Consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience, awareness Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is, the ability to experience "feeling Feeling is the nominalization of "to feel". The word was first used in the English language to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe experiences, other than the physical sensation of touch, such as "a feeling of warmth". In psychology, the word is", wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind.[1] It is an umbrella term An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or grouping of related concepts, also called a hypernym that may refer to a variety of mental phenomena.[2] Although humans realize what everyday experiences are, consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note (e.g. John Searle John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Searle began his college education at the University of Wisconsin, and subsequently became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he earned an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in philosophy and Ethics in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy):[3]
"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives." —Schneider and Velmans Max Velmans is a Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. From 2003 to 2006 he was Chair of the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society and has been involved in many other initiatives to encourage studies in consciousness. He is known for the theory of consciousness called ", 2007[4]
Consciousness in medicine (e.g., anesthesiology Anesthesia, or anaesthesia , has traditionally meant the condition of having sensation (including the feeling of pain) blocked or temporarily taken away. It is a pharmacologically induced reversible state of amnesia, analgesia, loss of responsiveness, loss of skeletal muscle reflexes and/or decreased stress response. This allows patients to) is assessed by observing a patient's alertness and responsiveness, and can be seen as a continuum of states ranging from alert, oriented to time and place, and communicative, through disorientation, then delirium, then loss of any meaningful communication, and ending with loss of movement in response to painful stimulation.[5]
Consciousness in psychology and philosophy typically means something beyond what it means for anesthesiology, and may be said in many contexts to imply four characteristics: subjectivity, change, continuity, and selectivity.[1][6] Philosopher Franz Brentano Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano was an influential German philosopher and psychologist whose influence was felt by other such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski and Alexius Meinong, who followed and adapted his views has suggested intentionality The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not. The term was later used by Edmund Husserl in his doctrine that consciousness is always intentional, a concept that he undertook in connection with or aboutness (that consciousness is about something). However, within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness.[7]
Consciousness is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in, psychology Psychology is the study of human or animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is a psychologist. Psychologists are classified as social or behavioral scientists. Psychological research can be considered either basic or applied. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in, neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. Nevertheless, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that involves other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and medicine. As a result, the scope of neuroscience has, cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of how information, e.g., concerning perception, language, reasoning, and emotion, is represented and transformed in the brain. It consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics, anthropology,, cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and and artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents," where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who. Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill or comatose people;[8] whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be measured; at what point in fetal development Prenatal or antenatal development is the process in which an embryo or fetus gestates during pregnancy, from fertilization until birth. Often, the terms fetal development, foetal development, or embryology are used in a similar sense consciousness begins; and whether computers A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data//information, and provides output in a useful format can achieve a conscious state.[9][10][11]
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Etymology
The word "conscious" is derived from Latin conscius meaning "1. having joint or common knowledge with another, privy to, cognizant of; 2. conscious to oneself; esp., conscious of guilt".[12] A related word was conscientia, which primarily means moral Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is conscience Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition, or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral evaluations of this type may reference values or norms . In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human does things that go against his/her moral values, and to feelings of. In the literal sense, "conscientia" means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by writers such as Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.[13] Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else.[14]
René Descartes René Descartes , (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (Latinized form; adjectival form: "Cartesian"), was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of (1596–1650) is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use "conscientia" in a way that does not seem to fit this traditional meaning.[citation needed] Descartes used "conscientia" the way modern speakers would use "conscience." In Search after Truth he says "conscience or internal testimony" (conscientia vel interno testimonio).[15]
Shortly thereafter, in Britain, the neo-Platonist theologian Ralph Cudworth Ralph Cudworth was an English philosopher, the leader of the Cambridge Platonists used the modern meaning of consciousness in his "True Intellectual System of the Universe" (1678 Year 1678 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar)) and associated the concept with personal identity In philosophy, personal identity refers to the numerical identity of persons through time. That is to say, the conditions under which a person is said to be identical to himself or herself through time, which is assured by the repeated consciousness of oneself. Cudworth's use of the term also remained intertwined with moral agency.[citation needed] While there were no elaborate theories of consciousness in the seventeenth century, there was an awareness of the idea of consciousness. Cudworth was the first English philosopher to make extensive use of the noun "consciousness" with a specific philosophical meaning.[16]
Twelve years later, Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of John Locke's two most famous works, the other being his Second Treatise on Civil Government. First appearing in 1690, the essay concerns the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind at birth as a blank slate filled later through experience. The essay was one of the (1690 Year 1690 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar)) connected consciousness with personal identity.[17] Locke argued that being the same person from one time to another was not dependent upon having the same soul or same body, but instead the same consciousness.[18] Locke defined consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.”[19] Locke had much influence on the 18th Century view of consciousness: in Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr Johnson, was a British author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English's celebrated Dictionary Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language (1755 Year 1755 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar)), Johnson uses this definition of "consciousness."[citation needed]
Philosophical approaches
There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including behaviorism Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be, dualism In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, idealism Idealism is the philosophical theory which maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on the mind or ideas. In the philosophy of perception, idealism is contrasted with realism in which the external world is said to have an apparent absolute existence. Epistemological idealists claim that the only things which can be directly known for, functionalism Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviourism. Its core idea is that mental states are constituted solely by their functional role — that is, they are causal relations to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. (Block,, reflexive monism Monism is the view that the universe, at the deepest level of analysis, is one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff. This is usually contrasted with Substance Dualism, the view found for example in the writings of Plato and Descartes that, fundamentally, the universe is composed of two kinds of stuff, physical stuff and the stuff of, phenomenalism In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli situated in time and in space. In particular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data, phenomenology Phenomenology is a philosophical movement. It was founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl, expanded together with a circle of his followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany, and spread across to France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's early work and intentionality The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not. The term was later used by Edmund Husserl in his doctrine that consciousness is always intentional, a concept that he undertook in connection with, physicalism Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties; that is, that there are no kinds of things other than physical things. The term was coined by Otto Neurath in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote:, emergentism In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts with reductionism. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is more than the sum of the properties of the system's parts, mysticism Mysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or awareness. Mysticism may be dualistic, maintaining a, personal identity In philosophy, personal identity refers to the numerical identity of persons through time. That is to say, the conditions under which a person is said to be identical to himself or herself through time, and externalism Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which hold that the mind is not only the results of what is going on inside the nervous system but also of what either occur or exist outside the subject. It is often contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges out of neural activity alone. Externalism articulates the.
Phenomenal and access consciousness
Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) is simply experience;[20] it is moving, colored forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the center. These experiences, considered independently of any impact on behavior, are called qualia "Qualia" , singular "quale" (pronounced /ˈkwɑːlɛ/), from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to describe the subjective quality of conscious experience. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the redness of an evening sky. Daniel. The hard problem of consciousness The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers, refers to the difficult problem of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences. Chalmers contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are, formulated by David Chalmers David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher specializing in the area of philosophy of mind. He is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University in 1996, deals with the issue of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its neurological basis".[21]
Access consciousness (A-consciousness) is the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So, when we perceive In philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. The word "perception" comes from the Latin words perceptio, percipio, and means "receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses.", information about what we perceive is often access conscious; when we introspect Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul. It can also be called contemplation of one's self, and is contrasted, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including technique of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent, information about the past (e.g., something that we learned Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves) is often access conscious, and so on. Chalmers thinks that access consciousness is less mysterious than phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of consciousness. Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, denies that there is a "hard problem", asserting that the totality of consciousness can be understood in terms of impact on behavior, as studied through heterophenomenology Heterophenomenology , is a term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe an explicitly third-person, scientific approach to the study of consciousness and other mental phenomena. It consists of applying the scientific method with an anthropological bend, combining the subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental. There have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Dennett suggests that what people think of as phenomenal consciousness, such as qualia, are judgments and consequent behavior.[22] He extends this analysis by arguing that phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of access consciousness, denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem."[22] Chalmers, on the other hand, argues that Dennett's explanatory processes merely address aspects of the easy problem. Eccles and others have pointed out the difficulty of explaining the evolution of qualia, or of 'minds', which experience them, given that all the processes governing evolution are physical and so have no direct access to them. There is no guarantee that all people have minds, nor any way to verify whether one does or does not possess one.
Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as subconscious events.
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Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:24:00 GMT+00:00
Wall Street Journal (blog) The PGA Championship proved Thursday how drastically six swings of a golf club can affect the public consciousness . ...
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Posted on Aug 29th 2009 by Ryon Now that I know a plethora of truth I can settle with the wisdom and inspire my youth
Sat, 30 Aug 2008 03:36:18 PDT
Eckhart Tolle - The Flowering of Human Consciousness - CD1. video.google.com.
Ram Kumar Shrestha
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:29:22 GM
The article 'Conscious events as orchestrated space-time selections' was written by Sir Roger Penrose and me for a special issue of the Journal of . Consciousness. Studies devoted to the 'hard problem' [1]. Coined by philosopher David ...
