Vision and Blindsight
Implications Regarding Consciousness
Vision-- receiving and interpreting light signals from the environment in order to form an image in one's mind-- is an incredibly complex process. Somehow signals from photoreceptors located in the eye are converted into the conscious experience of sight. Of all the aspects of vision, perhaps the most difficult for us to comprehend scientifically is this notion of consciousness. Somehow the brain interprets light waves hitting the retina so that we are visually aware of our surroundings. While the mechanism of signal transduction from the photoreceptor through the visual cortex has been extensively elucidated, science has difficulty dealing with the phenomena of consciousness and awareness, especially on a reductionist level.
A recent neurobiological approach to understanding consciousness, at least on a perceptual level, has involved the study of the phenomenon of blindsight. Damage to areas of the visual cortex often result in complete or partial blindness. Although the eye itself is undamaged, patients report an inability to detect any light input in part of (or the entire) visual field. However, experiments regularly show that somehow, visual cues are processed. Visual inputs presented to the blind field affect the patient's response to stimulus in the normal visual field. Reaction times to stimuli are affected as well as the interpretation of the stimuli. A visual cues presented in the blind field may suggest a certain interpretation of an ambiguous stimuli. For example, the interpretation of the word "bank", presented as an auditory cue, differs depending on whether the word "river" or "money" is presented to the blind field, even though the patient does not...
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Obesity is on the rise, and it is becoming more and more of a national health concern. It effects more than 1/3 of the population, and an additional 1/3 is overweight. With obesity becoming more and more of a problem each year, the American population is going to suffer from a catastrophic health emergency.
In this paper, I will argue that it is more likely that the qualia of colour could be explained by physicalism rather than by property dualism. Qualia are subjective experiences, such as our senses (pg. 3). Physicalism views every property as physical, and can be explained by science (pg. 29). Property dualism refers to the philosophical view that minds are made out of one substance, but contain physical properties, and a non-physical mind (qualia) that are not related to each other (pg. 29).
Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).
A therapist will face problems, issues and client troubles everyday. The professional must understand how their client relates to the world around them. These feelings and ideas affect how the client sees the problem and how they respond to their situation. Their actions, in turn, have bearing on individual thoughts, needs, and emotions. The therapist must be aware of the client's history, values, and culture in order to provide effective therapy. This paper will outline and provide information as to the importance of cultural competence and diversity in family therapy.
Leahy’s and Eiter’s (1980) study included 116 adolescent and you adult participants. The participants were from one of three age groups with an equal amount of boys and girls in each; eighth graders with an average age of 13.7, high school juniors with an average age of 17.2, and college aged students with an average age of 20.6 (Leahy & Eiter, 1980). The high school students were mostly middle-class white students from the same public school district in a NYC suburb (Leahy & Eiter
Obesity in America is a very serious problem affecting many Americans currently and is a problem that continues to grow each year. “Over the past 40 years, the prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in the United States” (Wimalawansa). This issue is known to many but believed not be an issue to care much about but this is not true. Obesity in America affects everyone regardless if they are obese or not. In order to resolve the problem, we can slaughter all the adults that are currently obese in America.
Homophobia is transporting Russia back in time to the late 1800s and early 1900s—the epoch of the racial issues in America. With several gay rights being legalized, it seemed that Russia had begun to accept the LGBT community into their society. But the violent and repressive actions towards gay people and their supporters have proved that Russia is not becoming any more tolerant of gays. It is unsure if Russians even view gays as humans. The present status of the Russian homophobia problem is starting to spiral out of control. Given Russia’s oscillating history with the LGBT community, it’s nearly impossible to predict whether or not Russia will accept or kill the gay people. Based on the current situation, it seems like the former will start happening. Russia must stop its discrimination of gay people and learn to accept that everyone is different.
Structural family therapist have exemplified within the context relational therapies that uncovers stressors in relationship between individuals (Vetere, 2001). Structural family therapy has been known to be called “interventive approach” because of the “intensity” to encourage clients to change (Hammond & Nichols, 2014).
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
The family and medical staff who attended Vincent, blinded since childhood by thick cataracts, had high hopes that, for the first time in nearly 45 years, he would be able to see following a surgery to remove the cataracts. When the bandages came off, Vincent saw colors, movement and shape. He even saw details and isolated features of objects. What he could not do, to their dismay, was to make sense of what he saw: he could not form coherent perceptions of objects in his world from the parts and features, and he had no sense of space, depth, or distance. (1)
Feminist social theory ought to challenge the ideals of Classical social theory embodied by the work of authors, such Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Simmel. Such traditional values tend to exclude women from their social analysis of the modern world, as women were considered non social agents. In support of this, Durkheim claim that men were product of society, whereas women belonged to nature, (Harrington: 2005, p.236). Thus, feminist social theory embrace post-enlightenment principles, focusing on values associated to “difference”,”particularism” and “specificity” (Harrington: 2005, p. 233). In order to do so, Feminist social theory has been feed by feminist theories which have similar concern about the study of social world, as both highlight the absence of women figure in modern social studies. Thus, the main key features of feminist social theory are the impact of patriarchy in society; the study of gender differences, the incorporation of different epistemology pretending to palliate social neglect toward women, and the analysis of postmodernist theories (Fulcher & Scott, 2003: 173).
Feminist Theory is an aspect of considering feminism as having been based on socio-phenomenon issues rather than biological or scientific. It appreciates gender inequality, analyzes the societal roles played by feminists in a bid to promote the interests, issues and rights of women in the society. It is also based on the assumption that women play subsidiary roles in the society. The whole idea of feminism has however experienced hurdles in the form of stereotyping by the wider society. This paper tries to examine some of the effects of stereotypes that feminism goes through, what other philosophers say and the way forward towards ending stereotyping.
Processing capacity is a very broad and flexible category according to many researchers. In fact, the quote above mentioned suggests that we often fail to notice things that happen just in front of us (unexpected events that are often salient) either because we were completely absorbed by something else or because we had so many things to do at the same time that we couldn’t pay attention to it. We have all at least once failed to see a friend who was waving at us while eating in the cafeteria or walking in a crowded street. The primary question that we should ask ourselves is: how many things can we attend at the same time? The truth is that we didn’t perceive this friend because of a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”. The problem is that the richness of our visual experience leads us to believe that our visual representation will include and preserve the same amount of detail (Levin et al 2000). In this paper we’ll see the different theories of inattentional blindness, and the classical theories demonstrating this paradigm.
Vision is one of the key sensory systems that primates rely on to achieve remarkable success throughout life. Vision, as depicted by the authors of dictionary.com refers to sensing with eyes (dictionary.com, 2017). The sensory system vision, has several key components and receptor cells involved in order for the eye to communicate information to the brain and through the rest of the body. Throughout this paper, a clear and precise explanation of what those key components are will be discussed, as well as how the brain interacts with the images portrayed by the eye.
Humans Damaging the Environment We, humanity, have a remarkable ability to define the world in terms