Functions Of Consciousness 1 example essay topic

Section 4: Consciousness Pages 114-117 I. Defining Consciousnessa. Consciousness is commonly defined as being aware of the immediate environment. i. For example, knowing when to go to class or work. b. Consciousness also deals with awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and memories. i. Examples 1. Making plans for dates.

2. Getting annoyed at your performance in school. 3. Thinking back about good times with your friends. c. Early psychologists and their studies i. When early psychologists studied the mind, they studied consciousness.

1. William Wundt (late 1880's) had subjects report contents of consciousness while working, falling asleep, and sitting still. 2. Sigmund Freud (1900's) wrote that needs, desires, and influences are part of the conscious and people have different levels of consciousness. d. Dualism i. Started by French philosopher Rene Descartes stated that mind and body are separate, but interacting. ii.

Dualism says that one thing cannot exist without it's opposite. 1. Light cannot exist without darkness. 2.

Good cannot exist without the presence of evil. 3. The body cannot function without the mind, and so forth. e. Materialism i. Psychologists say that our mental activity is rooted in the brain. ii.

Dominant perspective with modern psychologists.. Tends to take a less black and white view of "consciousness" versus "unconsciousness". iv. Psychologists say that you are more aware of certain mental processes over others. 1. For example, doing the same routine at work and time seems to go by faster. vs. Cognitive psychologists ignore the unconscious. They call it the deliberate versus the automatic. f.

Different levels of Consciousness. Freud and other cognitive psychologists came up with this theory. 1. Consciousness is a continuum. a. Alert attention.

Dreaming c. Hypnosis. Drug-induced states 2. Someone who isn't paying attention is still conscious, just not "as conscious" as someone that is alert. 3. Believes that drinking will bring you into a lower level of consciousness.

4. If you are in a state of consciousness that is different from what you normally are, you are in an altered state of consciousness. 5. When you are asleep, however, you are in a state of "turned off" consciousness.

(Hobson, 1994) ii. Meta cognition 1. Being able to think about their own thinking. 2. May allow them to access levels of consciousness that are not available to other people. a. For example, people's natural sleep timers.

3. Researched by asking people to track their consciousness, alertness, and moods over a length of time. a. Found out that there is a natural rhythm to consciousness.. Functions of Consciousness 1.

Allows us to monitor our mental and physical states. 2. Allows us to control our mental and physical states, to an extant. iv. What is consciousness? 1. General state of being aware of and responsive to events in the environment, as well as one's own mental processes.

II. Theories of Consciousnessa. Several researchers suggested biological theories of consciousness. i. Used evolution of the brain as the key to consciousness.

1. Jaynes (1976) believed that consciousness came from the different functions of the hemispheres of the brain. 2. Ornstein (1977) said that there were two modes of consciousness that was controlled by each side of the brain. a. The active-verbal-rational (active) mode i. Left dominated ii.

Automatic or default mode of the brain.. People limit their awareness automatically in order to shut out stimuli that do not directly relate to their ability to survive. b. The receptive-spatial-intuitive-holistic (receptive) mode i. Right dominated ii. Used when people expand their normal awareness.. Used when people need to gain perspective or insight about something. iv.

Includes biofeedback, meditation, hypnosis, and drug use. vs. Used to balance the active mode. 3. Ornstein and Galin supported the idea that the brain is divided and specialized in certain things is significant ways using laboratory studies and data. a. Stated that left-dominated and right-dominated modes of consciousness function in a complimentary and alternating fashion. i. One works while the other in inhibited (Galin, 1974; Ornstein, 1976). b. Integration of these two modes underlies the highest human accomplishments. i.

Support for this is still modest since the brain's functioning cannot be fully explained by it's structure. 4. Newest explanations of consciousness can be done by Dennett (1991, 1996) and neurologist Restak (1994). a. Both had a materialistic viewpoint. b. Dennett asserts that people have access to many sources of information, which in combination create conscious experiences in his book, Consciousness Explained. i. Also says that the brain creates copies of experiences that can constantly be reanalyzed. ii.

The brain develops a sense of consciousness as well as a sense of self through this constant updating and reanalysis of experience. 1. Theory is untested, widely unaccepted and criticized (Mangan, 1993). 2.

It does take a new path in suggesting that perceptual, physiological, and historical information come together in each individual to create consciousness. c. Restak supported Dennett's ideas in his book, The Modular Brain. i. He said that the brain's various sections control behavior in a human being. ii. Consciousness isn't organized, but rather just resides in these sections. 1. If you lose one of those sections in an accident, then you will lose its respective abilities. d.

Dam asio (1994) follows this line of reasoning as well. i. Suggested that all the sections of the brain are hierarchically organized. e. Calvin (1996) suggested that the sections of the brain are at work generating and synthesizing throughout our lives, whether we are awake or asleep. i. Argued that this activity may not always work well, but creates interesting and ingenious thought patterns.

5. Pinker (1997) says that even the best theorists confuse terms when they talk about consciousness. a. Pinker asserts that the mind is what the brain does, and nothing more than that. b. Also says that it has evolved as an evolutionary response to the world. i. The mind is a system of organs of computation. ii. It is designed by natural selection to solve the problems our ancestors faced in forging their way of life. c.

Pinker dismisses many psychological issues such as guilt, remorse, and fear. i. Pinker says that these emotions are nonsense, and that we must only look at the machine that is the brain. ii. Says that the "problem" of consciousness can be broken down into three issues. 1. Sentience a. Refers to subjective experience and awareness (feelings).

2. Access. Refers to the ability to report on the content and product of rational thought. It talks about taking deliberate, reasoned actions based on memory, rational ideas, and past experiences.

3. Self-knowledge a. Refers to the ability of individuals to recognize that their experiences are uniquely their own and to be aware that they are experiencing as they are doing it.. Access and self-knowledge are cognitive activities that can be analyzed by psychological viewpoints such as f MRI scans and biofeedback. 1.

Pinker says that this analysis is crucial because it is the only way for scientists to understand the true nature of consciousness. 6. Materialists like Pinker contrast greatly with philosophers like Chalmers (1996). a. Pinker focused on physiology, while Chalmers focused on subjective experience. b. There are plenty of theories around dealing with consciousness. c. Much analysis is based on bio behavioral. i.

An attempt to explain the nature of consciousness through a description of the brain's structure and functions and a corresponding analysis of behavior. d. Researchers mainly focus on specific states of consciousness such as sleep, meditation, biofeedback, hypnosis, and drug-induced consciousness.