Consciousness Essay example

Until, it was brought to her attention, she had no idea that she was only drawing half of the picture. This gives us evidence that there is not only a sensory problem, but a problem of consciousness. With 30 areas in the brain for seeing, visual input divides into two parallel streams of processing. One called the How pathway, is concerned with navigation and the other called the “What” pathway is concerned with recognition.

Growing up the common conception of what consciousness pertains to what is done with thought. However, when taking an in-depth examination of this topic, it appears that there is more to it than that. It is one of the most familiar concepts in the world, yet, it has a mysterious factor to it. Consciousness poses a baffling problem of the mind. It raises many questions surrounding its definition and furthermore how it correlates to everything else that we know today. Chalmers in his work (put name here) attempts to define what consciousness is and two problems that make it difficult to grasp. In addition, I will seek to derive a solution to the issue surrounding comprehending consciousness.

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.

The fascination with consciousness dates back to the time of Plato and Descartes. Since those times the term “consciousness” has spurned controversy in many scientific fields, including the fields of biology, psychology, and neuroscience. However, with the recent advancements in brain imaging technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), human consciousness has shifted from being a subjective, abstract idea into being a observable scientific phenomenon. As neuroimaging capabilities progress, the public interest in consciousness also grows.

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal

4.Hegarty, S. (2011, December 05). What phantom limbs and mirrors teach us about the brain. Retrieved February 25, 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15938103

The phenomenon of blindsight has far reaching implications regarding consciousness, awareness and the "I" function. These studies demonstrate that receiving and interpreting visual inputs is independent of our awareness of that input. Does this imply that there is a separate mechanism of "consciousness" which can be disengaged from our senses? Marcel proposes that this loss of visual consciousness results from the

However, as the article, and time frame the article occurs in, progresses, the indirect observation of the conscious mind becomes more deliberate. It becomes the aim of the research rather than a secondary result. For instance, the work of Weiskrantz and Bisiach indicates an intentional and deliberate studying of consciousness, through scientific processes involving “blindsight,” (31-32) and “inattentive,” vision (33), respectively. The correct responses in the studies yielded by individuals who have been rendered incapable of consciously correctly answering the questions provides solid, scientific evidence of unconscious processes that enabled their behavior, and also indicates a shift in the article toward a more objective take on the scientific method. However, the work indicates not only an evolution and advancement of the scientific discoveries highlighted—that is, the discussion of consciousness—but also an evolution of the scientific process itself away from the antiquated practices of pseudoscience that the piece highlights near its start, and toward the scientific method as it is known

According to Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, in his movie “Secrets of the Mind,” our vision system is divided into two parts, one with our eyes, and the other with our brain. He also says that there are two different pathways in which our brain uses to “see.” One of these pathways, he calls the evolutionary new pathway (the more sophisticated pathway) in which our eyes see, then the information is sent to the thalamus, and eventually entering the visual cortex of the brain. This pathway is the conscious part of seeing. The other pathway Dr. Ramachandran says is more prominent, as well as evolutionarily primitive. An iguana uses this system of seeing. In this second pathway, information enters through the eyes, and then is sent to the brain

In 1982 Ungerleider and Mishkin proposed the existence of a dorsal stream that processed special features, such as location in the field of view , and a ventral stream that processed visual features, such as the color or texture of the actual object. Through this model, the idea of “where” vs. “what” was formed. They tested this idea through an experiment where monkeys had been trained for two specific tasks, one that used the “where” and one that used the “what” aspect of vision. The experimenters then created brain lesions in the parietal cortex of some of the monkeys to test how it affected “where” and brain lesions in the inferotemporal cortex in the other monkeys to test how it affected “when.” “The results showed that monkeys with damage

Under these conditions, participants reported seeing illusory conjunctions in 18% of trials. That is, participants reported seeing objects that consisted of a combination of features from two different stimuli. For example, after seeing a big yellow circle, a big blue triangle, a small red triangle, and a small green circle, a person might report seeing a small red circle and a small green triangle. The reason illusory conjunctions occurred is that stimuli were presented rapidly and the observers' attention was distracted from the target object by having them focus on the black numbers; thus, elementary features had not yet been grouped or bound to an object. Having participants attend to the target objects eliminated the illusory conjunction. The second stage of processing depends on attention. In this stage, the features are recombined, so we perceive the whole object rather than individual features. Treisman linked the process of binding that occurs in the focused attention stage to physiology by noting that an object causes activity in both the '’what'’ and '’where'’ streams of the cortex (see Two-streams

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

The results of the experiment produced evidence consistent with the hypothesis as those in the visually similar condition noticed the unexpected stimulus more than the people in the visually dissimilar condition. Simons and Chebris (1999) also achieved these results in their study. However, there was not a large difference between the percentages in the visually similar and visually dissimilar conditions therefore the findings should be tested for significance as Neisser (1979) found that it is the properties of the unexpected stimulus that

Consciousness allows a person to recognize their existence, and subsequently, to form their essence. The

The concept of a ‘unitary mechanism’ has been recurrently mentioned in the text, although little has been said about what it means and implies. This is a term coined by Stephen Kosslyn (2005), he provided a model of visual imagery in which a single visual buffer is used “bottom-up” to display visual percepts and “top-down” to display internally generated images. The main claim is that the brain areas that implement the