Ned Block On The Philosophical Topic Of Consciousness

Ned Block argued for the distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness by pointing out that P-consciousness can occur without A-consciousness and vice versa. He supported this claim by suggesting that blind sight patients may have access to information but without the subjective awareness of the stimuli. Flanagan gave an illustration by suggesting that that the “blind field area does not invoke any voluntary actions due to the lack of subjective awareness” (Flanagan, O., 1991; Block, 1995). The assumption is made when the patients indicated that they were unaware of the stimuli. He further argued that the concept of superblindsighter, akin to the idea of imagination and imagine “what it is like” to see a stimuli in the blind field

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.

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.

As our scientific paradigm has shifted towards a materialist account of the world, many thinkers believe that appeals to the supernatural cannot provide truth. Consequently, beliefs that had once been considered adequate must now be reworked if not torn down entirely to fit this new world view. Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained attempts to provide an account of our internal experience (i.e. Consciousness) that is rooted in the materialist world view. Though he is not the first to undertake this project, he takes issue with what he perceives to be the popular materialist account of consciousness, and seeks promote his own theory. With this essay I aim to offer an informative summary of the book followed by an evaluative dialogue of its central claims.

David Rosenthal’s HOT (high order thought) theory of consciousness claims that a state is conscious when one has a certain kind of thought, a high order thought, about it. What it means for a thought being “higher order” is that it is a thought about a mental state. A thought about something that is not a mental state, for example, a thought that there is a dog on the sofa, is a first order thought. But thinking about the fact that you are thinking about a dog on the sofa is a higher order thought, or a second order thought. HOT theory seeks to explain state consciousness in terms of transitive consciousness. According to HOT theory, the only way we are conscious of our own mental states is if we can think about them; in other words, if we

Within the attention domain of cognitive psychology, there is the infamous gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness experiment by Simons and Chabris. In this experiment, participants are asked to count the number of

Vision-- receiving and interpreting light signals from the environment in order to form an image in one's mind-- is an incredibly complex process. Somehow signals from photoreceptors located in the eye are converted into the conscious experience of sight. Of all the aspects of vision, perhaps the most difficult for us to comprehend scientifically is this notion of consciousness. Somehow the brain interprets light waves hitting the retina so that we are visually aware of our surroundings. While the mechanism of signal transduction from the photoreceptor through the visual cortex has been extensively elucidated, science has difficulty dealing with the phenomena of consciousness

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

In the novel The Invisible Gorilla: How our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, a deeper way of how the mind works is shown. The authors explain what they call the “illusion of attention” by providing experiments and illustrations. The message being passed is that we as humans might think we are always aware of our surroundings, but we actually miss what is right in front of us. People usually focus on one thing at a time, therefore the unexpected goes unnoticed. The book explains how the brain only focuses on the object or area you are concentrating on, making you “blind” to everything else. Many experiments were held to prove to the readers that our intuition deceives us.

"Of all the objects in the universe, the human brain is the most complex. There are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.", a quote from an issue of a Discover magazine article. But what comes from this complexion? The answer is thought. Consciousness has been quarreled between writers, scientists, priests, atheists and everyone in between. The priest says it is divine and cannot be explained, the atheist says no - it’s evolution. The writer romanticizes it, creating characters that contain the free will of the author but have more unrealistic complexion than any real human character. Scientists explain that we are in a state of awareness and that consciousness cannot be entirely explained as it is subjective and objectively, it cannot be measured. Human existence has transcended from being a simple organism living with survival instincts: hunting and gathering food for our kin, to working boring jobs to feed the family and to have just enough leisurely time to assure yourself not to jump off the nearest building to end it all. The question is - can an organism become complex enough to consciously choose what they believe is morally right with free will. Do we live for others or ourselves? Does consciousness actually exist and how do we prove it?

In Nagel’s What Is It Like To Be a Bat, issues regarding consciousness are raised. One such issue is the mind-body problem which, as noted by Nagel, does not seem to fit with reductionist theories. That is, reductionist theories aim to explain things (e.g. persons and/or animal experiences) in relation to physical processes (i.e. organisms are just the sum of their physical parts). However, consciousness does not easily cooperate with such theories because it must be given a physical account. In addition, the nature of consciousness is that it is unique to a specific viewpoint (e.g. we can imagine what it would be for us to be a bat, but we cannot experience the mindset of said organism).

The statements “I have a guilty conscious” and “My conscious eating me alive” are phrases that have been giving physical meaning by everyday people. What has not been given merit is the imaginable state of consciousness or ones conscious. Are the statements true or just simply a saying with no meaning?

Consciousness it is a state of awareness on both the external and internal actions and reaction toward different stimulus. Consciousness has greater impacts on our daily life and could influence survival of different organisms that lives on planet earth. The benefits is that it offers protection as it control the self .Consciousness regulate what we think and the reaction that we respond to the different experiences that we undergo on daily basis. Also, it allows us to either allow a thought or respond or terminating the thought as it might be not useful both the inner and outer experiences.

In Dretske's paper over "what change blindness teaches about consciousness," I think one of the most important ideas pointed out is that what is in question is not what the person thinks they saw or were aware of, but what they actually were aware of. This is really hard to test and get results on accurately.

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.