Consciousness
You May Be Conscious at This Very Moment!
What the hell is consciousness?
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How would you define consciousness?
René Descartes
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The Cartesian Theater (Daniel Dennet)
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Unconscious Mind: what is not visible to the mind’s eye
Cogito Ergo Sum
“I think, therefore…?”
Phenomenology
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Most sciences study observable objects but…
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Consciousness is not an empirically observable object
Phenomenology: how things seem to the conscious person
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Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
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Phenomenological Epoche
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Where are you?
Problems with the Study of Consciousness
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Problem of Other Minds
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The fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others
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Philosopher’s zombie: looks, talks, acts conscious but ISN’T
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Even electrical monitors like “consciousness meters” only predict whether patients
will say after the fact that they WERE conscious
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Alan Turing?
In the Eye of the Beholder
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Where does the perception of other minds come from?
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Simply from the mind of the perceiver
People judge minds according to the capacity for
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(1) experience (e.g. the ability to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, consciousness, anger,
or fear) and…
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(2) the capacity for agency (self-control, planning, memory, or thought)
Mind/Body Problem
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Descartes said…what?
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Modern psychologists might say, “The mind is what the brain does.”
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Brain’s activities may actually PRECEDE the activities of the conscious mind
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Electrical activity starts roughly 300 milliseconds before conscious wishes are
registered and about 535 milliseconds before action occurs
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Consciousness: epiphenomenal?
Benjamin Libet
Consciousness: Basic Elements
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Intentionality
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Consciousness is always directed towards some object
Unity
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Consciousness is resistant to division
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Multitasking?
Franz Brentano
1838-1917
Consciousness: Basic Elements (2)
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Selectivity
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Capacity to include some objects and not others
Dichotic listening
Cocktail Party Phenomenon
Transience
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Tendency to change
Mind wanders from one “right now” to the next “right now” and then on to the next
Stream of consciousness
Immanuel Kant?
Working memory limitations
Different Levels of Consciousness
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Minimal Consciousness: consciousness that occurs when the mind inputs
sensations and may output behavior
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Self-Consciousness: when a person’s attention is drawn to the self as an object
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Tendency to notice shortcomings
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Mirrors increase self-consciousness
Full Consciousness: when you know and are able to report your mental state
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When you realize pain hurts, when you’re able to report or reflect upon your feelings
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Can animals achieve self-consciousness or full consciousness?
Conscious Contents
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How to accurately measure what comes to mind?
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Much of consciousness is directed towards immediate environment
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Have people report
Sample randomly
Anything else?
What is seen, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled
Otherwise: current concerns
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What you think about repeatedly
Your mental “to-do” list
Emotional?
Why do “Current Concerns” consume you?
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Daydreaming
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“a state of consciousness in which a seemingly purposeless flow of thoughts
comes to mind”
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Developmental/Evolutionary roots?
Isn’t It Ironic?
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Mental Control: the attempt to change conscious states of mind
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Thought Suppression: the conscious avoidance of a thought
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Don’t think of a polar bear!
Rebound effect of thought suppression: the tendency of a thought to return to
consciousness with greater frequency following suppression
Ironic Processes of Mental Control: ironic errors occur because the mental
process that monitors errors can itself produce them
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The process that monitors errors operates in the unconscious mind and stays alert
to signs of the thought that it wants to suppress
But this means that part of the mind is always ON the suppressed thought!
The Unconscious Mind
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Freudian Unconscious
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“Dynamic Unconscious”?
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Repression
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Inferable from consciousness
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Wishes, drives, rules
The Unconscious Mind (2)
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Cognitive Unconscious
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All the mental process that are not experienced by a person but that give rise to
the person’s thoughts, choices, emotions, and behavior
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Subliminal Perception
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Thoughts of getting old = slower movement?
Sleep and Dreaming!
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Altered State of Consciousness: a form of experience that departs
significantly from the normal subjective experience of the world and the
mind
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States of Sleep: (1) hypnagogic state; (2) hypnic jerk; (3) SLEEP!; (4)
hypnopompic state
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Circadian rhythm: naturally occurring 24-hour cycle
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Err…25.1 hour cycle?
Stages of Sleep
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Waking: Beta and Alpha waves (activity, relaxation)
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Stage 1: Theta Waves (more relaxed than Alpha Waves)
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Stage 2: Sleep Spindles, K Complexes
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Stage 3/4: Delta Waves (“slow-wave” sleep, hard to awaken)
REM Sleep
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Stage 5: REM Sleep
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A stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and a high level of brain
activity (similar to Beta Waves)
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Those awakened report having dreams more often than at other stages
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Signs of sexual arousal
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Wild dreams
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Dreams occur in “real time”
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Really?
REM Sleep
Sleep: Do You REALLY Need It? REALLY?
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Newborns sleep 6-8 times in 24 hours totaling more than 16 hours
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Typical 6-year-old needs 11-12 hours
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Adults need 7-7.5 hours a nigh
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Randy Gardner: record holder for most consecutive hours awake
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Sleep appears to be necessary for memory consolidation
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Rats last 21 days without sleep
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REM sleep deprivation leads to memory problems and excessive aggression
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REM rebound after a night of no sleep
Dreams
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Characteristics?
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1. Intensely emotional
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2. Illogical
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3. Sensation is fully formed and meaningful (especially visual, sometimes sound,
touch, movement)
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4. Uncritical Acceptance
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5. Difficulty of remembering dream afterwards
Theories of Dreams
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Hobson & McCarley’s “activation-synthesis model”
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Dreams are produced when the mind attempts to make sense of random neural
activity that occurs in the brain during sleep
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Mind continues to INTERPRET signals as if they were meaningful, even though
they’re not
Theories of Dreams (2)
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Freud!
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The Dreams of Children
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Manifest/Latent Contents
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Daily Residues
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Rules: Condensation (combination), Displacement (emotional significance
separated from true object), Visualization, Secondary Revision
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Nightmares?
Other Altered States of Consciousness
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Drug Use
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Hypnotism
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Meditation