Consciousness

David Chalmers is a philosopher who talked at a TED Talks conference in Vancouver British Columbia on March 2014 about consciousness and how one explains it. David Chalmers mentions in his talk that each of us in conscious, without consciousness, nothing in our lives would contain any value or meaning (2014). Consciousness is like a movie playing in your head, it possesses all the senses that humans have and also the feelings they have as well (Chalmers, 2014). This movie is your stream of consciousness. Overall, consciousness is one of the most difficult problem to solve in science and philosophy, it will and has taken a lot of time to figure out. With that being said, understanding consciousness is a big key to understanding not only ourselves

which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought

1.2 Consciousness Consciousness refers to an individual’s self-awareness, both internally and external stimulus which include your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations and environment. Your consciousness can constantly change from one conscious to another. The constant change in consciousness can also be referred to as “stream of conscious”. Awareness- its mechanism and function has

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.

For many years the question of whether or not the unconscious mind really exists, and if it does then what does it consist of has baffled many theorist’s minds and has made many philosophers question themselves. There have been debates on whether the conscious mind is influenced by other parts of the mind. These parts are indented within the unconscious, which has processes such as personal habits, intuition and being oblivious to certain things in life. While we are completely aware of what is happening I the conscious mind, we have absolutely no idea of what information is stored in the unconscious mind. It is believed that the unconscious mind comprises various significant and disturbing material, which is required to be kept out of awareness as they may be too menacing to completely acknowledge and be mindful of. There are been some critics that have completely disbelieved the existence of the unconscious mind. Many psychological scientists today believe that the unconscious mind is the shadow of a “real” conscious mind. However, through extensive research, evidence has been found that the unconscious is not visibly complex, controlling, or action-orientated.

Consciousness is the state or condition of being conscious. A sense of one's personal or collective identity, especially the complex of attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or a group. There are several different stages of consciousness. Waking consciousness, altered states of consciousness and sleep.

Consciousness is the heart of free will and intent, it is responsible for the ability of a person to choose. With that said, it is my belief that defining personal identity relies on both bodily and mental continuity.

Consider artificial intelligence. There are enormously erudite and complex debates about whether an AI can become conscious, and the dangers that might arise from that consciousness. These individuals either ignore the question of what consciousness is, or founder on the attempt to find a definition. (“Being able to produce a narrative about what one is doing while doing it” is perhaps as good a definition as any.)

     Lesley J. Rogers describes consciousness as, “related to awareness, intelligence, and complex cognition, as well as language. Consciousness may be manifested in self-awareness, awareness of others, intentional behavior, including intentional communication, deception of others, and in the

Kayla Southworth Professor Rondel PHIL 101-1001 December 2, 2015 Chalmers immaterial conscious 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

Therefore if we associate consciousness with our senses then it could be that consciousness is not the result of an immaterial substance. But it is also hard to determine if we have one unified consciousness, or when the brains are split, 2 different consciousnesses, or even more than 2! There is no way to measure that, and is still a mystery, we can’t thoroughly explain what actually determines the true consciousness of ourselves, if we believe there is more than one consciousness within our brains over ruling the other or letting that specific consciousness win the decision. If we associate consciousness with senses, then we also associate it with the decisions we make, if vanilla scented candles makes us feel calm, then we light them, if a specific song makes us happy, then we play it, if I jump off a high ledge and land wrong, it’ll hurt so perhaps I wouldn’t do that or learn how to land correctly. Or it could be that a person might do the complete opposite of those things, maybe they don’t want to feel calm, happy or might want to break their legs. We don’t know why consciousness helps us to decide what decisions we choose for ourselves or even why it matters in a scientific point of

I only found myself having one issue with this topic. Dr. Eagleman goes to say that everything we do is controlled by unconsciousness. Then, he goes on to say that “consciousness is like the CEO of a large corporation.” But, how can he talk about consciousness when he says everything we do is controlled by the unconscious. What even is conscious then if what seems like everything we do and who we are, is controlled by something we have no control over. Wouldn’t that make us unconscious? Dr. Eagleman made it is confusing in that instance by talking about consciousness.

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

Hallucinations and the Human Consciousness The idea of consciousness has been contemplated throughout the course of neurobiology and behavior. When does it begin or end? And what, precisely, is consciousness? Though researchers may only approximate the answers to these questions, a few things may be inferred. Since the subconscious mind

Conscious state according to dictionary.com is being aware of one’s own existence these may involve thoughts, sensations (images, aches, pain, visual, auditory and tactual sensation etc.). Smart refuses to admit to the fact that sensations are irreducibly psychical because of Occam’s razor (which suggests that such matters should not even be put into consideration). He affirms there is no philosophical argument that compels us to be dualist, he writes “I am in pain is a genuine report, and that what it reports is an irreducibly psychical something”(Adler and Elgin 384). From this context he believes that by claiming one is in pain one is reporting something, which is over and above, (something unexplainable beyond the human