Consciousness Is Not An Illusion

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.

Daniel Bor, a psychological researcher, and author, wrote an article titled “When Do We Become Truly Conscious” published on September 4, 2012 and in this article he discusses the idea of consciousness. Through use of deductive reasoning Bor refers to early opinions viewing consciousness as magic and discusses the science behind demystifying consciousness. Bor also discusses the ethical arguments behind learning for about consciousness. Bor also lists some of the emotional arguments centered on human awareness. Bor’s use of rhetorical strategies is designed to state his opinion in a simple and easily read way.

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

     Consciousness is a difficult term to grasp; so much so, that many scientists will not even attempt to define the term, much less search for it’s evidence. Most however, do agree that consciousness must include certain aspects; specifically cognition, self-awareness, memory, and abstract thought.

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

However, perceptions and senses could oftentimes be false, but the ability to introspect helps one to regain clarity on his or her environment. Thus, one essential condition of human consciousness is that one must be able introspect and have a sense of self. Rene Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” is an example that supports this condition. (I will and need to expand on this)

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.

Human curiosity has always attempted to understand the concept of consciousness. However, humanity's only definition is described as the state of being aware of one's surroundings. In a world where the mind is an undiscovered endless amount of power and self-expression, it is hard to categorize consciousness with such a vague definition. Questions also arise in regards to the very location of an individual's mind and whether it is dually connected with one's body or a separate entity entirely. The physical presence of the mind currently rests as a mystery but many theorize that its location is a part of your body or that it has no physical relation. Each individual currently has a different view on the definition of consciousness and the location of your mind rests with the belief of each individual.

In other words, what allows for the mind to recognize reality and being is something that scientific deduction cannot completely account for (Mitchell, 2015). Consciousness for him is subjective and unique being that any physical theory of the mind must first account for the subjective nature of the experience (Nagel, 1974).

Dr. Anil Seth combines cognitive science, neuroscience, psychiatry, brain imaging techniques and mathematics to explain why consciousness exists at all. He talks about the distinction, which is passed from Descartes, between the “easy problem” and the “hard problem”. The easy problem being to understand how the brain and the body give rise to perception, cognition, behaviour and learning. The hard problem being to understand how and why we have phenomenal experiences or qualia and how all of this should be associated with consciousness at all: why aren’t we just machines, without any inner world/experiences? It is intriguing to think that solving the easy problem would get us nowhere in solving the hard problem, which leaves the brain basis

Reading on the article “Will We Ever Understand Consciousness?” Scientists & Philosophers Debate was very intriguing. It imposes that consciousness is such an unbelievable magnesium and how unique the brain works due to the fact of how it give rise to fundamental action to the outside world and how separate it is from our bodies, minds, and souls. It states that the more we use our brains to think (known as consciousness), the more millions of neurons interact with each other to make sense of how put things together in the reality world; but the interesting part is that the mind itself is fundamentally incapable of comprehending itself, no matter how much scientist studies the brain. As I continue to read, it also go into details about self-awareness, and the brain activity of coma patients due to traumatic brain injury. The interesting fact is that how drugs or prescription medications can have such side effects to improve and disprove of one’s unconsciousness; like giving the prescription drug to treat Parkinson Disease also treat a person that has lost conscious, as well as knowing that we all experience unconsciousness every day, due to sleep. It also states that during sleep the neurons of the brain activity communication is much more localized and less complex during sleeping than during the times that we are awake because of

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.

In “Sensations are Brain Processes”, J.J.C Smart argues that “in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process” (Smart 1959 145). The ‘Sensation-Brain Process Identity Theory’ states: For any type of sensation state ‘S’, there is a type of brain state ‘B’ such that: ‘S = B’. In defense of this thesis Smart clears up Place’s identity distinction with his sense of strict identity. S and B are strictly identical when ‘S’ and ‘B’ are two names for a single object.

Consciousness is a broad topic that spans many different schools of thought. Its role in

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