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Consciousness.
Consciousness
The term consciousness has several different meanings, but is generally regarded as comprising abilities such as self-awareness and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. A thing that is conscious uses the term "I" to refer to itself. Some believe that the only conscious beings are humans, while others propose the possibility of mammals having a more or less conscious feeling.
In colloquial language, it denotes being awake and responsive to one's environment; what some call reactivity. This might contrast to being asleep or being in a coma. Usually most consciousness awareness is lost during sleep. However, some people can activate this awareness by using lucid dreaming techniques.
Human consciousness is generally regarded by most people as a self-evident directly perceived entity. However, consciousness has been a great problem for scientists and philosophers. Philosophers distinguish between phenomenal consciousness and psychological consciousness. Some suggest that consciousness resists or even defies definition.
In particular, philosophers have asked "how do we know we are conscious?" and "how do we know other people are conscious?". It turns out that these are difficult questions, both to formulate accurately, and to answer.
One question is to what extent other primates, whales and dolphins, or grey parrots have consciousness. These issues are of great interest and controversy not only to scientists, but also to animal rights lawyers.
In the past the origin of consciousness was looked for in a soul separate of the body. This idea developed in many cultures.
Some of these conceptions were first developed in ancient Greece, and later adapted to Christian ideas.
Today human consciousness is understood by many scientists as a function of the brain. This realization is based on the observation the fact that consciousness can be affected through chemical substances working in the brain and that often mental disorders cause changes in consciousness. Human behavior is affected by conscious and unconscious processes (assumed to be displaced consciousness contents and instincts), whereby the dividing line is to be drawn with difficulty.
Experimental psychology and developmental psychology, which are concerned with the learning behavior of infants (e.g. Elizabeth Spelke, Stephen Pinker), point to an early developing consciousness.
Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide")
1 Consciousness and language
2 Loss of consciousness
3 Consciousness and memory
4 The science of consciousness
4.1 Chemistry
4.2 Physics
5 Consciousness and philosophy
5.1 Phenomenal consciousness
5.2 Psychological consciousness
6 See also
7 Further reading
8 External links
Consciousness and language
Because of the fact that humans can express themselves by language, unlike all other animals, it is tempting to equate language abilities and consciousness. There are however speechless humans (infants, Kaspar Hauser, accident victims), to whom consciousness is attributed despite language lost or not yet acquired. Also consciousness does not change by the acquisition of a new language. Consciousness is therefore one of the conditions for the language acquisition; missing language ability is however no reference to missing consciousness.
Here a distinction must be made between language abilities and language authority: language authority is for example present with mute ones quite (see bearing language). Language is the substantial means of humans to give expression to the experience of consciousness. Other forms are artistic, such as music, dance, painting and sculpture.
Loss of consciousness
Several studies point to common mechanisms in different clinical conditions that lead to loss of consciousness. Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a condition in which a person loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but maintains sleep-wake cycles with full or partial autonomic functions. PVS is also often referred to a permanent vegetative state. Studies comparing PVS with healthy, awake subjects consistently demonstrate an impaired connectivity between the deeper (brainstem and thalamic) and the upper (cortical) areas of the brain. In addition, it is agreed that the general brain activity in the cortex is lower in the PVS state.
Loss of consciousness also occurs in other conditions, such as general (tonic-clonic) epileptic seizures, in general anaesthesia, maybe even in deep (slow wave) sleep. The currently best supported hypotheses about such cases of loss of consciousness focus on the need for 1) a widespread cortical network, including particularly the frontal, parietal and temporal cortices, and 2) cooperation between the deep layers of the brain, especially the thalamus, and the upper layers; the cortex. Such hypotheses go under the common term "globalist theories" of consciousness, due to the claim for a widespread, global network necessary for consciousness to exist in the first place.
Consciousness and memory
Consciousness is closely connected with the ability of memory, since even after temporary consciousness loss the identity of the individual remains.
The science of consciousness
Though some believe that consciousness is beyond science, many scientists, materialist or otherwise believes that science can explain the function of the brain and the consciousness.
Chemistry
Consciousness-changing chemicals human consciousness can be affected by medicines. Sleeping drugs (e.g. Midazolam = Dormicum) are used, in order to bring the brain from the awake condition (conscious) to the sleep (unconscious). Wake-up drugs (e.g. Anexate) reverse this process.
Many other drugs (such as heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA) have a consciousness-changing effect.
It is generally believed that general anaesthetics work by suppressing consciousness.
Modern brain research assumes that consciousness expires at brain death.
Physics
Physicists have tried to explain consciousness by the action of even smaller phenomenons than the chemical reactions. A controversial book by Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, suggests that non-local quantum mechanical effects constitutes the function of the mind. He also suggested that we need to deepen our knowledge of fundamental physics to properly explain consciousness. See Quantum brain dynamics.
Consciousness and philosophy
Phenomenal consciousness
There is, in the view of very many philosophers, one mental function that accompanies some, or perhaps all, mental events, namely, consciousness. In a philosophical context, the word "consciousness" means something like awareness, or that a mind is directed at something. (That sounds more like a definition of that philosophical term "intentionality" often referred to with the layman's term "aboutness".) So when we perceive, we are conscious of what we perceive; when we introspect, we are conscious of our thoughts; when we remember, we are conscious of something that happened in the past, or of some piece of information that we learned; and so on.
In this philosophical sense of the word "conscious", we are conscious even when we are dreaming; we are conscious of what's happening in the dream. But sleep researchers believe there is a sleep stage that happens, called "deep sleep", in which apparently we are not conscious of anything in any sense. No mental processes that involve consciousness in an ordinary or in a philosophical sense are going on. So dreamless deep sleep is an instance in which one is alive and one's brain is functioning, but there are no mental events occurring in which there is any element of consciousness.
Modern investigations into and discoveries about consciousness are based on psychological statistical studies and case studies of consciousness states and the deficits caused by lesions, stroke, injury, or surgery that disrupt the normal functioning of human senses and cognition. These discoveries suggest that the mind is a complex structure of various localized functions held together by a unitary awareness.
There has been some debate about the following question: Must one be conscious, in the philosophical sense, whenever a mental event occurs? For example, is it possible to have a pain that one does not feel? Some people think not; they think that in order for something to be a pain, one has to feel it and hence be aware of it. Similarly, if anything is a thought, then one has to be aware of that of which one is thinking (indeed, that seems nearly a tautology); if there is no consciousness, then one is not thinking. This raises these questions: do mental events necessarily involve consciousness? What about functioning of the brain of which we are unaware?
Suppose we answer "No." Then, of course, what we'd be saying is that there are some mental events that do not include an element of consciousness. These events are going on even though we aren't aware of them. In other words, part of the mind is unconscious. Cognitive scientists believe that many cognitive processes are unconscious in this manner; we are aware of only some of the events that are occurring in our minds.
Some view consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, somehow arising from a hierarchy of unconscious processes. These are fairly recent views, made popular only after Freud.
Psychological consciousness
Psychological consciousness refers to a closely interrelated set of features. Julian Jaynes lists these features as:
1. spatialization - having an internal mental 'space' in which hypothetical events can 'happen'. It is impossible to think of any events occurring in time without spatializing them, usually on a timeline running from left to right. People who are not conscious (eg, in a hypnotic state) are incapable of thinking about time or putting things in a time-ordered sequence.
2. analog I - being able to see 'in' one's spatialized mind what one would 'see' if one were in a certain situation. For example, if a person comes to a fork while walking through a forest, they can 'see' 'in' their mind what they would through their eyes if they took either of the paths. It's based on this information that they can decide to take one path (perhaps more scenic) over the other.
3. analog Me - the 'I' is the subject performing actions, through whose eyes we 'see'. The 'Me' is an object 'seen' in its entirety. The 'I' is the first-person view in computer games while the 'Me' is the third-person view, behind the main character. One can often 'see' oneself performing actions 'in one's mind' as if one were 'outside' of one's own body.
4. excerption - the taking of a small aspect of something to stand for that whole thing. No one thinks of their city by imagining every house, every street corner and every sewer. One takes something, perhaps the skyline or city hall, and lets it stand for the whole thing. The same occurs for everything. Recalling one excerption after another by a chain of associations is what constitutes 'reminiscence'.
5. conciliation - something similar to assimilation of knowledge to fit a schema but done 'in' a conscious mind.
6. narratization - the constant unnoticed activity of thinking of one's life in terms of stories, in which one is the star character.
See also
Further reading
- How the Mind Works, Stephen Pinker.
- Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett 1991
- Consciousness: An Introduction, Susan J. Blackmore, 2003.
- The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots, Irene M. Pepperberg, 1999.
- The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio, 1999
- The Emperor's New Mind, Roger Penrose
External links
The above article is adapted from from Wikipedia All Wikipedia article text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David R. Hawkins
Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness by Gerald M. Edelman
Limitless Mind: A Guide to Remote Viewing and Transformation of Consciousness by Russell Targ
The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel
The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley
Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan J. Blackmore
The Ever-Transcending Spirit : The Psychology of Human Relationships, Consciousness, and Development by Toru Sato
Natural Philosophy: Written to Evolve the Human Consciousness by Ben Harris
The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christof Koch
The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness by Antonio R. Damasio
Infinite Mind: Science of Human Vibrations of Consciousness by Valerie V. Hunt
The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World by Maggie Goswami
Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing by Russell Targ
Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy by Ken Wilber
Sanctuary: The Path to Consciousness by Stephen Lewis
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