What is consciousness?
Awareness of both the external world (events around us) and the internal world (ourselves, thoughts, feelings, behaviors).
What is consciousness described as?
A stream of inner experience
Can the stream of consciousness shift?
Yes, it can flow from the present to the past or future.
Why is awareness vital?
Without awareness of internal and external experiences, being consciously human seems impossible.
Is consciousness simple or complex?
It is complex and dynamic.
In what states does consciousness take different forms?
Asleep, awake, focused, daydreaming, meditating, etc.
Why is consciousness difficult to study?
Because it is private—you cannot observe or directly experience another person’s consciousness.
What is one approach scientists use to study consciousness?
Asking people to introspect and describe their own conscious experiences.
inrospection
is a useful tool that takes advantage of humans remarkable ability to think about their own thinking, called metacognition. Introspection involves self report, however, it suffers from the same limitations as any self report measure.
A problem with introspection,
is that even if you could perfectly describe your conscious experiences, there is no guarantee that others would understand them the same way you do. Another problem is that, people often dont know what they are thinking.
Synesthesia:
in which people experience information from one sensory system as if it were coming through multiple scenes.
Inattentional Blindness
The failure to see something outside ones focus of attention
selective attention.
People can hold so many things in their awareness at any given time, so they tend to prioritize their awareness to whatever is relevant to their goals, to the exclusion of everything else, this state of heightened yet focused awareness
Change Blindness
When focused on a particular target, people also prioritize their attention toward certain aspects of target over others.
What is wandering awareness?
When your mind drifts away from the present moment and focuses on thoughts of the past, future, or unrelated ideas
Why is wandering awareness important?
It can help with creativity and problem-solving but may reduce focus on current tasks.
Mind-Body Problem
Central challenge in understanding consciousness, the question how the brain and consciousness are related
Dualism
Mind and body are separate entities - different quality or elements: the first to propose this concept was anaxogaras, arguing that plants, animals and humans are composed of nous (mind).
Materialism
Consciousness emerges from physical brain processes
Panpsychism:
Consciousness exists in all matter
Cartesian Dualism
the mind is non physical, non extended (takes up no space) Body: Physical and extended
Idealists
Mind is fundamental. Problem: why and how appears a consistent physical world
Neutral monists
Mental and physical are two different ways to represent the same reality, which is neutral. They say there is something out there and it can give rise to some mental things.
Materialist
Matter is fundamental, everything is matter. If everything is matter how would we account for consciousness?? The problem they have to answer is how can matter give rise to something that is clearly not matter
