Consciousness

Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. Philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness which is experience itself and access consciousness which is the processing of the things in experience (Block 2004).

Philosophical approaches

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Philosophers distinguish between phenomenal consciousness and access or psychological consciousness. Some suggest that consciousness resists or even defies definition. There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including: behaviorism, dualism, idealism, functionalism, phenomenalism, physicalism, emergentism, and mysticism.

Related Topics:
Behaviorism - Dualism - Idealism - Functionalism - Phenomenalism - Physicalism - Emergentism - Mysticism

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Phenomenal and access consciousness

Philosophers call our current experience phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is simply experience, it is moving, coloured forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the centre. The hard problem of consciousness was formulated by Chalmers in 1996, it is the problem of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its neurological basis" (Block 2004).

Related Topics:
Hard problem of consciousness - Chalmers

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Access 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.g. something that we learned) is often access conscious; and so on. Access consciousness is often thought to be less mysterious than phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of consciousness.

Related Topics:
Perceive - Introspect - Remember - Learned

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Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as unconscious events.

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The description and location of consciousness

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Although it is the conventional wisdom that consciousness cannot be defined, philosophers have been describing it for centuries. Rene Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in the seventeenth century, and this contains extensive descriptions of what it is to be conscious. Descartes described consciousness as things laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point. Each thing appears as a result of some quality such as colour, smell etc. (philosophers call these qualities 'qualia'). Descartes used the term "ideas" to describe the images in our experience whether these images were perceptions or imaginary things. Other philosophers such as Nicholas Malebranche, John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant also agreed with much of this description although some avoid mentioning the viewing point. 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". These philosophers also go on to describe dreams, thoughts, emotions etc.

Related Topics:
Rene Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy - Qualia - Nicholas Malebranche - John Locke - David Hume - Immanuel Kant - William James

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Empiricist philosophers have provided a description of consciousness that is like our own experience. 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 contents of consciousness there are fierce disagreements. Some philosophers and scientists do not hold that every mental event has a direct physical event (weak or no 'Supervenience'). As an example, Descartes proposed that the contents of consciousness are images in the brain and the viewing point is some special, non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans). This idea is known as 'Cartesian Dualism'. 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 through a chain of cause and effect. The idea that conscious experience is directly the world itself is known as Direct Realism. The precise physical substrate of conscious experience in the world, such as photons, photochemicals, quantum fields etc. is usually not specified. This idea of a chain of cause and effect or chain of relations causing conscious experience to supervene on the world is found in post-modernism and some forms of behaviourism.

Related Topics:
Supervenience - Dualism - Thomas Reid - Direct Realism - Post-modernism - Behaviourism

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Some philosophers such as functionalists and eliminativists believe that the qualia that empiricist descriptions attribute to the contents of consciousness are solely judgements or beliefs about things in the world. Other philosophers doubt that experience can be redefined as belief.

Related Topics:
Functionalists - Eliminativists

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It is sometimes held that consciousness will emerge from the complexity of brain processing (see for instance the Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness). The general label 'emergence' allows a new physical phenomenon to be implied by physicalist theorists without specifying the exact nature of the phenomenon. This leaves an explanatory gap. Many Indirect Realists see the explanatory gap in terms of phenomenal consciousness and have proposed various physical theories such as Quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness, which contain a direct correspondence between brain activity and experience. As yet there is little evidence from brain studies to support these theories.

Related Topics:
Multiple Drafts Model - Emergence - Physicalist - Explanatory gap - Indirect Realists - Quantum mind - Space-time theories of consciousness - Electromagnetic theories of consciousness

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