Chapter 5: Consciousness Flashcards
Consciousness
A person’s inner experience.
A person’s subjective experience of the world and of the mind.
Experience.
Phenomenology
Psychologists hope to understand the subjective experience of people, to understand what it is like to human.
How things seem to the conscious person.
Problem of other minds
Difficulty in perceiving the consciousness of others.
We can’t tell if someone is consciousness are not easily.
Not able to know if someone is experience an inner experience.
No way to tell if someone’s experience is anything like mine.
We assume that other’s minds, inner experiences are similar to their own, but we can’t tell if that is true.
Problem of other minds: Agency
People judge how other’s consciousness (inner experience) is like based on agency and experience.
Agency: The ability of self-control, planning, memory, or thought.
Problem of other minds: Experience
Experience: The ability to to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, anger, fear, awareness.
Mind-body problem
The mystery (issue) of how the mind is related to the brain and body.
- René Descartes proposed that the human body is physical matter and human mind is seperate of thinking matter.
- Psychologists assume that thinking causes neural activity in the brain.
- Some studies show that brain activities happen before the activities of the conscious mind.
Artificial Intelligence
The study and use of of machines that can independently operate in ways that mimic human intelligence and interactions.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Intentionality
Intentionality: Consciousness is focused on one object (a small part) of all the information that is going on around us (sights, sounds, feelings etc).
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Unity
Unity: Consciousness integrates information from all of the body’s senses (of all different stimuli) into one coherent whole.
Puts all the enormous amount of information into one unified consciousness/ experience.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity
Consciousness filters out information and tunes into other information.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity: Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening: People wearing headphones hear different messages in each ear.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Selectivity: Cocktail-party phenomenon
Cocktail-party phenomenon: People tuning into one message (conversation) while filtering out others nearby.
Consciousness: Four Basic Properties: Transcience
Transcience: The tendency for consciousness to change from one “right now” to the next: A constantly changing stream of consciousness since humans can hold only to a limited amount of information at the same time consciously, so when we select more information, some of what is currently there must disappear.
Out focus of attention keeps changing.
Levels of Consciousness: Minimal consciousness
Minimal consciousness: A low-level of sensory awareness and responsiveness to it, the mind inputs sensory information and may output behaviour.
The mind registers that sensory information (like a poke), and may respond by a behaviour, but the person may not be aware of having had that experience.
Levels of Consciousness: Full consciousness
Full consciousness: Being aware of experiencing an experience. Being able to report one’s own particular mental state.
Levels of Consciousness: Self-consciousness
Self-consciousness: Specific level of consciousness in which a person’s attention is seeing oneself as an object.
Coma
Seem completely unaware.
Vegetative state
No evidence exists that patients are aware of themselves of their surroundings, although they may appear “awake” through their actions (which are random).
Locked-in syndrome
A rare condition in which patients are fully aware but not able to demonstrate it because they cannot voluntarily move their muscles.
10 to 40 people who are deemed to not be conscious (in a vegetative state) turn out to be conscious in some degree.
Experience-sampling/ Ecological momentary assessment (EMA)
Technique to learn what is one people’s minds by asking them by asking people to report on their conscious experiences at specific times.
Experience-sampling is increasingly being used to study what it is like to be human by focusing on a range of different aspects of conscious experiences. (Ex. Asking when someone feels bored during the day, to understand what activities make people the most bored).
Daydreaming
A state of consciousness where a purposeless flow of thoughts come to mind.
Being in a daydreaming state (when someone isn’t down a mental activity) shows activity in the default network.
Mental control
Attempt to change one’s conscious state of mind to another.
Thought suppression
Trying to avoid a thought in one’s mind.
Rebound effect of thought suppression
The tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency after trying to suppress it.
Ironic process of mental control:
A mental process that causes errors that one is trying not to make happen because thinking of avoiding these errors actually causes them.
Focusing on not wanting something to happen causes it to happen.
Dynamic unconscious
Freud’s view that the subconscious mind is a system that stores all memories, a person’s deep desires, animalistic desires, and a person’s inner struggle to control them.
Repression
The unconscious is controlled, “held back” from expressing itself by the something Freud called the repression: A mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts and memories from consciousness and keeps them in the unconscious.