Defining the Conscious State Essay

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 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.

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

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

In order to determine whether it is possible to compute consciousness, it is first necessary to define

Consciousness, a material property that is not explained in its entirety through physics, is our rational capacity for understanding the functions of human life in this world. The mind has an element in its nature that differentiates it from the physical. Understanding the functions of the mind has both an objective and subjective aspects. Consciousness is the subjective, inner life of our mind. It is based on the emotions and ideas that arise from perceiving external activities. Knowledge of consciousness comes from our knowledge of the brain and knowledge of experience. As stated by Nagel, "There are facts about conscious experience that cannot be deduced from physical facts about the functioning of the brain.” It is known that subjective experiences emerge from physical processes; however, it is yet unknown how or why this is. In order to reach an understanding of consciousness, theories based on philosophical and neuroscientific laws are being

Consciousness refers to the relationship and interactions between our mind and its surrounding environments. Consciousness fades when the normal patterns of waking neural activity in the brain are replaced by the patterns characteristic of sleep, or when the tissues of the brain are damaged physically or by intoxicants. We do not have a set explanation has to how brain activity produces consciousness. It is concluded that consciousness is an elemental component of the universe that cannot be discussed or analyzed any further by the human race.

Consciousness is the way beings have their own personal experiences in their minds. In other words, how they experience every day situations in their own personal view or perspective. Ned Block (1995) explains that “phenomenal consciousness is experience; what makes a state phenomenally conscious is that there is something ‘it is like’ to be in that state.” Susan Blackmore (2012) said that consciousness was subjective; meaning consciousness is personal and cannot be shared with anyone else. Study and research on consciousness has advanced and increased in the past years. The Laboratory of Nuero Imaging states that humans have at least 70,000 thoughts racing through their heads on a normal day. These thoughts make up a part of our consciousness; our ongoing dose of qualia, or private internal experiences. It is obvious that humans have consciousness, but do other organisms share this capability? One experiment compared the cognitive ability of humans and great apes at the early stages of their development. Mammals, like apes and monkeys, do have consciousness based on anecdotal evidence, research, and experiments.

Consciousness is the most fundamental facts of existence, it is what is most intimate to us yet at the same time the most mysterious. Consciousness is what makes life worth living if we were not conscious nothing in our life would have meaning or value.

The emergence of human consciousness is a highly debated subject matter. Some people argue that either consciousness existed in other human beings, or it emerged at some instance during the process of evolution. It is pertinent to note that the proponents of the idea of emergence of consciousness during evolution believe that it was one of the adaptive features developed by humans in order to survive in the changing environment. This has been the most common view. Human consciousness is an integral section defining the abilities of a human being. As an adaptive feature in human beings, consciousness has a number of roles necessary for human survival. Adaptability in human beings is an outcome of the struggle to survival in a dynamic environment. The conventional theory on the emergence of consciousness is the development of a complex neural network in the brain. This is related to the pattern of the neural networks in the brain. However, within this theory, there are subsets of thoughts that explain the synchronous oscillations in the neural networks. With evidence, this study will seek to show the superior and complex nature of human consciousness compared to other organisms (Rychlak, 1997).

Define state consciousness and the phenomenal aspect of conscious (When we say a mental state is state conscious we mean to identify not only that there is a relational property that we attribute to that mental state, namely, state consciousness, but also that there is something it’s like, an affiliated phenomenal character, for the bearer of that state.)

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

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

Psychologists may not agree on a specific definition of consciousness or of the psychology behind it, however there is to a large degree, a general understanding of the topics and problems that persist within the domain of the psychology of consciousness. Some of these