Thinking About Consciousness

The study of consciousness in modern day psychology is becoming increasingly difficult to explain. In the early days of consciousness studies it may have been explained as our experience or awareness (Blackmore, 2010). However, over a number of years, there have been many psychologists who have contributed many important theories towards the explanation of how consciousness works, and its initial existence. As Chalmers states: “There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing harder to explain” (Chalmers, 1995 p.200). Being one of the leading philosophers in consciousness, David Chalmers introduced the idea of the Hard Problem in 1994. Chalmers defined the hard problem as: “The questions of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience” (Chalmers, 1995 p.63). Chalmers suggested that he found it difficult to understand how a small mass of grey matter such as the brain could produce conscious experience. These ideas of a ‘hard problem’ in consciousness were rejected by a number of theorists, which will be discussed later in the essay. Another idea which Chalmers has put forward is the zombie. A zombie, according to Chalmers is a being identical to you and I, speaks like you, acts like you, but is not conscious (Blackmore, 2010). A zombie contains no qualia (a physical conscious experience). The idea of the zombie put forward by Chalmers is extremely important in the explanation of consciousness and has been

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

Consciousness is what is used to define the non-physical mind. It encompasses thoughts, feelings and emotions among other attributes. Consciousness creates a picture of the mind being vague, Vast, mysterious and something that cannot be seen by the naked eye but is present nevertheless. You can’t slice open someone’s brain and see what they are feeling, or dreaming or thinking. You can only know that by observation likes someone crying, smiling, laughing or showing some form of physical reaction or by someone simply telling you how they are feeling. Consciousness is part of the mind-body problem that we read about with Descartes where he believes that we have a thinking mind and a physical body. Both are present but two separate parts.

There exist scholars in the field of psychology who theorize that the unconscious and conscious mind are interactive. The interesting concept is that it could be perceived as a one-sided relationship between the two minds. Because of the fact that the conscious mind is unaware of the impact. So, then the question becomes, if the conscious is unaware, how can it be interactive. The answer to that question will be discussed in depth in this paper.

Numerous factors determine when and why you feel tired, full of energy, and hungry. A person's state of consciousness and awareness varies throughout the day and depends on a person's activity, environment, and time clock.

In the wake of slavery, the black body is constantly under attack. The hold co-exists within the wake of slavery. According to Christina Sharpe, college professor, author of In the Wake on Blackness and Being, (2016) “The wake; a state of wakefulness and a state of consciousness” (pg. 5). Being in the wake of slavery means one still faces the negative effects it and is aware of the negative affects it has on the black community. The hold co-exists in the wake of slavery and the black body is inhibited by this hold. Sharpe defines the hold as, “A large space in the lower part of a aircraft in which cargo is stowed (of a ship or aircraft); keep or detain (someone)” (p. 68). In the hold, the black body has been introduced, taught, ingrained and continues this idea of the language of violence. Through the actual hold of the ship during the Middle Passage, to the perception of blacks which also holds the black body, and to the engrained idea of the “masculine black body” which keeps queer black bodies in their own hold. In this paper, I will examine the intersectionality of blackness and queerness which is being held in the wake of slavery.

One of the ways an individual can understand cultural diversity is by creating a meaningful and genuine relationships with people who are from different cultures. Cultural diversity is an important phenomenal for teachers in training to become familiar with and I believe it is for this reason that the Education Department at Medgar Evers College has as one of its eight-unit standard Personal and Global Consciousness. The department under this standard expects teachers in training to examine, deconstruct, and reconstruct their own and others beliefs, values and perspective, to understand their own cultures, and to develop empathy and acceptance towards others culture. Teachers wishing to work in New York City

Nella Larsen, a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance, explores the nature of racial identity and double-consciousness in her novella Passing. W.E.B Du Bois’s theory of double-consciousness is characterized in The Souls of Black Folk as a sense of “twoness,-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois 2). Irene and Clare, Larsen’s novella’s primary characters, both lack a “dark body” which allows them to oscillate, by choice, between playing the part of the white “American” and the “Negro”. The appeal of racial passing lies in how it provides disenfranchised minorities access to otherwise unattainable

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.

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.

The phenomenon of blindsight has far reaching implications regarding consciousness, awareness and the "I" function. These studies demonstrate that receiving and interpreting visual inputs is independent of our awareness of that input. Does this imply that there is a separate mechanism of "consciousness" which can be disengaged from our senses? Marcel proposes that this loss of visual consciousness results from the

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

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?

This paper encompasses an analysis of physiological psychology, the relationship between the human nervous system and behavior, and an evaluation of historical figures in the field of physiological psychology

Thanks to recent developments in technology, consciousness has become a significant topic of research in psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience within the past few decades. The primary focus is on understanding what it means biologically and psychologically for information to be present in consciousness—that is, on determining the neural and psychological correlates of consciousness.