Consciousness Is The Way Beings Have Their Own Personal Experiences

Native Americans believed that we are and should be one with Mother Nature. Many believes stem from them being so Intune with the wind, ground, tress/plants and animals. They believe that everything is connected and to be fully connected they needed to have these special ceremonies. These ceremonies included peyote and strong tobaccos to reach true enlightenment and to become one with yourself. Also in these ceremonies you typically are on a journey to find yourself or see things you need to strengthen within yourself. Since I have started mediating and looking further in depth about meditating, I have learned that many feel that you cannot reach true enlightenment in ordinary consciousness. I believe that this “ordinary consciousness” is somewhat

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.

Primate intelligence correlates to primate cognition which is the study of the intellectual and behavioral skills of primates (Low). In the book Human Evolution and Culture, chapter five "Human Evolution Biological and Culture" states that primates share a lot of common features with mammals but what makes them uniquely different than many other mammals is that primates have a wide range of physical and social traits (86). The social relationships of primates are unique because just like humans, they relationship begin with the mother and other adults that the younger dependable primates. "The dependency of infant primates offers an evolutionary benefit that allows infant primates more time to examine and master the intricate behaviors necessary to survival while enjoying the care and protection of mature adults."(87) Primates have the privilege of having a large brain the size similar to body size to learn the culture and the way of life they live. Larger brains give primates the advantage to obtain an enormous amount of learning and integrate data. Primates have a special gift in areas of their brain that's dedicated to speech and language. (94) Primates have the special ability to communicate with each other as well as with humans and are the "only habitual toolmaking animal" (96). Although primates are more cognitively advanced than many other animals/mammals, researchers and critics still debate on how to define, compare and study intelligence and the growth of

Apes and primates come in all different shapes and sizes. They all exhibit different characteristics and most importantly different behaviors that separate these different primates. The thing that is the most fascinating is really how similar they are to us. The similarities go past structure, similarities can also be seen in their behavior and how they think similar to a rational human being. Gorillas are the biggest primate currently alive on earth and they are also one of the smartest as seen through Koko the gorilla who actually understands english and can effectively use sign language. Gorillas are truly fascinating creatures that exhibit behaviors

Primates have been traced to have a very close evolutionary relationship with humans. Monkeys and apes resemble humans more than any other groups of primates. Primatologists have studied monkeys and apes and found that they share a number of characteristics with humans. These primates have developed their characteristics through the environment they live in. They have developed teeth, sensory organs, a brain and a skeleton by adapting to their environment. They also live and travel in groups. Primates reconcile with each other after an argument. This embracing and touching demonstrates group sociability that humans also demonstrate. Apes have the same reproduction cycle as humans. They give birth to one infant at a time and then nurse that

When I say I am conscious, or spiritual awake, I mean I am in tune with what is going on within the world and within myself. According to Bill Harris’s article, What Does It Mean to be Conscious, "The awake person is not at odds with the world. He is a part of it, but not attached to the outcome. He watches as it all goes by, but he is also a participant.” Being conscious means I am mentally perceptive alert or awake.

Today mammals are the largest and most powerful creators with high metabolisms and ferocious need to feed to help shape their bodies and brains. Humans are closely related to primates and share similar cognitive and intellectual characteristics like nurture young, pass on social skills, learn like us, mimicking, and remember. Although we have so much in common we are still slightly different because of our larger brains and our ability to communicate and ask questions like how we got

Despite the complex structures discovered in the brains of dolphins, primates have been the main focus of intelligence research. One of the main reason for the focus on primates is that they seem to be so similar to humans in many ways, the most important being genetically. Besides basic genetic similarities, or perhaps because them, primates have many advanced brain structures some of which are similar to human brain structures. Most primates have and EQ the around 2.34 (2) while humans have an EQ around 7. This may seem like are large difference, but when you consider that very few species have an EQ above 1, the difference is less profound. In addition to similarities in size and structure "primates devote more of their energy resources to their brains than do most other mammals", which is another important measure of intelligence(3).

Human Consciousness is when the happenings of the day are filtered through an individual’s thoughts and experiences. The consciousness consists of both wakefulness, being alert, and awareness, ability to experience life in a unique perspective. The daily fluctuations between wakefulness and alertness is due to the changing state of mental functioning, or the changes between waking and sleeping.

A hemispherectomy is a surgical process in which the brain of a patient is halved and one of these parts is then removed. The procedure is only ever carried out on individuals who are very young, as their brains are still flexible, pliable enough that the remaining portion will then take on the functions of the half that had been removed. Though this process is rather rare, only carried out when the child in question is experiences dramatic seizures that can only be halted in this way, it brings a crucial element to the table, far beyond the medical benefit for one. Hemispherectomies prove that patients can survive with only half of the brain, and thus, if the

Everyone experiences consciousness, yet no one knows what consciousness really is. French philosopher, Rene Descartes famously said “Cortigo Ergo Sum”, a philosophical proposition meaning, “I think therefor I am” (Tononi 292). What Descartes was implying is that the phenomenon of thought characterizes consciousness. While this claim may be off base, it serves as an integral starting point in the study of consciousness. According to Tononi, consciousness “is what vanishes every night when we fall into dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or when we dream.

When I first started this course I thought I knew a good amount about consciousness or cognition. As the semester went on I realized I did not know as much as I thought, but I ended up learning more than I ever thought possible. Every week I felt as if my knowledge was increasing day by day. Before this class most of my knowledge came through personal experience or doing some research for my own curiosity. This semester brought more insight into many different topics, but the ones I feel that I grew the most were anxiety, depression, music and its effect on the brain, and love and romance.

For starters consciousness is a mystical network. It has several different extraordinary characters. One David Chalmers says it has a “unified and a differentiated character”, that he feels defines consciousness and makes it simple. But is it really that simplistic?? I mean consciousness is something everyone is aware of at every waking moment of life until death. Never has it been something

Conscious is thought to be a mental state in which we are able to process information and act on it. However this term is used to describe a state of awareness while awake whereas there seems to be varying levels of consciousness that describe most mental states. If information can be perceived (knowing or unknowingly) then it is likely that you are conscious, e.g. even when in light sleep we can dream and may even wake up on hearing a loud noise, therefore the brain still processes information, however in deep sleep this is not the case. When looking at consciousness, there is what Levine described as the explanatory gap (Levine, 1983). This states that in the present moment we are not able to provide an explanation for the phenomena that is consciousness however as time goes on and our knowledge of neuroscience increases this gap will close gradually until it is non-existent (Block & Young, 1996). However despite this statement being made by Levine around 30 years ago, the explanatory gap still remains although it is clearly beginning to close, we still have some way to go before we can begin to understand what consciousness is. Consciousness is inherently a subjective matter as there are many different meanings for the word which are seemingly thrown around without much thought, there is no way to prove that one normal experience of consciousness is the same as another (qualia) and we are unable to scientifically explain conscious experiences. Therefore before we can

As consciousness remains an unsolved mystery to the science world, we know a lot about elements that make up the consciousness. Some of the elements associated with consciousness is one’s unique thoughts, memories, feelings and sensations. These elements are seen not only in human consciousness but in animal conscious as well. We are able to study consciousness by observing the behavior in humans and animals. Observing these actions we are able to see how consciousness affects the subject 's life in an everyday basis.