14.3 Conscious And Unconscious Flashcards
The most widespread view among nonscientists is ____, the belief that the mind and body are different kinds of substance that exist independently.
dualism
Biological explanations of behaviour raise the ____ or ____ problem. What is the relationship between the mind and the brain?
mind-body or mind-brain
French philosopher Renee Descartes defended dualism but recognised the vexing issue of how a mind that is not made of ____ could influence the physical brain.
material
Descartes proposed that mind and brain interact at a single point in space, which he suggested it was the ____ ____, the smallest unpaired structure he could find in the brain.
pineal gland
Nearly all current philosophers and neuroscientists ____ Dualism.
reject
The decisive objection is that dualism conflicts with one of the cornerstones of physics, known as the law of ____ of ____ and ____:
conservation of matter and energy
So far as we can tell, the total amount of matter and energy in the universe has been fixed since the Big Bang that originated it all. Mater can transform into energy or energy into matter, but neither one emerges from ____ or disappears into ____.
nothing
Because matter alters its course only when other matter or energy act upon it, a mind that is not composed of ____ or ____ could not make anything happen, including muscle movements.
matter or energy
The alternative to dualism is ____, the belief that the universe consists of only one kind of substance.
monism
_____ : the view that everything that exists is material, or physical.
Materialism
_____,: the view that only the mind really exists and at the physical world could not exist unless some mind were aware of it.
Mentalism
____ ____ : the view that mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing, described in different teams.
Identity position
The identity position does not say that the mind is the brain. It says that the mind is ____ ____. Mental activity is what happens in the brain.
brain activity
The identity position also does not say brain activity “____ ____”. Brain activity does not cause consciousness any more than consciousness causes brain activity. Each is the same as the other.
causes consciousness
David ____ (1995) distinguish between what he calls the easy problems and a handful of consciousness.
Chalmers
The ____ ____ pertain to such questions as the difference between wakefulness and sleep and what brain activity occurs during consciousness.
easy problems
In contrast, the ____ ____ concerns why consciousness exists at all.
hard problem
If a cooperative person reports awareness of one stimulus and not another, then he or she was ____ of the first and not the second.
conscious
Using this definition, the next step is to present a given stimulus under the two ____. In one condition we expect the observer to be conscious of it, and in the other condition we expect the observer to be unconscious of it.
conditions
In both cases the stimulus excites receptors that send a message to the brain, but once the message reaches the brain presumably something different happens for conscious vs. unconscious ____.
processing
Many studies use ____: a brief visual stimulus is preceded and followed by longer interfering stimuli.
masking
In many cases, just the latter stimulus is presented, in which case it is called ____ ____.
backward masking
Hey conscious stimulus also ____ responses for neurons in various brain areas.
synchronises
When you see something and recognise it, it evokes activity precisely synchronised in several brain areas, in the frequency of about 30-50 Hz (cycles per second), known as ____ ____.
gamma waves
One consequence of synchronised action potentials is that the synaptic imports arrive simultaneously at their target cells, producing ____ ____.
maximal summation
Overall, the data imply that consciousness of a stimulus depends on the amount and spread of ____ ____.
brain activity
Conscious stimuli also produce more consistent responses from one trial to another than do similar but ____ stimuli.
unconscious
Becoming ____ of something means that it’s information takes over more of your brain activity.
conscious
If a meaningful stimulus catches your attention faster than a meaningless stimulus, somehow your brain had to know it was meaningful before it became conscious! The conclusion is that much of brain activity is unconscious, and even unconscious activity can influence ____.
behaviour
