Emergence of Human Consciousness and Its Future

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.

Bor uses the factual evidence that “every person on the planet, on average, consumes twice his or her weight in animal-derived food each year” (Bor) to set the stage form this controversial topic that hangs on the question of consciousness. Bor once again makes the audience read the entire section on animal rights before revealing his stance on the issue; Bor claims to be a vegetarian which shows the reader that he believes animals experience consciousness to the point where they should not be consumed as a food source. He presents the question how many animals actually have the brain regions required for consciousness? Bor then answers that most mammals have developed these structures and saying that this is “suggesting strongly that they too have some significant levels of consciousness” (Bor). He then references several animals how have been observed to use tools and “demonstrate a mental life that many would classify as conscious” (Bor) such as a crow or an octopus. Bor refers to several test done to various species to determine their self-consciousness and metacognition. The self-awareness test revealed “chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, dolphins, elephants, and pigs” (Bor) to have some degree of self-awareness while the metacognition test revealed that “great apes and monkeys” (Bor) show metacognition. Bor uses these results to support his ideals that “ethically consistent for us to extend

People have the basic gene to develop to the certain status but even the same gene can have the different way to develop. As people’s consciousness are deciding a lot of things such as behaviors and reactions. Gene will also have some tiny changes due to Consciousness. Consciousness can help people to make better evolution based the limit gene. In the essay, Susan Blackmore introduces the concept of consciousness and indicates that consciousness plays an important role in the process of brain give the reaction for all the situations. As a result, people are hard to make the same application to imitate people’s consciousness. She concludes that “If intelligence does not provide simple answers perhaps consciousness might. Many people believe that human consciousness unique and is responsible for making us human.” (32). When people engage in the work for meme, people neglect how people on earth think all the staff inside the brain. We need to keep this in mind to make us find out the reason for the

     These animals also demonstrated memory, another of the aspects of consciousness. Many behaviorists believe that animals act only on instinct, or on conditioned responses to stimuli. Others, like Lesley J. Rogers, believe that memories actually play an important part in an animal’s behavior. “The uniqueness of an individual is not simply encoded in the enormous diversity of our genetic code (our inheritance) but is established by our unique

It seems to us that we are in control of our mind and body as a unified self. It means that we have free will to act. We can imagine it is like a homunculus in the Cartesian Theater which is responsible for making every decision in our brain. However, unless we can prove there is a homunculus in our brain, there is no consciousness. Libet and Wegner challenge the view that we do not have free will. “We can’t possibly know the tremendous number of mechanical influences on our behavior because we inhabit an extraordinarily complicated machine.” (Wegner, 2002)

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

Intelligence and Consciousness are two very controversial topics discussed in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. They are both labels for inner-workings of the brain, so they cannot easily be identified. The existence itself of intelligence is not very controversial, because it refers to the brain’s capacity for memory, learning, and ability to reason and problem-solve. However, the measurement of intelligence is very oversimplified and unreliable. Consciousness is significantly more debatable because it is essentially impossible (at least by today’s standards) to develop an objective list of criteria to identify consciousness. Very little is known about it other than the fact that we feel as if we have a single consciousness. The two

Consciousness is a pivotal element in human existence. According to Max Velmans and Susan Schneider The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness”. As important as it is, scientists have trouble in coining the exact definition for consciousness. Even more shockingly, there have been studies that claim human do not make conscious decisions as we have always believed, such as the article Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain published by Nature Publishing Group in 2008, and in the BBC documentary The Secret You by Marcus du Sautoy.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Solaris, brings into discussion whether or not the recreation of Hari is a real person. I will argue through analysis of Derek Parfits’ and John Locke’s perspectives on personhood how although Hari is made of neutrinos, that she is in-fact a person, although not the same person as the former Hari that Kelvin knew.

Overall a majority of scientists believe that the brain alone creates conscious experience. The brain is described as a genetically programmed computer whose electrical and biochemical processes produce what we experience as thought and decision-making. It is therefore no surprise that science headlines today suggest that the experience of free-will is merely an illusion, a byproduct of so-called background noise in the brain. In popular media we are presented with the black and white dilemma. We must choose between reason and rationality or superstition and blind faith. However for decades some acclaim scientists around the world have conducted consciousness research that provides a very different picture.

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

U.T. Place argues in Is Consciousness a Brain Process? The claim sensations are brain processes is logically possible. In other words, the claim itself has no contradiction built in it. Place hypothesizes the truth of the claim is contingent. Identity statements are neither necessarily true nor false. So, scientific research might reveal phenomena of consciousness are brain processes.

Our memory and attention is based on what is most relevant to understanding our surroundings. The brain might have been shaped to keep us interacting with others and in touch with reality. The higher parts of the brain where consciousness is based are connected to emotion and decision-making circuits. Consciousness relies on frequencies in the EEG. Small, fast waves signal being aware and awake and Large, small waves indicate sleep or coma. Scientists are close to discovering the cause of consciousness for the ‘Easy Problem’ but there are still unanswered questions in the ‘Hard Problem’. An example of the ‘Hard Problem’ is pondering whether everyone sees colors the same way. Nothing we know of now could prove the argument either way and the problem very well may be just an idiosyncrasy of the mind. A better understanding of consciousness helps us to advance our morals, our understanding for others, and how they are just like us. Pinker’s thoughts on consciousness brought to light the fact that all consciousness is tied to brain tissue function, a concept I didn’t fully understand before. Stephen Pinker’s areas of academic expertise are visual cognition and psycholinguistics, areas

Human culture expands rapidly and our concept of consciousness is rapidly evolving with it. Philosophers have filled the void concerning the true nature of consciousness not yet determined by science. Despite the subjective nature of consciousness, perceived by many to be a personal and private aspect of human existence, neurobiologists are investigating and measuring objective characteristics of introspective reasoning and associated elements of morality. Most agree that consciousness is key to human happiness and belonging. I will argue that consciousness is a physiological phenomenon, equivalent to the concept of self, as well as a portal to one’s culture, collective experience and fulfillment. I contend that it is critical to