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Abstract about human consciousness
Consciousness and its variations
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Human Consciousness
A Portrait of the Brain
Through Theories and Discussion
A hemispherectomy is a surgical process in which the brain of a patient is halved and one of these parts is then removed. The procedure is only ever carried out on individuals who are very young, as their brains are still flexible, pliable enough that the remaining portion will then take on the functions of the half that had been removed. Though this process is rather rare, only carried out when the child in question is experiences dramatic seizures that can only be halted in this way, it brings a crucial element to the table, far beyond the medical benefit for one. Hemispherectomies prove that patients can survive with only half of the brain, and thus, if the single mind could be partitioned into two separate bodies, producing a pair of similar living organisms - which patient would be the original? This very question has basis in the complex phenomena known as consciousness.
Human consciousness can be rather elusive to define, as there are differing theories as well as opinions as to what the state is as a whole, and what it can then be boiled down into. Morgan Kelly (2014) claims that most people consider consciousness to be the complete, “non-physical mental package” that composes an individual, such as the personality, memory, experiences, and notably, emotion. Awareness, then, is also taken to be more focuses, as in the specific items noted in the conscious. Scientists who study consciousness hold the belief that if an explanation can be reached on how the brain becomes aware of something, the larger phenomenon of consciousness can likewise be explained. According to Kendra Cherry (2013) the functioning definition of this awareness from a p...
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...s between different actions, forming a bridge between the conscious and subconscious.
Works Cited
Cherry, Kendra (2013). Consciousness - Psychology Definition of the Week.
Psychology - About.com. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/b/2013/01/18/consciousness-psychology-definition-of-the-week.htm
Kelly, Morgan (2014). Unpacking the Toolkit of the Human Consciousness
Princeton University Office of Communications. Retrieved from http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/91/90C37/index.xml?section=featured
Seth, Anil (2012). Consciousness: Eight Questions Science Must Answer
The Gaurdian.com Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/mar/01/consciousness-eight-questions-science
Thornton, Stephen P. (2014). Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds
Internet Encyclopedia of Philisophy Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/#H5
Derek Parfit, one of the most important defender of Hume, addresses the puzzle of the non-identity problem. Parfit claims that there is no self. This statement argues against the Ego Theory, which claims that beneath experience, a subject or self exists. Ego Theorists claims that the unity of a person’s whole life including life experiences is also known as the Cartesian view, which claims that each person is a “persisting purely mental thing.” Parfit uses the Split-Brain Case, which tells us something interesting about personal identity, to invalidate the Ego Theory. During the Split Brain procedure, there are neither ‘persons’ nor ‘persons’ before the brain was split. Within the experiment, the patient has control of their arms, and sees what is in half of their visual fields with only one of their hemispheres. However, when the right and left hemisphere disconnect, the patient is able to receive two different written questions targeted to the two halves of their visual field; thus, per hand, they write two different answers. In a split brain case, there are two streams of consciousness and Parfit claims that the number of persons involved is none. The scenario involves the disconnection of hemispheres in the brain. The patient is then placed in front of a screen where the left half of a screen is red and the right half is blue. When the color is shown to one hemisphere and the patient is asked, “How many colors do you see,” the patient, with both hands, will write only one color. But when colors are shown to both sides of the hemisphere, the patient with one hand writes red and the other writes blue.
The textbook mentioned how it is possible to live with one side of the brain (Lilienfeld et al., 2016). However, I was still a bit confused on this concept because I have always thought that you need both hemispheres working together to function properly. As I watched the TedTalk, I was further able to change my understanding of the concept that you can live with one hemisphere, you would just lose some functions associated with that hemisphere, as Jill explained (Taylor, 2008). Not only that, but from the textbook I never understood how you would feel without one of your hemispheres not functioning properly, I personally thought that you would lose some abilities and it would be difficult to survive. However, the TedTalk changed this understanding of mine because, like Jill, although she lost some functions, she lost all her stresses, and she felt peace, as she states, “So here I am in this space, and my job, and any stress related to my job - it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and any stressors related to any of those - they were gone. And I felt this sense of peacefulness” (Taylor, 2008). It gave her a whole new world and it never occurred to me that this could happen, so it really expanded on the knowledge obtained from the
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,
One of the most memorable case studies I read about in high school psychology was the procedure of removing large portions, sometime half the brain, to treat young children with epileptic seizures. This procedure, called hemi-spherectomy, was developed in the 1920's but rarely performed due to complications (8). With the advances in medicine today, it has become a more common practice in treatment severe epilepsy. At first, though the procedure was expected to stop the seizures, doctors did not expect these children to ever function normally. After all, with so much of the brain missing, it is hard to expect much of the mental functions of these children. Surprisingly, these children often retained much of their personality, memories and sense humor (8), awing their doctors with the flexibility of the brains to adjust after such invasive surgery.
In W.E.B Du Bois’s “Double-Consciousness and the Veil”, he talks about the Negro’s viewpoint in the emancipated world. He illustrates the way that black people are able to view themselves from two perspectives. He shows the struggle that black people have to balance out in order to make it in society. I will be explaining what the theory of double-consciousness is and what Du bois felt like it meant for black people.
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
Human mind is still a mystery to us all. It is hard to conclude on what
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.
What is it that makes us human? Is it our actions, our sense of purpose, or our ability to keep our mind on as well as perform complex tasks? Is it that we analyze our own mental processes, as well as the processes of others? What exactly is a mental state, and what creates it? Is it a level of attentiveness, an impulse, or an emotional state? What is it that allows us to experience these things? The answers all lie within our brains.
Division Parfit uses a famous case of division (or fission), as imagined by Wiggins (1967), to illustrate his claim that identity is not what matters in survival. When A’s brain is split into two parts, each housed within two separate, brainless bodies (B and C), it seems that we have three options. We either believe that or not. 1. What is the difference between a. and a A has ceased to exist; 2.
Sperry, R. W. (1982, September 24). Some Effects of Disconnecting the Cerebral Hemispheres. Science Megazine, 217, 1223-1226.
In philosophy, the majority of studies relate to the mind. Whether it is the main subject or just a helpful side topic to move the main subject along, this term is used often. Defining the term mind is difficult, and is a topic that is popularly studied and debated among philosophers. These qualified and knowledgeable people try to determine whether or not the mind is who people are or if they are their body or a combination. Although they have learned many helpful truths and defined other useful terms, the debate is still evident in the philosophical community today. Learning about how the mind relates to the body, and whether the mind and the brain are the same thing are other ways to look at the many options of how to discern
“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).
“Self-awareness is a psychological state in which people are aware of their traits, feelings and behaviour. Alternatively, it can be defined as the realisation of oneself as an individual entity.” (Crisp & Turner, 2010). In other words, self awareness is recognising one’s personality which includes strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs and emotions.