give an account of what constitutes the cognitive revolution, and also assess the contributions that the cognitive revolution has made to the scientific study of psychology. The cognitive revolution represents a diametric turn around in the century’s old treatment of mind and consciousness in science, such as the contents of conscious experience, whose subjective qualities were being discarded as mere causal epiphenomena (Sperry 1993). This paradigm shift brought with it alternative beliefs about the ultimate nature of things, thereby bringing forth new answers to some of humanity's deepest questions.
Psychology did not begin to progress until it moved from an introspective model to an experimental model. The introspective model was a central component to the early day’s of psychology, more specifically during the Structuralist period. It is the process of examining yourself and your actions. People would have
The development of psychology like all other sciences started with great minds debating unknown topics and searching for unknown answers. Early philosophers and psychologists such as Sir Francis Bacon and Charles Darwin took a scientific approach to psychology by introducing the ideas of measurement and biology into the way an indi...
"Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness." Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2011.
The consciousness is an integrated group of experiences that require unity of two kinds, the experiences must have the characteristic of a singular subject and the consciousness that the said subject possesses regarding represented objects must be unified. The first requirement regarding experiences and consciousness seems trivial but according to Hume, for instance, what singles out a group’s experiences into an individual’s is the association with one another in a rather appropriate way, what he referred to as the bundle theory, not the presence of a common subject. The need for a subject however is derived from straight forward considerations like: representations not only mean something but they mean it to someone, and representations are nit handed down to people but to be considered so, sensory inputs have to be processed by a rather integrated cognitive system. Kant was exceedingly conscious of both points. He however called unity of consciousness both the consciousness and apperception unity. Regarding the unity of consciousness, Kant asserts that people are no conscious of single but of a great many experiences at a particular
How has perception of consciousness developed overtime and in recent time with the rapid increase in
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).