Consciousness is a state of the nervous systems of humans and other animals that defies definition, but which may involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, dreams, and an awareness of self, although not necessarily all of these. Neuropsychology is the applied scientific discipline that studies the structure and function of the Brain related to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors A brain-computer interface (BCI sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal Traumatic brain injury (TBI also called intracranial injury, occurs when Physical trauma injures the Brain. Anatomical regions of the brain are listed vertically following hierarchies that are standard in Neuroanatomy. Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-specialty of clinical Psychology that specialises in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of patients with Brain injury or Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrate underlying Cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS Neuroanatomy is the science for localizing function in the Human brain. Neurophysiology (from Greek grc νεῦρον neuron, "nerve" grc φύσις physis, "nature origin" and grc -λογία Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν phrēn, "mind" and λόγος Logos, "knowledge" is a defunct field of study once The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS Wikipedia articles related to Brain Function Visual system Auditory system Olfactory system Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake Attention is the Cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things Decision making can be regarded as an outcome of mental processes ( cognitive process) leading to the selection of a course of action among several alternatives The executive system is a theorized Cognitive system in Psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes In the Philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a Language that is spoken or written in phonemic-alphabetic or phonemically-related In the fields of Neuropsychology, Personal development and Education, Learning is one of the most important Mental function of humans In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information Gross motor coordination addresses the Gross motor skills walking running climbing jumping crawling lifting one's head sitting up etc In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. Planning in Organizations and Public policy is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a Plan; and the psychological process of Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions problem solving has been defined as higher-order Cognitive Thought and thinking are mental forms and Processes respectively ("thought" is both David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American António Rosa Damásio, GOSE, pron. ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (b Phineas P Gage (July 9? 1823 – May 21? 1860 was a railroad worker now remembered for his incredible survival of a Traumatic brain injury which destroyed one or both of Norman Geschwind (1926-1984 can be considered the father of modern Behavioral neurology in America Elkhonon Goldberg (b 1946 Riga, Latvia) is a Neuropsychologist and Cognitive neuroscientist known for his work in hemispheric specialization Donald Olding Hebb ( July 22, 1904 &ndash August 20, 1985) was a Canadian Psychologist who was influential in the area of Neuropsychology Kenneth M Heilman is an American Behavioral neurologist. Biography Early life and career Kenneth Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn Muriel Deutsch Lezak is an American neuropsychologist best known for her book Neuropsychological Assessment, widely accepted as the standard in the field Benjamin Libet ( April 12, 1916 - July 23, 2007) was a researcher in the Physiology department of the University of California Rodolfo R Llinás (b Bogotá, Colombia in 1934 is the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience Alexander Romanovich Luria Александр Романович Лурия ( July 16, 1902 - August 14, 1977) was a famous Soviet Dr Brenda Milner CC FRS (born 15 July 1918, Manchester England) has contributed extensively to the research literature Karl H Pribram (born February 25, 1919 in Vienna Austria) is a professor at Georgetown University and George Mason University Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE (born July 9, 1933, London is a British Neurologist residing in the United States who has written popular books about Roger Wolcott Sperry ( August 20, 1913 – April 17, 1994) was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who KC (Also known as Patient KC) is a famous patient in Neuropsychology who suffers from Anterograde amnesia and temporally graded Retrograde amnesia Neuropsychological tests are specifically designed tasks used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular Brain structure or pathway The Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test, or simply the Bender-Gestalt test, is a Psychological test first developed by child Neuropsychiatrist Lauretta The Benton Visual Retention Test (or simply Benton Test) is an individually administered test for ages 8-adult that measures Visual perception and Visual memory The Clinical Dementia Rating or CDR is a numeric scale used to quantify the severity of Symptoms of Dementia (i A Continuous Performance Task/Test, or CPT, is a Psychological test which measures a person's sustained and selective Attention and impulsivity The Glasgow Coma Scale or GCS, sometimes also known as the Glasgow Coma Score is a neurological scale which aims to give a reliable objective The Hayling and Brixton tests are Neuropsychological tests of Executive function created by psychologists Paul W The lexical decision task is a procedure used in many Psychology and Psycholinguistics experiments The mini-mental state examination ( MMSE) or Folstein test is a brief 30-point questionnaire test that is used to assess Cognition. Demonstration Say aloud the colors of each of these words as fast Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS is a general test of intelligence ( IQ) published in February 1955 as a revision of the Wechsler - Bellevue test The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST is a Neuropsychological test of "set-shifting" i A Johari window is a cognitive psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States used to help people better understand The nervous system is a Network of specialized cells that communicate information about an animal's surroundings and itself Self-awareness is the concept that one exists as an individual separate from other people with private Thoughts. Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others [1] Consciousness is a point of view, an I, or what Thomas Nagel called the existence of "something that it is like" to be something. Thomas Nagel (born July 4 1937 is an American Philosopher, currently University Professor and Professor of Philosophy and Law [2] Julian Jaynes has emphasized that "Consciousness is not the same as cognition and should be sharply distinguished from it. Julian Jaynes ( February 27 1920 &ndash November 21 1997) was an American Psychologist, best known for his book The Origin . . . The most common error . . . is to confuse consciousness with perception. " [3]
Ned Block divides consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is subjective experience itself (being something), and access consciousness, which refers to the availability of information to processing systems in the brain (being conscious of something). Ned Block (born 1942 is a philosopher of mind who has made important contributions to matters of Consciousness and Cognitive science. The brain is the center of the Nervous system in animals All Vertebrates and the majority of Invertebrates have a brain [4]
The issue of what consciousness is, and to what extent and in what sense it exists, is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system Cognitive science may be broadly defined as the multidisciplinary study of mind and behavior Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill individuals;[5] to what extent non-humans are self conscious; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and whether computers can achieve conscious states. [6][7][8]
In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to the environment, in contrast to being asleep or in a coma. The phrase built environment refers to the man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places Sleep is a Natural state of bodily rest observed throughout the animal kingdom In Medicine, a coma (from the Greek koma, meaning deep sleep is a profound state of Unconsciousness.
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Etymology
"Consciousness" derives from Latin conscientia which primarily means moral conscience. Conscience is a hypothesized Ability or faculty that distinguishes whether our actions are right or wrong In the literal sense, "conscientia" (or "con scientia") means knowledge-with, that is, shared knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridic texts by writers such as Cicero. Marcus Tullius Cicero ( Classical Latin ˈkikeroː usually ˈsɪsərəʊ in English January 3, 106 BC &ndash December 7, 43 BC was a Roman Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else. In Christian theology, conscience stands for the moral conscience in which our actions and intentions are registered and which is only fully known to God. Medieval writers such as Thomas Aquinas describe the conscientia as the act by which we apply practical and moral knowledge to our own actions. [9] René Descartes has been said to be the first philosopher to use "conscientia" in a way that does not seem to fit this traditional meaning, and, as a consequence, the translators of his writings in other languages like French and English coined new words in order to denote merely psychological consciousness. These are, for instance, conscience, and Bewusstsein. [10] However, it has also been argued that John Locke was in fact the first one to use the modern meaning of consciousness in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, although it remains closely intertwined with moral conscience (I may be held morally responsible only for the act of which I am conscious of having achieved; and my personal identity - my self - goes as far as my consciousness extends itself). John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of John Locke 's two most famous works the other being his Second Treatise on Civil Government Moral responsibility can refer to two different but related things Self is broadly defined as the essential qualities that make a person distinct from all others The modern sense of "consciousness" was therefore first found not in Descartes' work - who sometimes used the word in a modern sense, but did not distinguish it as much as Locke would do -, but in Locke's text. The contemporary sense of the word (consciousness associated to the idea of personal identity, which is assured by the repeated consciousness of oneself) was therefore introduced by Locke; but the word "conscience" itself was coined by Pierre Costes, French translator of Locke. In Philosophy, personal identity refers to the essence of a self-conscious person that which makes him or her unique Henceforth, the modern sense first appeared in Locke's works, but the word itself first appeared in the French language. [11] Locke's influence upon the concept can be found in Samuel Johnson's celebrated Dictionary, in which Johnson abstains from offering a definition of "consciousness," choosing instead to simply quote Locke. Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed Words in a specific language with definitions etymologies pronunciations and other information or a book of alphabetically
Philosophical approaches
There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including: behaviorism, dualism, idealism, functionalism, reflexive monism, phenomenalism, phenomenology and intentionality, physicalism, emergentism, mysticism, personal identity etc. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior is a philosophy of Psychology based on the 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 In Western civilization, Idealism is the philosophy which maintains that the Ultimate nature of reality is ideal or based upon ideas values essences The so-called Monism is the view that the universe at the deepest level of analysis is one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff 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 The term intentionality is often simplistically summarised as "aboutness" 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 In Philosophy, emergentism is the belief in Emergence, particularly as it involves Consciousness and the Philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts Mysticism (from the Greek grc μυστικός mystikos, an initiate of a Mystery religion) is the pursuit of communion with identity In Philosophy, personal identity refers to the essence of a self-conscious person that which makes him or her unique
Phenomenal and access consciousness
Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) is simply experience; it is moving, coloured 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 " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" The hard problem of consciousness was formulated by Chalmers in 1996, dealing with the issue of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its neurological basis" (Block 2004). The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers, refers to the "hard problem" of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a Philosopher in the area of Philosophy of mind.
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, information about what we perceive is often access conscious; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember, information about the past (e. In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of Conscious inner Thoughts desires and Sensations It is a conscious mental and usually In Psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store retain and subsequently retrieve information g. , something that we learned) is often access conscious; and so on. In the fields of Neuropsychology, Personal development and Education, Learning is one of the most important Mental function of humans 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. Dennett 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 (" Phenomenology of another not oneself" is a term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe an explicitly third-person scientific There have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Philosophers who have explored this problem include Gerald Edelman, Edmund Husserl and Daniel Dennett. Gerald Maurice Edelman (born July 1, 1929) is an American biologist who won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (ˈhʊsɛrl April 8 1859 – April 26 1938) was a philosopher, known as the father of Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research Daniel Dennett (1988) suggests that what people think of as phenomenal consciousness, such as qualia, are judgments and consequent behaviour. Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research He extends this analysis (Dennett, 1996) 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. " Chalmers, on the other hand, makes a strong case for the hard problem, and shows that all of Dennett's supposed explanatory processes merely address aspects of the easy problem, albeit disgused in obfuscating verbiage. 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. The possibility has indeed been proposed that those denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem," do so since they do not possess this faculty[12].
Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as subconscious events. The term subconscious is defined as existing or operating in the Mind beneath or beyond Conscious Awareness.
The description and location of phenomenal consciousness
For centuries, philosophers have investigated phenomenal consciousness. René Descartes, who arrived at the famous dictum 'cogito ergo sum', wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in the seventeenth century. " la Cogito ergo sum " (I think therefore I am sometimes misquoted as la Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum (Latin "I doubt therefore I think therefore I am" Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise written As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar He described, extensively, what it is to be conscious. Conscious experience, according to Descartes, included such ideas as imaginings and perceptions laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point, and appearing as a result of some quality (qualia) such as color, smell, and so on. Imagination is the ability to form Mental images/sounds/feelings or the ability to Spontaneously Generate images/sounds/feelings within one's own Mind In Psychology and the Cognitive sciences perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory Information. Space is the extent within which Matter is physically extended and objects and Events have positions relative to one another For other uses see Time (disambiguation Time is a component of a measuring system used to sequence events to compare the durations of " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" (Modern readers are often confused by this Descartes' notion of interchangeability between the terms 'idea' and 'imaginings. ')
Like Aristotle Descartes defines ideas as extended things, as in this excerpt from his Treatise on Man:
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Now among these figures, it is not those imprinted on the external sense organs, or on the internal surface of the brain, which should be taken to be ideas - but only those which are traced in the spirits on the surface of gland H [where the seat of the imagination and the 'common sense' is located]. Aristotle (Greek Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC was a Greek philosopher a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. That is to say, it is only the latter figures which should be taken to be the forms or images which the rational soul united to this machine will consider directly when it imagines some object or perceives it by the senses.
Thus Descartes does not identify mental ideas or 'qualia' with activity within the sense organs, or even with brain activity, but rather with interaction between body and the 'rational soul', through the mediating 'gland H'. " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" This organ is now known as the pineal gland. In Biology, an organ ( Latin: organum, "instrument tool" from Greek όργανον - organon "organ instrument The pineal gland (also called the pineal body, epiphysis cerebri, or epiphysis) is a small endocrine gland in the vertebrate Brain Descartes notes that, anatomically, while the human brain consists of two symmetrical hemispheres the pineal gland, which lies close to the brain's centre, is singular. The human brain controls the Central nervous system (CNS by way of the Cranial nerves and Spinal cord, the Peripheral nervous system (PNS Thus he extrapolated from this that it was the mediator between body and soul.
Other philosophers agreed with Descartes to varying degrees. They include Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Reid, John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. "Malebranche" redirects here For the fictional demons see Malebolge. Thomas Reid ( April 26, 1710 – October 7, 1796) Scottish Philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English Philosopher. David Hume (26 April 1711 25 August 1776 Scottish Philosopher, Economist, and Historian is an important figure in Western philosophy Immanuel Kant (ɪmanuəl kant 22 April 1724 12 February 1804 was an 18th-century German Philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg Malebranche, for example, agreed with Descartes that the human being was composed of two elements, body and mind, and that conscious experience resided in the latter. He did, however, disagree with Descartes as to the ease with which we might become aware of our mental constitution, stating 'I am not my own light unto myself'. David Hume and Immanuel Kant also differ from Descartes, in that they avoid mentioning a place from which experience is viewed (see "Further reading" below); certainly, few if any modern philosophers have identified the pineal gland as the seat of dualist interaction.
The extension of things in time was considered in more detail by Kant and James. Kant wrote that "only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time [simultaneously] or at different times [successively]. " William James stressed the extension of experience in time and said that time is "the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible. For other people named William James see William James (disambiguation William James (January 11 1842 – August 26 1910 was a pioneering "
When we look around a room or have a dream, things are laid out in space and time and viewed as if from a point. However, when philosophers and scientists consider the location of the form and contents of this phenomenal consciousness, there are fierce disagreements. As an example, Descartes proposed that the contents are brain activity seen by a non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans), which, in Meditations on First Philosophy, he identified as the soul. Meditations on First Philosophy (subtitled In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated) is a philosophical treatise written This idea is known as Cartesian 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 Another example is found in the work of Thomas Reid who thought the contents of consciousness are the world itself, which becomes conscious experience in some way. Thomas Reid ( April 26, 1710 – October 7, 1796) Scottish Philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was This concept is a type of Direct realism. Direct realism, also known as Naive realism or common sense realism is a theory of Perception that claims that the Senses provide us with direct Awareness The precise physical substrate of conscious experience in the world, such as photons, quantum fields, etc. is usually not specified.
Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of consciousness are an aspect of minds and do not necessarily involve matter at all. George Berkeley (ˈbɑrkli (12 March 1685 14 January 1753 also known as Bishop Berkeley, was a Philosopher. This is a type of Idealism. In Western civilization, Idealism is the philosophy which maintains that the Ultimate nature of reality is ideal or based upon ideas values essences The so-called Yet others, such as Leibniz, have considered that each point in the universe is endowed with conscious content. This is a form of Panpsychism. Panpsychism, in Philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses Panpsychism is the belief that all matter, including rocks for example, is sentient or conscious. The concept of the things in conscious experience being impressions in the brain is a type of representationalism, and representationalism is a form of indirect realism. Representative Theory of Perception, also known as Indirect realism, epistemological dualism, and The veil of perception, is a philosophical Representative Theory of Perception, also known as Indirect realism, epistemological dualism, and The veil of perception, is a philosophical
It is sometimes held that consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain processing. The general label 'emergence' applies to new phenomena that emerge from a physical basis without the connection between the two explicitly specified. For other uses see Emergence (disambiguation, Emergent, and Emergency.
Physicalists claim that consciousness must arise from the neuronal interactions in the brain, a hugely complicated machine with about 10 million million neurones, each with thousands of excitatory and inhibitory connections “votes,” with no mystery stuff. 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 These neuronal interactions must use voting mechanisms to deliver outcomes. But voting systems can produce different results from the same voter base and such voting result variations provide the required indeterminacy which provides freedom from rigid deterministic mechanisms (Welsby PD. Problems with voting: the ultimate source? Int Journal of Design & Nature Vol2, No 4, 2007). Sufficiently complex brains will have a coordinating system which, when confronted by such indeterminacy, will become aware that it has been burdened with free will as it has to determine which of the voting systems will be chosen to get the result. This, according to the theory, is the origin of free will; awareness of free will in turn leads to self-awareness, and self-awareness is consciousness.
Investigators have failed to agree on an anatomical mechanism for consciousness. To those who support the emergence theory, this is predictable because consciousness is not an anatomical feature but a function; one that that emerges from billions of neurones and their voting interactions, in the way that a rainbow emerges from billions of raindrops.
Some theorists hold that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap. The basic idea of the explanatory gap is that human experience (such as Qualia) cannot be fully explained by mechanical processes that something extra perhaps even of a different Colin McGinn takes the New Mysterianism position that it can't be solved, and Chalmers criticizes purely physical accounts of mental experiences based on the idea that philosophical zombies are logically possible and supports property dualism. Colin McGinn (born March 10, 1950) is a British Philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. This article is about a response to the mind-body problem For a general article on the limits of inquiry see cognitive closure. David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a Philosopher in the area of Philosophy of mind. A philosophical Zombie, p-zombie or p-zed is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious Property dualism describes a category of positions in the Philosophy of mind which hold that while the world is constituted of just one kind of Substance - the physical But others have proposed speculative scientific theories to explain the explanatory gap, such as Quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness, reflexive monism, and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness to explain the correspondence between brain activity and experience. Quantum mind theories are based on the premise that Quantum mechanics is necessary to fully understand the Mind and Brain, particularly concerning an explanation Monism is the view that the universe at the deepest level of analysis is one thing or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff The electromagnetic theory of consciousness is a Theory that says the Electromagnetic field generated by the Brain (measurable by EEGs is the
Parapsychologists sometimes appeal to the unproven concepts of psychokinesis or telepathy to support the belief that consciousness is not confined to the brain. Parapsychology is a discipline that seeks to demonstrate the existence and causes of Psychic abilities and life after death using the Scientific method The term psychokinesis (from the Greek ψυχή, "psyche" meaning mind soul heart or breath; and κίνησις, "kinesis" Telepathy ( Greek τηλε tele meaning "distant" and πάθεια patheia meaning "to be affected by" describes the purported transfer
Philosophical criticisms
From the eighteenth to twentieth centuries many philosophers concentrated on relations, processes and thought as the most important aspects of consciousness. These aspects would later become known as "access consciousness" and this focus on relations allowed philosophers such as Marx, Nietzsche and Foucault to claim that individual consciousness was dependent on such factors as social relations, political relations and ideology. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist
Locke's "forensic" notion of personal identity founded on an individual conscious subject would be criticized in the 19th century by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud following different angles. Not to be confused with the subiectum or Hypokeimenon in Aristotelianism Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Sigmund Freud (ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt born Sigismund Shlomo Freud (May 6 1856 &ndash September 23 1939 was an Austrian Psychiatrist who founded Martin Heidegger's concept of the Dasein ("Being-there") would also be an attempt to think beyond the conscious subject. Martin Heidegger ( September 26, 1889 &ndash May 26, 1976) (ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪ̯dɛgɐ was an influential German philosopher Heideggerian terminology Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his Magnum opus Being Disambiguation For the Wigwam album see Being (album, for spiritual or religious beingness, see Ego (spirituality
Marx considered that social relations ontologically preceded individual consciousness, and criticized the conception of a conscious subject as an ideological conception on which liberal political thought was founded. In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Liberalism is a broad array of related ideas and theories of Government that consider individual Liberty to be the most important political goal Marx in particular criticized the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considering that the so-called individual natural rights were ideological fictions camouflaging social inequality in the attribution of those rights. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen is a fundamental document of the French Revolution, defining Social inequality refers to a lack of Social equality, where individuals in a society do not have equal Social status. Later, Louis Althusser would criticize the "bourgeois ideology of the subject" through the concept of interpellation ("Hey, you!"). Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. Interpellation is a concept first coined by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser to describe the process by which ideology addresses the (abstract pre-ideological
Nietzsche, for his part, once wrote that "they give you free will only to later blame yourself", thus reversing the classical liberal conception of free will in a critical account of the genealogy of consciousness as the effect of guilt and ressentiment, which he described in On the Genealogy of Morals. The question of free will Liberalism is a broad array of related ideas and theories of Government that consider individual Liberty to be the most important political goal Ressentiment (pronounced /rɛsɑ̃timɑ̃/ is a term used in Psychology and Philosophy derived from the French word 'ressentiment' (meaning On the Genealogy of Morality, or On the Genealogy of Morals (German Zur Genealogie der Moral) subtitled "A Polemic " ( Eine Streitschrift Hence, Nietzsche was the first one to make the claim that the modern notion of consciousness was indebted to the modern system of penalty, which judged a man according to his "responsibility", that is by the consciousness through which acts can be attributed to an individual subject: "I did this! this is me!". Moral responsibility can refer to two different but related things Consciousness is thus related by Nietzsche to the classic philosopheme of recognition which, according to him, defines knowledge. Recognition (re+ Cognition) is a process that occurs in Thinking when some event, Process, Pattern, or object recurrs Knowledge is defined ( Oxford English Dictionary) variously as (i expertise and skills acquired by a person through experience or education the theoretical or practical understanding [13]
According to Pierre Klossowski (1969), Nietzsche considered consciousness to be a hypostatization of the body, composed of multiple forces (the "Will to Power"). Pierre Klossowski ( August 9, 1905 — August 12, 2001) was a French writer translator and artist With regard to living things, a body is the integral physical material of an individual Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist According to him, the subject was only a "grammatical fiction": we believed in the existence of an individual subject, and therefore of a specific author of each act, insofar as we speak. Therefore, the conscious subject is dependent on the existence of language, a claim which would be generalized by critical discourse analysis (see for example Judith Butler). A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Discourse, which views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social Judith Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American Post-structuralist philosopher who has contributed to the fields of Feminism
Michel Foucault's analysis of the creation of the individual subject through disciplines, in Discipline and Punish (1975), would extend Nietzsche's genealogy of consciousness and personal identity - i. Michel Foucault ( (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 was a French philosopher, Historian, Intellectual, Critic and Sociologist. Disciplinary institutions ( French) is a Concept proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975 Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison is a book written by the philosopher Michel Foucault. e. individualism - to the change in the juridico-penal system: the emergence of penology and the disciplinization of the individual subject through the creation of a penal system which judged not the acts as it alleged to, but the personal identity of the wrong-doer. Penology (from the Latin poena, " Punishment " comprises Penitentiary Science: that concerned with the processes devised In other words, Foucault maintained that, by judging not the acts (the crime), but the person behind those acts (the criminal), the modern penal system was not only following the philosophical definition of consciousness, once again demonstrating the imbrications between ideas and social institutions ("material ideology" as Althusser would call it); it was by itself creating the individual person, categorizing and dividing the masses into a category of poor but honest and law-abiding citizens and another category of "professional criminals" or recidivists. iDeaS is a Nintendo DS Emulator for Microsoft Windows and Linux, using GTK+. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. Recidivism ( IPA: /ɹɪˈsɪdɪvɪzm̩/ From recidive + ism, from Latin recidīvus "recurring" from re-
Gilbert Ryle has argued that traditional understandings of consciousness depend on a Cartesian outlook that divides into mind and body, mind and world. Gilbert Ryle ( 19 August 1900 - 6 October 1976) was a British Philosopher, and a representative of the generation of He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by saying 'consciousness,' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.
The failure to produce a workable definition of consciousness also raises formidable philosophical questions. It has been argued that when Antonio Damasio[14] defines consciousness as "an organism's awareness of its own self and its surroundings", the definition has not escaped circularity, because awareness in that context can be considered a synonym for consciousness. António Rosa Damásio, GOSE, pron. ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (b
The notion of consciousness as passive awareness can be contrasted with the notion of the active construction of mental representations. A mental model is an explanation in someone's Thought process for how something works in the real world Maturana and Varela[15] showed that the brain is massively involved with creating worlds of experience for us with meager input from the senses. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins[16] sums up the interactive view of experience: "In a way, what sense organs do is assist our brains to construct a useful model and it is this model that we move around in. Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941 is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and Popular science It is a kind of virtual reality simulation of the world. "
Consciousness and language
Because humans express their conscious states using language, it is tempting to equate language abilities and consciousness. There are, however, speechless humans (infants, feral children, aphasics, severe forms of autism), to whom consciousness is attributed despite language lost or not yet acquired. A feral child ( Feral, Wild, or undomesticated) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age and has no (or little Language development. The terminology Moreover, the study of brain states of non-linguistic primates, in particular the macaques, has been used extensively by scientists and philosophers in their quest for the neural correlates of the contents of consciousness. The macaques (məˈkæk constitute a genus ( Macaca, /məˈkækə/ of Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC can be defined as the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one
Julian Jaynes argued to the contrary, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, that for consciousness (which he defines as not merely perception of an object, but awareness that one is an entity which is perceiving it) to arise in a person, language needs to have reached a fairly high level of complexity. Julian Jaynes ( February 27 1920 &ndash November 21 1997) was an American Psychologist, best known for his book The Origin In Psychology, bicameralism is a controversial hypothesis which argues that the human Brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which According to Jaynes, human consciousness emerged as recently as 1300 BCE or thereabouts. Some philosophers, including W.V. Quine, and some neuroscientists, including Christof Koch, contest this hypothesis, arguing that it suggests that prior to this "discovery" of consciousness, experience simply did not exist. Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25 1908 Akron, Ohio &ndash December 25 2000 (known to intimates as "Van" Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system Christof Koch (born November 13, 1956, Kansas City) is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of Consciousness [17] Ned Block argued that Jaynes had confused consciousness with the concept of consciousness, the latter being what was discovered between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ned Block (born 1942 is a philosopher of mind who has made important contributions to matters of Consciousness and Cognitive science. [18] Daniel Dennett points out that these approaches misconceive Jaynes's definition of consciousness as more than mere perception or awareness of an object. Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research He notes that consciousness is like money in that having the thing requires having the concept of it, so it is a revolutionary proposal and not a ridiculous error to suppose that consciousness only emerges when its concept does.
Other approaches
Cognitive neuroscience
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. Psychological statistics is the application of Statistics to Psychology. A statistical hypothesis test is a method of making statistical decisions using experimental data A lesion is any abnormal tissue found on or in an organism usually damaged by disease or trauma A stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain functions due to a disturbance in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain Injury or bodily injury is Damage or Harm caused to the Structure or function of the Body caused by an outside agent or Surgery (from the χειρουργική cheirourgikē, via chirurgiae meaning "hand work" is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental Senses are the physiological methods of Perception. The senses and their operation classification and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields Cognition is a concept used in different ways by different disciplines but is generally accepted to mean the process of awareness or thought These discoveries suggest that the mind is a complex structure derived from various localized functions that are bound together with a unitary awareness. MIND ( Moving In New Directions) (est 1975 is an alternative education high school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The binding problem is "the problem of how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system
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 an individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but maintains sleep-wake cycles with full or partial autonomic functions. A persistent vegetative state (PVS is a condition of patients with severe Brain damage in whom Coma has progressed to a state of wakefulness without detectable 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. Some electroneurobiological interpretations of consciousness characterize this loss of consciousness as a loss of the ability to resolve time (similar to playing an old phonographic record at very slow or very rapid speed), along a continuum that starts with inattention, continues on sleep, and arrives to coma and death [19] . Death is the termination of the biological functions that define living Organisms It refers both to a specific It is likely that different components of consciousness can be teased apart with anesthetics, sedatives and hypnotics. Anesthesia, or anaesthesia (see spelling differences; from Greek grc αν- an-, "without" and grc αἲσθησις For the state of mind see Hypnosis. Hypnotic drugs induce Sleep (which differentiates them from the Sedative These drugs appear to differentially act on several brain areas to disrupt, to varying degrees, different components of consciousness. The ability to recall information, for example, may be disrupted by anesthetics acting on the hippocampal cortex. Neurons in this region are particularly sensitive to anesthetics at the time loss of recall occurs. Direct anesthetic actions on hippocampal neurons have been shown to underlie EEG effects that occur in humans and animals during loss of recall (MacIver et al 1996; see also: http://www.stanford.edu/group/maciverlab/research.html).
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. In modern medical practice general anaesthesia ( AmE: anesthesia) is a state of total unconsciousness resulting from General anaesthetic drugs Sleep is a Natural state of bodily rest observed throughout the animal kingdom At present, the best-supported hypotheses about such cases of loss of consciousness (or loss of time resolution) 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 interact with non-mental reality in the first place.
Brain chemistry affects human consciousness. Sleeping drugs (such as Midazolam = Dormicum) can bring the brain from the awake condition (conscious) to the sleep (unconscious). Midazolam (marketed under brand names Dormicum, Flormidal, Versed, Hypnovel and Dormonid, pronounced mɪˈdæzəlæm Wake-up drugs such as Anexate reverse this process. Flumazenil (also known as flumazepil, code name Ro 15-1788, trade names Anexate, Lanexat, Mazicon, Romazicon Many other drugs (such as alcohol, nicotine, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA) have a consciousness-changing effect. Nicotine is an Alkaloid found in the Nightshade family of plants ( Solanaceae) which constitutes approximately 0 Heroin ( INN: diacetylmorphine, BAN: diamorphine) is a semi-synthetic opioid synthesized from Morphine, a derivative Cocaine ( benzoylmethyl ecgonine) is a Crystalline Tropane Alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the Coca plant MDMA ( 34-methylenedioxy- N -methylamphetamine) most commonly known today by the street name Ecstasy (often abbreviated E, X,
There is a neural link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, known as the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is a structure of the Mammalian Brain in the longitudinal fissure that connects the left and right Cerebral hemispheres It also facilitates This link is sometimes surgically severed to control severe seizures in epilepsy patients. This procedure was first performed by Roger Sperry in the 1960s. Roger Wolcott Sperry ( August 20, 1913 – April 17, 1994) was a neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate who Tests of these patients have shown that, after the link is completely severed, the hemispheres are no longer able to communicate, leading to certain problems that usually arise only in test conditions. Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the Corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the Brain is severed to some degree For example, while the left side of the brain can verbally describe what is going on in the right visual field, the right hemisphere is essentially mute, instead relying on its spatial abilities to interact with the world on the left visual field. Some say that it is as if two separate minds now share the same skull, but both still represent themselves as a single "I" to the outside world.
The bilateral removal of the centromedian nucleus (part of the Intra-laminar nucleus of the Thalamus) appears to abolish consciousness, causing coma, PVS, severe mutism and other features that mimic brain death. In the Anatomy of the brain the centromedian nucleus, also known as the centrum medianum, ( CM or Cm-Pf) is a part of the Intralaminar Brain death is a legal definition of death that emerged in the 1960s as a response to the ability to resuscitate individuals and mechanically keep the heart and lungs working The centromedian nucleus is also one of the principal sites of action of general anaesthetics and anti-psychotic drugs. This evidence suggests that a functioning thalamus is necessary, but not sufficient, for human consciousness.
Neurophysiological studies in awake, behaving monkeys point to advanced cortical areas in prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes as carriers of neuronal correlates of consciousness. Christof Koch and Francis Crick argued that neuronal mechanisms of consciousness are intricately related to prefrontal cortex — the most advanced cortical area. Christof Koch (born November 13, 1956, Kansas City) is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of Consciousness Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004 Ph The Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC can be defined as the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one Rodolfo Llinas proposes that consciousness results from recurrent thalamo-cortical resonance where the specific (dorsal thalamus) thalamocortical system (content) and the non-specific (centromedial thalamus) thalamocortical system (context) interact at gamma band frequency via time coincidence. Rodolfo R Llinás (b Bogotá, Colombia in 1934 is the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the department of Physiology & Neuroscience Recurrent thalamo-cortical Resonance, as proposed by Rodolfo Llinas, is a Dynamic time coherent event involving intrinsic neuronal properties at the According to this view the "I" represents a global predictive function required for intentionality. [20][21] Experimental work of Steven Wise, Mikhail Lebedev and their colleagues supports this view. Mikhail Ivanovich Lebedev (Михаил Иванович Лебедев 1811-1837 was a Russian painter They demonstrated that activity of prefrontal cortex neurons reflects illusory perceptions of movements of visual stimuli. Nikos Logothetis and colleagues made similar observations on visually responsive neurons in the temporal lobe. These neurons reflect the visual perception in the situation when conflicting visual images are presented to different eyes (i. e. , bistable percepts during binocular rivalry). The studies of blindsight — vision without awareness after lesions to parts of the visual system such as the primary visual cortex — performed by Lawrence Weiskrantz and David P. Blindsight is a phenomenon in which people who are perceptually Blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli without any qualitative Carey provided important insights on how conscious perception arises in the brain. In recent years the theory of two visual streams, vision for perception versus vision for action was developed by Melvyn Goodale, David Milner and others. According to this theory, visual perception arises as the result of processing of visual information by the ventral stream areas (located mostly in the temporal lobe), whereas the dorsal stream areas (located mostly in the parietal lobe) process visual information unconsciously. For example, quick catching of the ball would engage mostly the dorsal stream areas, and viewing a painting would be handled by the ventral stream. Overall, these studies show that conscious versus unconscious behaviors can be linked to specific brain areas and patterns of neuronal activation. . However, neuroscience only focuses on the neural correlates of consciousness. The Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC can be defined as the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one The hard problem of consciousness is to explain how all these flows and electrochemical processes in the brain give rise to the inner experience of subjective awareness. The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers, refers to the "hard problem" of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences The brain is the center of the Nervous system in animals All Vertebrates and the majority of Invertebrates have a brain
One of the promising approaches in modern Neuroscience is Operational Architectonicstheory of brain-mind functioning developed by Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts. This theory states that whenever any pattern of phenomenality (including reflective thought) is instantiated, there is neuro-physiological pattern (revealed directly by EEG) of appropriate kind that corresponds to it. [22][23] These neuron-physiological EEG patterns (expressed as the virtual operational modules) are brought to existence by joint operations of many functional and transient neuronal assemblies in the brain. [24] The activity of neuronal assemblies per se is 'hidden' in the complex nonstationary structure of EEG field. [25] Therefore, a proper EEG analysis is needed that would be able to reveal the EEG architecture which reflects or instantiates the kind of phenomenal world (considering that there should be the ‘well-defined’ and ‘well-detected’ EEG phenomena) which humans subjectively experience. Currently available EEG methods can reveal the EEG architecture which is amazingly similar to the architecture of a phenomenal world of consciousness (see review on EEG and Operational Architectonics).
Evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology, which by its own definition is strictly concerned with the origin of species from a common descent, does not know of any natural mechanism that could have produced the trait of self awareness. Self-awareness is the concept that one exists as an individual separate from other people with private Thoughts. Given the non-physical nature of consciousness and the fact that the earliest life forms in the evolutionary timeline never possessed self awareness, consciousness appears to have originated from a domain outside the known natural world. Evolutionary biologists who try to explain the origins of consciousness from an evolutionary perspective, do so under the assumption that consciousness was a product of evolution.
Consciousness can be viewed from the evolutionary biology approach as an adaptation because it is a trait that increases the fitness of its possessor. Evolutionary biology is a sub-field of Biology concerned with the origin of Species from a Common descent, and Descent of species An adaptation is a characteristic of an Organism that has been favored by Natural selection and [26] Consciousness also adheres to John Alcock's theory of animal behavioral adaptations because it possesses both proximate and ultimate causes. John Alcock may refer to John Alcock (aviator John Alcock (bishop John Alcock (behavioral ecologist [27]
The proximate causes for consciousness, i. e. how consciousness evolved in organisms, was elucidated by John C. Eccles in his paper "Evolution of consciousness. " In it, he stated that special anatomical and physical properties of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness. The cerebral cortex is a structure within the Brain that plays a key role in Memory, Attention, perceptual Awareness, Thought, [28] This is further evidenced by the work of Gerhard Roth, who stated that "Among all features of vertebrate brains, the size of cortex or structures homologous to the mammalian cortex as well as the number of neurons and synapses contained in these structures correlate most clearly with the complexity of cognitive functions including states of consciousness. "[29] Roth also states that the high-order consciousness possessed by humans is most likely the result of a very large number of cortical neurons, a prolonged period of ontogenetic plasticity of cortical synapses, and the presence of centers underlying syntactical language. Neurons (ˈnjuːɹɒn also known as neurones and nerve cells) are responsive cells in the Nervous system that process and transmit information [29]However, it can be assumed that all vertebrates with larger cortex-like structures, particularly those with cortices showing cross-modality information transfer, have awareness about what is going on around them. [29] Self-recognition, being able to recognize one's self in a mirror, requires a large associative, including prefrontal, cortex. [29] The evolution of a special type of prefrontal cortex was the basis for an increased capability for action planning, syntactical language, imitation, and understanding the behavior of others. [29]
The ultimate causes of consciousness tell why consciousness has evolved in animals and the advantages that consciousness confers to its possessors. Human consciousness evolved as a response to the selective pressure upon an intelligent, group-dwelling animal to anticipate and counter the social strategems of others. [30] One theory for the evolution of consciousness and language is that it was an evolutionary "arms race" driven by the counter one's rivals within society. [30] Another theory, proposed by Shaun Nichols and Todd Grantham, proposes that is unnecessary to know the evolutionary or causal role of phenomenal consciousness because the complexity of phenomenal consciousness implies that it is an adaptation. [31]Regardless of the adaptive complexity theory, several functions of consciousness were outlined by Bernard J. Baars. [32]
| Function | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Definition and context-setting | Relating global input to its contexts, thereby defining input and removing ambiguities |
| Adaptation and learning | Representing and adapting to novel and significant events |
| Editing, flagging, and debugging | Monitoring conscious content, editing it, and trying to change it if it is consciously "flagged" as an error |
| Recruiting and control function | Recruiting subgoals and motor systems to organize and carry out mental and physical actions |
| Prioritizing and access control | Control over what will become conscious |
| Decision making or executive function | Recruiting unconscious knowledge sources to make proper decisions, and making goals conscious to allow widespread recruitment of conscious and unconscious "votes" for or against it |
| Analogy-forming function | Searching for a partial match between contents of unconscious systems and a globally displayed (conscious) message |
| Metacognitive or self-forming function | Reflection upon and control of our own conscious and unconscious functioning |
| Auto-programming and self-maintenance function | Maintenance of maximum stability in the face of changing inner and outer conditions |
Physical
Even at the dawn of Newtonian science, Leibniz and many others were suggesting physical theories of consciousness. Gottfried Leibniz 's theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every "substance" only affects itself Modern physical theories of consciousness can be divided into three types: theories to explain behaviour and access consciousness, theories to explain phenomenal consciousness and theories to explain the quantum mechanical (QM) Quantum mind. Quantum mind theories are based on the premise that Quantum mechanics is necessary to fully understand the Mind and Brain, particularly concerning an explanation Theories that seek to explain behaviour are an everyday part of neuroscience, some of these theories of access consciousness, such as Edelman's theory, contentiously identify phenomenal consciousness with reflex events in the brain. Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system Gerald Maurice Edelman (born July 1, 1929) is an American biologist who won the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his Theories that seek to explain phenomenal consciousness directly, such as Space-time theories of consciousness and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness, have been available for almost a century, but have not yet been confirmed by experiment. The electromagnetic theory of consciousness is a Theory that says the Electromagnetic field generated by the Brain (measurable by EEGs is the Theories that attempt to explain the QM measurement problem include Pribram and Bohm's Holonomic brain theory, Hameroff and Penrose's Orch-OR theory and the Many-minds interpretation. Karl H Pribram (born February 25, 1919 in Vienna Austria) is a professor at Georgetown University and George Mason University David Joseph Bohm ( December 20 1917, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania – October 27 1992, London) was an American The holonomic brain theory, originated by psychologist Karl Pribram and initially developed in collaboration with physicist David Bohm, is a model for human Cognition Stuart Hameroff (Born in July 16, 1947, Buffalo New York) is an Anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona Sir Roger Penrose, PhD, OM, FRS (born 8 August 1931) is an English Mathematical physicist and Emeritus Orch OR ( Orchestrated Objective Reduction) is a theory of Consciousness, which is the joint work of theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist The many-minds interpretation of Quantum mechanics extends the Many-worlds interpretation by proposing that the distinction between worlds should be made at the level Some of these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness, as well as QM interpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has been confirmed by experiment, and there are philosophers who argue that QM has no bearing on consciousness.
There is also a concerted effort in the field of Artificial Intelligence to create digital computer programs that can simulate consciousness. strong AI Artificial consciousness (AC also known as machine consciousness (MC or synthetic consciousness, is a field related to Artificial intelligence
Functions
We generally agree that our fellow human beings are conscious, and that much simpler life forms, such as bacteria, are not. Many of us attribute consciousness to higher-order animals such as dolphins and primates; academic research is investigating the extent to which animals are conscious. This suggests the hypothesis that consciousness has co-evolved with life, which would require it to have some sort of added value, especially survival value. People have therefore looked for specific functions and benefits of consciousness. Bernard Baars (1997), for instance, states that "consciousness is a supremely functional adaptation" and suggests a variety of functions in which consciousness plays an important, if not essential, role: prioritization of alternatives, problem solving, decision making, brain processes recruiting, action control, error detection, planning, learning, adaptation, context creation, and access to information. Bernard J Baars is a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla CA Antonio Damasio (1999) regards consciousness as part of an organism's survival kit, allowing planned rather than instinctual responses. António Rosa Damásio, GOSE, pron. ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (ɐ̃'tɔniu dɐ'maziu (b He also points out that awareness of self allows a concern for one's own survival, which increases the drive to survive, although how far consciousness is involved in behaviour is an actively debated issue. Many psychologists, such as radical behaviorists, and many philosophers, such as those that support Ryle's approach, would maintain that behavior can be explained by non-conscious processes akin to artificial intelligence, and might consider consciousness to be epiphenomenal or only weakly related to function. Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior is a philosophy of Psychology based on the Gilbert Ryle ( 19 August 1900 - 6 October 1976) was a British Philosopher, and a representative of the generation of In Philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism, also known as ' Type-E Dualism ' is a view according to which some or all mental states are mere Epiphenomena
Regarding the primary function of conscious processing, a recurring idea in recent theories is that phenomenal states somehow integrate neural activities and information-processing that would otherwise be independent (see review in Baars, 2002). This has been called the integration consensus. However, it has remained unspecified which kinds of information are integrated in a conscious manner and which kinds can be integrated without consciousness. Obviously not all kinds of information are capable of being disseminated consciously (e. g. , neural activity related to vegetative functions, reflexes, unconscious motor programs, low-level perceptual analyses, etc. ) and many kinds can be disseminated and combined with other kinds without consciousness, as in intersensory interactions such as the ventriloquism effect (cf. , Morsella, 2005).
Ervin Laszlo argues that self-awareness, the ability to make observations of oneself, evolved. Ervin László (born 1932 in Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian philosopher of science, systems theorist, integral theorist, and classical Self-awareness is the concept that one exists as an individual separate from other people with private Thoughts. Emile Durkheim formulated the concept of so called collective consciousness, which is essential for organization of human, social relations. Émile Durkheim ( April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French Sociologist whose contributions were instrumental Collective consciousness refers to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society The accelerating drive of human race to explorations, cognition, understanding and technological progress[1] can be explained by some features of collective consciousness (collective self - concepts) and collective intelligence
Tests
As there is no clear definition of consciousness and no empirical measure exists to test for its presence, it has been argued that due to the nature of the problem of consciousness, empirical tests are intrinsically impossible. Collective consciousness refers to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society Collective intelligence is a shared or group Intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals However, several tests have been developed which attempt to provide an operational definition of consciousness and try to determine whether computers and other non-human animals can demonstrate through their behavior, by passing these tests, that they are conscious. An operational definition is a demonstration of a process &mdash such as a Variable, term, or object &mdash relative in terms of the specific Process
In medicine, several neurological and brain imaging techniques, like EEG and fMRI, have proven useful for physical measures of brain activity associated with consciousness. This is particularly true for EEG measures during anesthesia[2] that can provide an indication of anesthetic depth, although with still limited accuracies of ~ 70 % and a high degree of patient and drug variability seen. Electroencephalogram (EEG measures taken during anesthesia exhibit stereotypic changes as anesthetic depth increases
Turing
- See also: Turing test and philosophy of artificial intelligence
Though often thought of as a test for consciousness, the Turing test (named after computer scientist Alan Turing, who first proposed it) is actually a test to determine whether or not a computer satisfied his operational definition of "intelligent" (which is actually quite different from a test for consciousness or self-awareness). The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a Machine 's ability to demonstrate intelligence ethics of artificial intelligence The philosophy of artificial intelligence considers the relationship between machines and thought and attempts to answer such The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a Machine 's ability to demonstrate intelligence Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (ˈt(jʊ(ərɪŋ (23 June 1912 &ndash 7 June 1954 was an English Mathematician This test is commonly cited in discussion of artificial intelligence. The essence of the test is based on "the Imitation Game", in which a human experimenter attempts to converse, via computer keyboards, with two others. One of the others is a human (who, it is assumed, is conscious) while the other is a computer. Because all of the conversation is via keyboards (teletypes, in Turing's original conception) no cues such as voice, prosody, or appearance will be available to indicate which is the human and which is the computer. If the human is unable to determine which of the conversants is human, and which is a computer, the computer is said to have "passed" the Turing test (satisfied Turing's operational definition of "intelligent").
The Turing test has generated a great deal of research and philosophical debate. For example, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter argue that anything capable of passing the Turing test is necessarily conscious,[33] while David Chalmers, argues that a philosophical zombie could pass the test, yet fail to be conscious. Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15 1945 in New York New York) is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness thinking and creativity David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a Philosopher in the area of Philosophy of mind. A philosophical Zombie, p-zombie or p-zed is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious [34]
It has been argued that the question itself is excessively anthropomorphic. Edsger Dijkstra commented that "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim", expressing the view that different words are appropriate for the workings of a machine to those of animals even if they produce similar results, just as submarines are not normally said to swim. Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ( May 11, 1930 &ndash August 6, 2002; ˈɛtsxər ˈwibə ˈdɛɪkstra was a Dutch computer scientist
Philosopher John Searle developed a thought experiment, the Chinese room argument, which is intended to show problems with the Turing Test. John Rogers Searle (born July 31 1932 in Denver Colorado) is an American Philosopher and the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University A thought experiment (from the German Gedankenexperiment) is a proposal for an Experiment that would test a Hypothesis or Theory Philosophy of artificial intelligence The Chinese Room argument comprises a Thought experiment and associated Arguments by John Searle, who attempts [35] Searle asks the reader to imagine a non-Chinese speaker in a room in which there are stored a very large number of Chinese symbols and rule books. Questions are passed to the person in the form of written Chinese symbols via a slot, and the person responds by looking up the symbols and the correct replies in the rule books. Based on the purely input-output operations, the "Chinese room" gives the appearance of understanding Chinese. However, the person in the room understands no Chinese at all. This argument has been the subject of intense philosophical debate since it was introduced in 1980, even leading to edited volumes on this topic alone.
The application of the Turing test to human consciousness has even led to an annual competition, the Loebner Prize with "Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human's. " For a summary of research on the Turing Test, see here.
Mirror
See also the concept of the Mirror stage by Jacques Lacan
With the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, one is interested in whether animals are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. The Mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan 's first official contribution to Psychoanalytic theory (Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst The mirror test is a measure of Self-awareness developed by Gordon Gallup Jr Gordon G Gallup Jr is a Psychologist currently working at the University at Albany 's Psychology department in the Biopsychology program area The classic example of the test involves placing a spot of coloring on the skin or fur near the individual's forehead and seeing if they attempt to remove it or at least touch the spot, thus indicating that they recognize that the individual they are seeing in the mirror is themselves. Humans (older than 18 months), great apes (except for gorillas), bottlenose dolphins, pigeons [3], and elephants [4] have all been observed to pass this test. Gorillas, the largest of the living Primates are ground-dwelling Herbivores that inhabit the Forests of Africa. The Bottlenose Dolphin is one of the most common and well-known Dolphins. Elephants ( family: Elephantidae) are large land Mammals of the order Proboscidea. The test is usually carried out with an identical 'spot' being placed elsewhere on the head with a non-visible material as a control, to assure the subject is not responding to the touch stimuli of the spot's presence. Proponents of the hard problem of consciousness claim that the mirror test only demonstrates that some animals possess a particular cognitive capacity for modelling their environment, but not for the presence of phenomenal consciousness per se. The term hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers, refers to the "hard problem" of explaining why we have qualitative phenomenal experiences
Delay
One problem researchers face is distinguishing nonconscious reflexes and instinctual responses from conscious responses. Neuroscientists Francis Crick and Christof Koch have proposed that by placing a delay between stimulus and execution of action, one may determine the extent of involvement of consciousness in an action of a biological organism. Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004 Ph Christof Koch (born November 13, 1956, Kansas City) is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of Consciousness
For example, when psychologists Larry Squire and Robert Clark combined a tone of a specific pitch with a puff of air to the eye, test subjects came to blink their eyes in anticipation of the puff of air when the appropriate tone was played. Robert Clark may refer to Robert Clark (actor, Canadian television actor Robert Clark (American football, American football player When the puff of air followed a half of a second later, no such conditioning occurred. When subjects were asked about the experiment, only those who were asked to pay attention could consciously distinguish which tone preceded the puff of air.
Ability to delay the response to an action implies that the information must be stored in short-term memory, which is conjectured to be a closely associated prerequisite for consciousness. However, this test is only valid for biological organisms. While it is simple to create a computer program that passes, such success does not suggest anything beyond a clever programmer. [17]
See also
- Cognitive science
- Attention
- Binocular rivalry
- Blindsight
- Change blindness
- Cognitive science
- Iconic memory
- Multistable perception
- Neural correlates of consciousness
- Neural Darwinism
- Psyche (psychology)
- Reticular activating system
- Short term memory
- Society of Mind
- Split brain
- Stream of consciousness (psychology)
- Unconscious mind
- Visual short term memory
- Spirituality
- Philosophy
- 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness
- Bodymind
- Donald Davidson's swamp man thought experiment ("Knowing One Own's Mind", 1987)
- Dream argument
- False Consciousness (Marxism)
- Freedom of thought
- Homunculus
- Mental body
- Mind
- Mind at Large
- Mind-body problem
- Multiple Drafts theory (Daniel Dennett) cf. Attention is the Cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things Binocular rivalry is a phenomenon of Visual perception in which perception alternates between different images presented to each Eye. Blindsight is a phenomenon in which people who are perceptually Blind in a certain area of their visual field demonstrate some response to visual stimuli without any qualitative In Visual perception, change blindness is the phenomenon where a person viewing a visual scene apparently fails to detect large changes in the scene Cognitive science may be broadly defined as the multidisciplinary study of mind and behavior Iconic memory is a type of short term Visual memory (a Sensory memory) named by George Sperling in 1960 Multistable perceptual phenomena are a rare form of Visual perception phenomena which is characterized by an unpredictable sequence of spontaneous subjective changes The Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC can be defined as the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one Neural Darwinism, a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978 in a book called The Mindful Brain (MIT Press In Psychoanalysis, the psyche (ˈsaɪki refers to the forces in an individual that influence thought, Behavior and Personality. The reticular activating system (or ARAS for Ascending Reticular Activating System is the name given to the part of the Brain (the Reticular formation and its connections Short-term memory, sometimes referred to as "primary" "working" or "active" Memory, is said to hold a small amount of information for about 20 The Society of Mind is a book and theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky. Split-brain is a lay term to describe the result when the Corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the Brain is severed to some degree Stream of consciousness refers to the flow of Thoughts in the conscious Mind. Many observers throughout history have argued that there are influences on Consciousness from other parts of the Mind. In the study of vision, visual short-term memory ( VSTM) is one of three broad memory systems including Iconic memory and Long-term memory. Vijñāna ( Sanskrit; Devanagari: विज्ञान or viññāṇa ( Pāli; Devanagari: विञ्ञाण Higher consciousness, also called super consciousness ( Yoga) objective consciousness ( Gurdjieff) Buddhic consciousness ( Mindstream is a compound Lexical item composed of Mind and Stream used to translate a term from Buddhist philosophy. The 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness is a theory of Consciousness first proposed by Psychologist Timothy Leary. Bodymind is a compound conjunction of Body and Mind, which in scientific disciplines researchers have begun studying in order to move beyond the dualist Donald Davidson is the name of Donald Davidson (poet (1893–1968 American poet Donald Davidson (philosopher (1917–2003 American philosopher Swampman is the subject of a philosophical Thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind" The "dream argument" is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully Theory The concept flows from the theory of Commodity fetishism &mdash that people experience social relationships as value relations between things e Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience and freedom of ideas) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact viewpoint The concept of a homunculus ( Latin for "little man" plural "homunculi" the diminutive of homo, "man" is often used to illustrate The mental body (the Mind) is one of the subtle bodies in Esoteric philosophies in some Religious teachings and in New Age thought MIND ( Moving In New Directions) (est 1975 is an alternative education high school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Mind at Large is a Concept from The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Daniel Dennett 's Multiple Drafts Model of Consciousness is a physicalist theory of Consciousness based upon cognitivism, which views the mind also Marvin Minsky
- New Mysterianism
- Personhood Theory
- Philosophy of mind
- Philosophy of perception
- Political consciousness, pertaining to marxist and post-marxist conceptions of consciousness. The Society of Mind is a book and theory of natural intelligence as written and developed by Marvin Minsky. This article is about a response to the mind-body problem For a general article on the limits of inquiry see cognitive closure. The term person is used in Common sense to mean an individual Human being. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties The philosophy of perception concerns how mental processes and Symbols depend on the world internal and external to the perceiver The politics of consciousness Consciousness typically refers to the idea of a being who is self-aware
- Qualia
- Stream of consciousness
- Supervenience
- Theory of mind
- Physical hypotheses about consciousness
- Orch-OR theory
- Electromagnetic theories of consciousness
- Holonomic brain theory
- Quantum mind
- Space-time theories of consciousness
- Simulated Reality
- Groups
- Association for Consciousness Exploration
- Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
- Mind and Life Institute
- Mind Science Foundation
- Portals
- Portal:Thinking
- Portal:Philosophy
Notes
- ^ Flanagan, Owen. " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" Stream of consciousness refers to the flow of Thoughts in the conscious Mind. In Philosophy, supervenience is a kind of dependency relationship typically held to obtain between Sets of properties. " Theory of mind " is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs intents desires pretending knowledge etc Orch OR ( Orchestrated Objective Reduction) is a theory of Consciousness, which is the joint work of theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist The electromagnetic theory of consciousness is a Theory that says the Electromagnetic field generated by the Brain (measurable by EEGs is the The holonomic brain theory, originated by psychologist Karl Pribram and initially developed in collaboration with physicist David Bohm, is a model for human Cognition Quantum mind theories are based on the premise that Quantum mechanics is necessary to fully understand the Mind and Brain, particularly concerning an explanation Simulated reality is the proposition that Reality could be simulated—perhaps by Computer simulation —to a degree indistinguishable from "true" Reality The Association for Consciousness Exploration LLC (ACE is an American organization based in Northeastern Ohio which produces events books and recorded media in the fields The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (commonly referred to as the ASSC is a professional membership organization that aims to encourage research on Consciousness The Mind and Life Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism as methodologies in understanding the nature of reality The Mind Science Foundation (MSF is a private nonprofit scientific foundation in San Antonio, Texas, established by visionary philanthropist Thomas Baker Slick "Consciousness" in Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, University of Oxford Press, 1995, p. 152.
- ^ Nagel, Thomas. "What it is like to be a bat," The Philosophical Review, LXXXIII, 4, October 1974, pp. 435-450.
- ^ Jaynes, Julian, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 2d ed. 1990, p. 447
- ^ Block, Ned. "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness" in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1995.
- ^ Late recovery from the minimally conscious state: ethical and policy implications. Fins JJ, Schiff ND, Foley KM. Neurology. 2007 Jan 23;68(4):304-7. Abstract at Pubmed, retrieved 27 February 2007
- ^ Samuel Butler first raised the possibility of mechanical consciousness in an article signed with the nom de plume Cellarius and headed "Darwin among the Machines", which appeared in the Christchurch, New Zealand, newspaper The Press on 13 June 1863: retrieved from PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION, Project Gutenberg eBook Erewhon, by Samuel Butler. Samuel Butler may refer to Samuel Butler (poet (1612&ndash1680 author of Hudibras Samuel Butler (schoolmaster (1774&ndash1839 A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a Pseudonym adopted by an Author or their publishers to conceal their identity Christchurch (Ōtautahi The largest City in the South Island, it is also the second largest city and third largest urban area of New Zealand New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island The Press is a daily broadsheet Newspaper published in Christchurch, New Zealand. Events 1525 - Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the Celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for Year 1863 ( MDCCCLXIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works Release Date: March 20, 2005.
- ^ Stuart Shieber (ed): The Turing test : verbal behavior as the hallmark of intelligence, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-262-69293-9
- ^ Steven Marcus: Neuroethics: mapping the field. Dana Press, New York 2002. ISBN 978-0-9723830-0-4.
- ^ See Aquinas, De Veritate 17,1 c.a.
- ^ See Catherine G. Davies, Conscience as Consciousness, Oxford 1990, and Hennig, Cartesian Conscientia.
- ^ See Etienne Balibar, Identité et différence. Étienne Balibar (born April 23, 1942 in Avallon, Bourgogne, France) is a French Marxist Philosopher Le chapitre II, xxvii de l'Essay concerning Human Understanding de Locke. L'invention de la conscience. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998. ISBN 978-2-02-026300-9
- ^ Avi Rabinowitz Mindless Materialists: A Controversial Proposition
- ^ See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §355. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist The Gay Science language|German] Die fröhliche Wissenschaft ("la gaya scienza" ] is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche
- ^ Damasio. A. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 4.
- ^ Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela. 1980. Autopoesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: D. Reidel.
- ^ Dawkins, R. 2003. A Devil's Chaplain; Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 46.
- ^ a b Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Christof Koch (born November 13, 1956, Kansas City) is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of Consciousness Englewood, Colorado: Roberts and Company Publishers.
- ^ Ned Block, "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" Philosophical Topics 22, 1994. Ned Block (born 1942 is a philosopher of mind who has made important contributions to matters of Consciousness and Cognitive science.
- ^ Mariela Szirko: "Effects of relativistic motions in the brain and their physiological relevance", Chapter 10 (pp. 313-358) in: Helmut Wautischer, editor, Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action, A Bradford Book: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. , 1st edition, 2007.
- ^ Llinas R. . (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
- ^ Llinas R. ,Ribary,U. Contreras,D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal basis for consciousness" Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
- ^ Fingelkurts An. A. and Fingelkurts Al. A. Operational architectonics of the human brain biopotential field: Towards solving the mind-brain problem. Brain and Mind, vol. 2, pp. 261-296, 2001.
- ^ Fingelkurts An. A. and Fingelkurts Al. A. Timing in cognition and EEG brain dynamics: discreteness versus continuity. Cognitive Proces. , vol. 7, pp. 135-162, 2006.
- ^ Fingelkurts An. A. and Fingelkurts Al. A. Mapping of the brain operational architectonics, in Focus on Brain Mapping Research, Chapter 2, F. J. Chen, Ed. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. , 2005, pp. 59-98.
- ^ Fingelkurts An. A. and Fingelkurts Al. A. Making complexity simpler: multivariability and metastability in the Brain. Int. J. Neurosci. , vol. 114, pp. 843-862, 2004.
- ^ Freeman and Herron. Evolutionary Analysis. 2007. Pearson Education, NJ.
- ^ Alcock, J. Animal Behavior 5th Ed. 1993. Sinauer Assoc. Cunderland, MA
- ^ Eccles, John C. "Evolution of consciousness. " 1992. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 89 pp. 7320-7324
- ^ a b c d e Roth, Gerhard. "The Evolution of Consciousness. " Brain Evolution and Cognition. 2001. New York, NY.
- ^ a b Budiansky, Stephen. If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness. 1998. The Free Press, NY.
- ^ Nichols, Shaun, and Grantham, Todd. "Adaptive Complexity and Phenomenal Consciousness. " 2000. Philosophy of Science Vol. 67 pp. 648-670.
- ^ Baars, Bernard J. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. 1993. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Dennett, D. C. and Hofstadter, D. (1985). The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (ISBN 978-0-553-34584-1)
- ^ Chalmers, D. (1997) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789 Please check ISBN|0195117891
- ^ Searle, J. (1980) "Minds, Brains and Programs" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, 417-424.
Further reading and external links
- Baars, B. (1997). In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2001 reprint: ISBN 978-0-19-514703-2
- Baars, Bernard J and Stan Franklin. 2003. How conscious experience and working memory interact. Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 166–172.
- Bar-Yam, Yaneer (2003). Dynamics of Complex Systems, Chapter 3.
- Blackmore, S. (2003). Consciousness: an Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515343-9
- Block, N. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
- Carter, Rita. (2002) Exploring Consciousness. UC Berkeley Press. ISBN 0-520-23737-4
- Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511789-9
- Charlton, Bruce G. "Evolution and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Awareness, Consciousness and Language"
- Cleermans, A. (Ed. ) (2003). The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration, and Dissociation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850857-1
- Rodney M. J. Cotterill (1998). Rodney Michael John Cotterill Order of the Dannebrog ( 27 September, 1933 – 24 June, 2007) was a English - Danish Year 1998 ( MCMXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar) Enchanted Looms : Conscious networks in brains and computer. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP is a Publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534 ISBN 978-0521794626.
- Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Press. ISBN 978-0-15-601075-7
- Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little & Company. ISBN 978-0-316-18066-5
- Eccles, J. C. (1994), How the Self Controls its Brain, (Springer-Verlag).
- Franklin, S, B J Baars, U Ramamurthy, and Matthew Ventura. 2005. The role of consciousness in memory. Brains, Minds and Media 1: 1–38, pdf.
- Halliday, Eugene, Reflexive Self-Consciousness, ISBN 0-872240-01-1
- Harnad, S. (2005) What is Consciousness? New York Review of Books 52(11). Professor Stevan Harnad (Hernád István Hesslein István is a cognitive scientist who was born in Budapest, Hungary. The New York Review of Books (or NYREV or NYRB) is a semimonthly Magazine on Literature, Culture, and current
- James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Immanuel Kant (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith with preface by Howard Caygill. Pub: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Koch, C. (2004). The Quest for Consciousness. Englewood, CO: Roberts & Company. ISBN 978-0-9747077-0-9
- John Locke (1689). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- Libet, B. , Freeman, A. & Sutherland, K. ed. (1999). The Volitional Brain: Towards a neuroscience of free will. Exeter, UK: Short Run Press, Ltd.
- Llinas R. ,Ribary,U. Contreras,D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal basis for consciousness" Phil. Tranns. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
- Llinas R. (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
- Metzinger, T. (2003). Being No One: the Self-model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Metzinger, T. (Ed. ) (2000). The Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-13370-8
- Morgan, John H. (2007. In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious Consciousness. Cloverdale Books, South Bend. Cloverdale Corporation has for 29 years been involved in publishing scholarly research for the scientific community ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0
- Morsella, E. (2005). The Function of Phenomenal States: Supramodular Interaction Theory. Psychological Review, 112, 1000-1021.
- Penrose, R. , Hameroff, S. R. (1996), 'Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections', Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (1), pp. 36-53.
- Pharoah, M. C. (online). Looking to systems theory for a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience and evolutionary foundations for higher order thought Retrieved Dec. 14 2007.
- Sanz, R. , López, I. , Rodríguez, M. and Hernández, C. (2007) 'Principles for Consciousness in Integrated Cognitive Control'. Neural Networks, 20, pp. 938-946.
- Scaruffi, P. (2006). The Nature Of Consciousness. Omniware.
- Searle, J. (2004). Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Sternberg, E. (2007) Are You a Machine? The Brain, the Mind and What it Means to be Human. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
- Velmans, M. (2000) Understanding Consciousness. Understanding Consciousness is a scientific-philosophical text written by psychologist Max Velmans. London: Routledge/Psychology Press.
- Velmans, M. and Schneider, S. (Eds. )(2006) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. New York: Blackwell.
- Academic journals & newsletters
- Anthropology of Consciousness
- Journal of Consciousness Studies
- Consciousness and Cognition
- Psyche
- Science & Consciousness Review
- ASSC e-print archive containing articles, book chapters, theses, conference presentations by members of the ASSC.
- Philosophy resources
- Publications of the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies, including Daniel Dennett
- David Chalmers' directory of online papers on consciousness
- Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies an article describing the folk intuitions about what is a conscious agent
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- Miscellaneous sites
- History of Consciousness Graduate Program, ("consciousness as forms of human expression and social action manifested in historical, cultural, and political contexts") at the University of California, Santa Cruz, headed by Dr. Angela Davis* Online lecture videos, from an undergraduate course taught by Christof Koch at Caltech on the neurobiological basis of consciousness in 2004. Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham Alabama) is an American Political activist and University Christof Koch (born November 13, 1956, Kansas City) is an American neuroscientist working on the neural basis of Consciousness The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, Coeducational research university located in Pasadena
- Piero Scaruffi's annotated bibliography on the mind
- Anesthesia and Drug effects on consciousness
- Brain Atlas, Brain Maps, Neuroinformatics
- Online course in consciousness at University of Virginia
- A survey course at University of Florida
- Edinburgh thesis (. The University of Virginia (also called UVa, UVA, Mr Jefferson's University, or The University) is a highly selective public research The University of Florida ( Florida or UF) is a public land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant major Research ps) on consciousness including up-to-date reviews
- Consciousness-Related Engineering Anomaly Princeton
- Thy Mystery of Consciousness TIME. com
- Helen Keller Language and Consciousness
- Theory of the Red Blood Cells
- Video
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