An Integral Theory Of Consciousness Essay

BibliographyBooks1.Burt, C. (1962). The concept of consciousness. British Journal of Psychology, 53, 229-2422.Carlson, N., & Buskist, W. (1997). Psychology: The science of behavior (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

In the wake of slavery, the black body is constantly under attack. The hold co-exists within the wake of slavery. According to Christina Sharpe, college professor, author of In the Wake on Blackness and Being, (2016) “The wake; a state of wakefulness and a state of consciousness” (pg. 5). Being in the wake of slavery means one still faces the negative effects it and is aware of the negative affects it has on the black community. The hold co-exists in the wake of slavery and the black body is inhibited by this hold. Sharpe defines the hold as, “A large space in the lower part of a aircraft in which cargo is stowed (of a ship or aircraft); keep or detain (someone)” (p. 68). In the hold, the black body has been introduced, taught, ingrained and continues this idea of the language of violence. Through the actual hold of the ship during the Middle Passage, to the perception of blacks which also holds the black body, and to the engrained idea of the “masculine black body” which keeps queer black bodies in their own hold. In this paper, I will examine the intersectionality of blackness and queerness which is being held in the wake of slavery.

My own theory of consciousness is a state of awareness of self. It has been said that this awareness stems from arousal. Consciousness, to me, is entirely internal. We experience the external world, but only through our senses. Dehaene and Naccache (2001) explain that neuroscience is beginning to investigate and understand the "neural underpinnings of consciousness." Thus, consciousness is something that we experience via our own bodies. However, there is an implied separation between experience and consciousness. Animals and plants also have mechanisms for interacting with the world, but they do not appear to have the same neural underpinnings that them to interpret the world with the same awareness that humans have. We, however, not only experience the external world, but we are aware of that experience.

There are four major points outlined by the author. The first one is the central role of consciousness in the traditional mind-body problem. The relationships between mind and body cannot be explained without the proper comprehending of consciousness and its role. The second one is the incorrect approaches utilized by the modern reductionists. Their examples and analogies are inapplicable to the mind-body problem. The third one is that experience of any specie or organism has a highly subjective character. Therefore, people cannot even image what it means to be a bat. The fourth one is the need for determining the optimal balance between comprehending the objective physical processes and beings’

Consciousness for many years has been a debatable topic between people, where some take the materialist approach while others take the dualist approach. Metaphysical materialism is the view that there is no such thing as spooky substances only matter. This type of view goes on to say that phenomenon’s such as the conscious is just byproducts of material substances interacting with one another. Materialist’s views for a long time were hard to rebuke. However, in 1996 David Chalmers wrote The consciousness mind, which does rebuke materialism’s very view. In his piece, he has people imagine a world exactly like the one conscious human beings

Rosenthal’s definition of what is consciousness revolves around two distinctions – creature consciousness and state consciousness. Creature consciousness is a state where an organism is simply awake and aware of surroundings, but that is all that needs to happen for an organism to be creature conscious. On the other hand, state consciousness involves mental and intentional states. In other words, there is an existence of beliefs and desires. Therefore, it is argued that state consciousness is transitive, meaning there is intentionality behind an action. In terms of phenomenal

By comparing conscious and unconscious events, William James focused on the problem of detecting conscious awareness. The method of binocular rivalry analyzes the switch between the two stimuli happening in the brain. It is the idea of turning on the conscious mind by looking at an object such as an apple, and processing the “visual image”, by putting together “feature maps” in different parts of the brain. Thus, creating a visual experience. However, sensory regions are not the only parts of the brain involved. In fact, the author, Bernard J. Baars of “Thinking About Consciousness” goes to explain that our brain is like a parallel processing system that involves the parietal and frontal lobes, limiting moment-to-moment conscious events.

The three theories we have discussed so far are the dualism theory of Plato and Descartes, the Aristotelian theory, and the Physicalism (identity) theory of Place and Strong. The identity of consciousness means that if you have the same consciousness, you are the same person, and if not conscience, you are not the same person. The thing that remains constant throughout all states of consciousness is that it is physically the same human being. For example, the drunk person and the sober person are the same human being, but may not be the same person. We are the same human being throughout our lives but we are not the same person, so our consciousness changes as we grow. The Aristotelian theory and the Physicalism theory of Place and Armstrong make strong points about the nature of consciousness, but Plato and Descartes’ theory of Dualism offers the best explanation of the natural state of consciousness.

Overall a majority of scientists believe that the brain alone creates conscious experience. The brain is described as a genetically programmed computer whose electrical and biochemical processes produce what we experience as thought and decision-making. It is therefore no surprise that science headlines today suggest that the experience of free-will is merely an illusion, a byproduct of so-called background noise in the brain. In popular media we are presented with the black and white dilemma. We must choose between reason and rationality or superstition and blind faith. However for decades some acclaim scientists around the world have conducted consciousness research that provides a very different picture.

The up and coming fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology have the potential to break a seemingly everlasting stalemate on the debate over the existence of free will. Breaking away from a purely theoretical approach to discussing a philosophical question could shed some light into our greatest existential dilemmas. German philosopher Martin Heidegger himself said, “we ourselves are entities to be analyzed,” and that seems ever so fitting for the investigation into consciousness. Although we have first person access to our conscious brain, the advancement of technology has allowed previously inaccessible understanding of what goes on inside our heads. But much of our brain and spinal cord, the scientifically agreed upon location of the self, is barely understood. But as we apply reason and testing to our theories, we can learn more about the brain from a scientific and philosophic viewpoint. We can finally marry the two fields through an agreement of reason and questioning, agreeing with Rudolf Carnap that “Logic is the last scientific ingredient of philosophy.”

For quite some time scientists and doctors have been trying to find a way to measure the level of a person’s conscious state. This is important due to two kinds of unconscious behavior: severe disorders and invasive surgery. In The Scientific American, an article is published that examines Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory.

Peter Hacker, a 20th century philosopher, argues that the current notions, held by neuroscientists and philosophers, regarding the brain and consciousness are illogical. Subsequently, he discusses, in his opinion, the current misconceptions we have today.

Consciousness poses the most baffling challenges in scientific realm of the mind. There’s nothing with which we share an intimate relation than conscious experience, but there’s nothing so strenuous or demanding to explain. Perhaps no other aspect of mind is more puzzling than this mystifying experience that we encounter in our every day life. There’s a widespread disparity amongst individuals regarding the existence of this entity. Some might argue that consciousness is not more than a foolish idea, though there are some stances where investigations over its existence hadn’t yield anything to prove it’s very existence in nature, while others have held an opposite view, and contended that its very existence can be explained in empirical

There are various definitions of consciousness which can be ambiguous and to have a precise explanation at this time can still be considered premature. We actually do not have an exact rationalization of how consciousness emerges or the mechanism of consciousness process. However, there are different theories of how consciousness arises within the past years that have been advocated. There is a long repertoire of proposed theories based on metaphysical and ontological which is an assumption constructed on the state of subsistence with disparities can be perplexing. Nonetheless, several of the stipulated suppositions of such paradigms have direct correlations with each other, which can be ascertained to be not mutually exclusive. Neuroscience is concerned with the nervous system as it relates to the structure, how it arises and its functionality. Neuroscientists concentrate on the human brain and how it influences human behavior and cognitive functions. Therefore, for the neuroscientists’ point of view, the fundamental theories of consciousness are based on the higher order attribute, global workspace assessment and the biological aspect of the human mind (Block, 2009).

In this essay, I will talk about Jean-Paul Sartre’s work about the Nature of Consciousness. Firstly, I will discuss his theories of Consciousness and secondly, I will talk about how they developed in response to the work of other philosophers. Lastly, I will state why his work is still interesting today.