I have been asked to answer the following questions; how do psychologists define conscious states? How can these conscious states be measured? In order to do so, I shall be looking at different sources and reviewing various definitions and interpretations of consciousness and distinguishing the methods approached to the study of the topic in the way it is measured. The original source of the concept of consciousness is considered to come from the English Philosopher John Locke who perceived the term to be “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind” (Locke 1690). The challenge of defining the term is even considered daunting as it is still found to be difficult in giving a specific definition. Although, most psychologists appreciate that there is a basic broad understanding of the term, that being: the general awareness of an individual whilst awake. There has not yet been an ultimate and concluding definition. This is demonstrated by Francis Crick and Christoff Koch (as cited in Güzeldere, 1997) who stated ‘they need not provide a precise definition of consciousness since everyone has a rough idea of what is meant by consciousness', this was written in 1990, a far more recent indication of consciousness still being free from complete human understanding, even the greatest minds have struggled with Sigmund Freud (as cited in Güzeldere, 1997) declaring “What is meant by consciousness we need not discuss; it is beyond all doubt.” Much like Freud’s attitude to the understanding of consciousness, Stuart Sutherland seems accepting of the fact that regardless of psychologists perceptions and interpretations of what consciousness is, it is somewhat worthless trying to depict the true definition of the theory, as there is no... ... middle of paper ... ...define consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16(5), p139-156 Williams, J. (1892) The Stream of Consciousness. Journal of Cosmology, volume 14 Williams, J. (1904) Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1, p477-491 http://www.markbancroft.com/info/what-is-consciousness http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35140/title/Measuring-Consciousness/ Definitions of consciousness. Retrieved January 24th 2014, from http://www.consciousentities.com/definitions.htm The basics of General Anesthesia. Retrieved February 13th 2014, from http://science.howstuffworks.com/anesthesia4.htm What is Introspection. Retrieved February 13th 2014, from http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/fl/What-Is-Introspection.htm http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/consciousness_sci_of/consciousness_sci_of.php
theorists attempt to develop a mode of consciousness and cognition that breaks the identity of
American philosopher; Daniel Dennett stated that “One of the deepest and most penetrating of errors about consciousness is the idea that it is something that divides the universe in two, that there are the things that have it and the things that don’t and it’s this utterly amazing, nearly magical property.” Dennett emphasizes on how consciousness shouldn’t be
Rosenthal D 2002, 'Explaining Consciousness', in Philosophy of mind classical and contemporary readings,Chalmers D J (eds), Oxford University press, New York
There has been a growing trend among philosophers to consider consciousness as being a strictly material phenomenon with no transcendent characteristics. Consciousness is, to those who subscribe to this school of thought, merely the effect of matter and energy interacting. This trend owes its origin to the recent advancement of neuroscience coupled with certain philosophical trends. Though neuroscience has provided many answers to ancient questions about the mind, it cannot explain the source of consciousness. The philosophical trends are, much like the appeals to neuroscience, also flawed. This philosophical camp, which will henceforth be referred to as materialists, has much popularity, but cannot explain a highly important phenomenon that
Varela, Francisco J., “Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem”, Journal of consciousness studies 3(4) (1996): pp. 330–49.
Consciousness was first described and introduced by Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche (Crick & Koch, 2001). It has been described as a realm of the mind that controls human behaviour. However consciousness is not accessible to conscious introspection, self-examination or a source of knowledge. On the contrary, Christof Koch, a neuroscientist collaborator of Francis Crick, describes unconsciousness as any neuronal activity that does not give rise to conscious sensation, thought or memory (Crick & Koch, 2001). Though unconsciousness differs in many different ways to consciousness, it works in a waking state that deals with cause and effect and the logical spontaneous processes in order to process information. On the contrary unconscious mind is associated with involuntary activities that form connections with thoughts, ideas and reflections, which unconsciousness also has the capability for multi-tasking. Therefore, as Koch explains, unconscious puts humans is an “online” mode, allowing us to override our instinctual ‘offline’ programming.
[4] Guven Guzeldere (1995) 'Consciousness: What it is & how to study it' Journal of Consciousness Studies vol.2, no.1; pp. 30-51
Wood, Samuel E., Ellen R. Green. Wood, and Denise Roberts. Boyd. "Chapter 4/Consciousness." Mastering the World of Psychology. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 115-35. Print.
Weiskrantz, L. (1997). Consciousness lost and found: A neuropsychological exploration. Oxford University Press, p. 294
The fundamental basis of researches in the ontology of consciousness belongs to Plato, I. Kant, G. Hegel, A. Schopenhauer, A. Bergson. The traditions of the "philosophy of life" the author considers to be the most fruitful. Romanticism and neokantiants (H. Rikkert) paid attention to the essential difference between methodology of natural sciences and spiritual sciences. In contemporary researches of the problems of consciousness in Russia the basic attention is being paid to the rational-monosemantic and reflexial forms of consciousness objectivation, and irrational and nonreflexial forms of consciousness are being examined much less, due to their difficult introspection (see: Tugarinov V.P. Philosophy of consciousness. Moscow, 1971; Spirkin A.G. Consciousness and self-consciousness. Moscow, 1972; Iljenkov E. V. The Problem of the Ideal // Question s of Philosophy. Moscow, 1979. # 6-7; Dubrovski D. I. The Problem of the Ideal. Moscow, 1983; Problems of consciousness in modern foreign philosophy. M., 1989). The weak point of such an approach is the unilateral exaggeration of the role of the gnoseological approach to the phenomena of consciousness and underestimation of the methods of evaluation. In Russian philosophy of XIX - XX centuries there were attempts to comprehend the problems of consciousness, correlated to the researches of M. Heidegger and E. Husserl. The specificity of the Russian philosophy is closely connected with fact that Christianity came to the Slavic peoples in their own, related language and they didn't have to learn strange and far ideas of it through the Latin language.
area of the understanding the unconscious, an aspect of the mind to which, he claimed, we
U.T. Place, like all physicalist (or materialist), must confront the formidable task of explaining consciousness in terms of contemporary science. While (nearly) everyone, I assume, would accept the proposition that there is a connection, to a degree, between consciousness and the brain, a physicalist would appear to have to go one step further and assert that the two are one and the same thing. Now, the proposition that consciousness is identical to, and thus, nothing more than a brain process (or processes) may be impossible to prove—however, in Is Consciousness A Brain Process?, Place doesn’t attempt to establish this proposition. But Place does argue the identity theory, i.e., consciousness is a process(es) in the brain, cannot be “dismissed on logical grounds alone” (p.44). Subsequently, he cites an objection to the identity theory presented by Sir Charles Sherrington. My focus in this short paper will be to explain Sherrington’s objection and Place’s response to said objection.
They suggest that Freud’s observational data consisted of a patient’s disorders and the absence of conscious contents which would appear during the psychoanalytic talking-cure. With this fundamental basis Freud formulated a theory which leads to the belief that the repressed unconscious thoughts in essence caused the disorders. (Talvitie & Tiitinen, 2006) Talvitie and Tiitinen modify the historical realm of psychoanalytic terms of repressed contents and the meta-psychology towards the present era using neurophysiological and empirical studies of consciousness, which focus more on the dynamic systems approach and one’s consciousness, memory, attention, and self. (Talvitie & Tiitinen,
Sir Roger Penrose, one of the foremost scientists of our time, when faced with a similar problem with regard to the definition of quite something else, viz., consciousness, states in his The Emperor's New Mind: "I do not think that it is wise, at this stage of understanding, to attempt to propose a precise definition of consciousness, but we can rely, to good measure, on our subjective impressions and intuitive common sense as to what the term means ..."[1]
What's really strange about consciousness is that we all know what it means, but none of us know how it came to be, what part of the brain makes us conscious, or even what the full scope of consciousness is.