Consciousness

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

• the state or quality of awareness – awareness of thoughts, perceptions, memories, and feelings
• subjective experience
• if a being is capable of having a subjective experience, then there is something that it is like to be that being

Question 2

What is the frontal lobotomy?

Answer 2

• treatment for psychosis, depression, anxiety, etc
• if something is wrong, cut it out
• popularity of this procedure waned in the mid 1950s following the discovery of partially effective antipsychotic medications

Question 3

What is the split-brain operation?

Answer 3

• outdated surgical approach for treating seizure disorder
• cutting the corpus callosum

Question 4

What is the corpus callosum?

Answer 4

• the bundle of nerve fibers that connect the left and right sides of the cerebral cortex
• enables the two hemispheres to share information so that each side knows what the other side is perceiving and doing

Question 5

What are our cerebral hemispheres critical for?

Answer 5

• ability to consciously process sensory information
• our ability to consciously (purposefully) move our body in space

Question 6

What is the crisscross of the nerve fivers in the cerebral cortex?

Answer 6

• The left brain is largely responsible for the right side of the body
• The right brain is largely responsible for the left side of the body

Question 7

What happens when you cut the corpus callosum?

Answer 7

• the two cerebral hemispheres cannot directly talk to each other
• they can still send information downwards (to the brainstem and spinal cord) to control muscles

Question 8

What did researchers find in split-brain patients?

Answer 8

• the patients’ improvements were short-lived and/or exaggerated
• cutting the corpus callosum did not do very much (good or bad)
• left hand sometimes actively worked against what the person was consciously trying to accomplish
• left hand controlled by processes outside their conscious awareness
• right hand, controlled by the left brain, never acted out of the ordinary
• after about a year, conflicts with left hand are rare

Question 9

Split-brain patients and touch

Answer 9

• When a split-brain patient closes their eyes and touches a familiar but unidentified object with their left hand, they cannot identify the object out loud

Question 10

Split-brain patients and vision

Answer 10

• When a split-brain patient sees an image only in their left peripheral vision, which is processed on the right side of the brain, they cannot verbalize what they see

Question 11

What is the localization of language in the brain?

Answer 11

• language ability is located in the left cerebral hemisphere
• right brain can understand simple phrases and left hand can indicate answers to simple questions

Question 12

Can split brain patients see an object in their right peripheral vision?

Answer 12

• with right hand, write yes
• say yes
• with left hand, point to no

Question 13

Can split brain patients see an object in their left peripheral vision?

Answer 13

• with right hand, write no
• say no
• with left hand, point to yes

Question 14

Can split brain patients tell if two objects are the same or different?
(are the objects the same?)

Answer 14

• with right hand, write don’t know
• say don’t know
• with left hand, point to don’t know

Question 15

key - ring

Answer 15

• say ring
• pick up key with left hand

Question 16

What is Gazzaniga’s Interpreter theory?

Answer 16

• behaviour is fully controlled by unconscious processes
• function of our left-brain consciousness is simply to create narratives with the information it has in an attempt to make sense of the world
• free will is an illusion; our conscious mind does not directly control our behaviour, despite our intuition
• consciousness is just storytelling, and since storytelling relies on language, consciousness is only located in the left cerebral hemisphere of the human brain

Question 17

What did Rene Descartes conclude?

Answer 17

• questioning everything, doubting everything
• I think, therefore I am
• An evil demon cannot trick someone into thinking they exist if they don’t exist
• the act of thinking proved that an immaterial world exists

Question 18

What is mind-body dualism?

Answer 18

• contradiction between the deterministic laws of physics and our subjective experience of free will
• while the body may be a mechanical device and the world deterministic, the mind (or soul) is something else, something immaterial that exists outside the body

Question 19

What is the Cartesian impasse?

Answer 19

• paradox
• if the movement of all atoms can be well explained by the physical laws of nature, how can our immaterial souls control our material bodies

Question 20

What is the evolution of thought?

Answer 20

• Neural networks evolved to sense the internal and external world and to coordinate movements of the organism
• neural networks give rise to thoughts
• Thoughts do not produce preordained, automatic behavioural responses
• patterns of brain activity that are independent of any sensory input or motor output

Question 21

What is a deterministic world?

Answer 21

• all events, including human actions, are ultimately determined by causes that are independent (external) of free will
• everything is preordained, following a path determined by the laws of physics
• no inherent meaning

Question 22

Is the world deterministic?

Answer 22

• Our brains construct a world of ideas on top of the laws of nature, a world in which things have meaning
• world of ideas represents a distinct layer of our reality, a layer that harnesses (directs, constrains) the physical laws of nature, controlling how the world will play out
• thoughts have influence and power