Consciousness- Lecture 11 Flashcards
What is consciousness?
Definition: Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.
James (1890)
Exploring consciousness is like “trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks”
Access Consciousness
Information we use in thinking, speech or action
e.g. attention, priming, sleep
(fairly understood)
Phenomenal consciousness
Subjective in nature- experiential properties of a state
e.g. when we hear, see, smell, taste things
It is what these feel like to you
(majorly difficult to explain)
Dualism (Cartesian)
The physical world and subjective experience
>Mind and brain are two different entities that meet in the pineal gland
Implicit assumption of dualism
Mind influences the brain
>non-physical entity affecting a physical entity
»has been criticised
idealist solution to consciousness
Only things in our mind really exist, eliminating the need for the physical world to exist
The behaviourist solution to consciousness
Extreme opposite to idealism
- Mental states do not exist
- Notion of consciousness is meaningless
- All reaction to environment with no internal subjective intuition
The materialist solution
Mental states are equivalent to brain states
-mind and consciousness are by-products of material processes (the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system)
Consciousness and cognitive psychology
Studies complex processes: -Thinking -Attention Focuses on access consciousness mostly Often relies on participants phenomenal experience
Change blindness
When a new object/stimulus is introduced into individuals visual field, however goes unnoticed unless attention is directed towards it
Rensink et al. (1997)
CHANGE BLINDNESS
Spot the difference- with brief blank screen between
»>Focused attention is necessary to see change
Simons and Chabris (1999)
In-attentional Blindness
Due to involvement of other attentional resources, we may miss obvious events
>e.g., in a crowded film theatre, we miss friends waving at us
Posner (1980)
Spotlight attention
Supports in-attentional blindness- we have selective attention, where a small amount of info from environment is processes and limited amount outside of this is processed
Studies on Magic
Magic is misdirected attention
Linking Attention to consciousness
Where attention is not focused, is our unconscious and when attention is permitted is our conscious
Consciously carrying out something –> we have diverted our attention to it
Subliminal Persuasion
Unconsciously persuading individuals to carry out a task
Subliminal messages- something that unconsciously may influence someone to act
Vicary (1950s)
Can unconsciously influence someone to buy products:
>Flashing very short messages every 5s between something they are paying attention to
-e.g. drink coke
McConell et al (1958)
No proof that subliminal advertising is effective despite claims in commercial world- ‘boosting sales’
Moore (1996)
Evidence of subliminal persuasion in modern life:
Disney accused of inserted subliminal messages into films
Subliminal Priming
Subliminal stimuli may influence our cognitive processes in the short term in the form of priming
Bar and Biederman (1998)
Empirical evidence for subliminal priming
First demonstration of facilitatory visual recognition priming by unidentified pictures
Dehaene et al (1998)
Ptps had to identify if the target digit > or < 5
-Presented with another priming digit (in letters) briefly shown before
Participants were faster when the subliminal and target digits were congruent
Automaticity
Automated actions: >fast >require little attention >unavailable to consciousness >practice leads to automated actions
Stroop effect
Meaning of words automatically processed- hard to inhibit as it is automatic
Fournier et al (1995)
Children who are poor readers (less practice reading) experience less slowing down as they don’t have to inhibit the automatic response
Norman and Shallice (1986)
Supervisory attentional system (SAS) controls allocation of attention and decides which process will become conscious
>SAS described as little human
Homunculus problem
SAS like a little human allocating resources and bringing things into consciousness within our brain
>but this would surely also have conscious processes and shifting of attentional resources
>This creates an infinite regress- what controls the homunculus
Dennett (1991)
The Cartesian theatre- homunculus
>All processes come together in a single place
dualist trap
Baars (2002)
Global Workspace theory
- Consciousness represents a general availability in our mind that involves the subsystems to carry out different cognitive processes.
- A network of subsystems (cog. processes) that are all available to each other.
- Cognitive content is globally available for diverse cognitive processes including attention, evaluation, memory, and verbal report
Issues with global workspace theory
> Unclear why broadcasted processes become conscious and others don’t
Theory describes info processing associated with consciousness but doesn’t answer Q of nature and function of consciousness
Consciousness and Materialism
Modern view of of equating the mind with physical brain processes- cognitive processes are explained, by physical processes of our brain
BY PRODUCT
STILL have problem of conscious subjective experience
Chalmers (1996)
Consciousness and Zombies
Problems with materialism
Zombies> complete replica of human but without consciousness
Consciousness as an illusion
Perceptual illusions
Some visual stimuli appear to our consciousness as existing in one form, but in fact exist in another
Consciousness not always directly what we percieve
Consciousness as an Illusion
Neuropsychological evidence
patients with damage to right side of brain> cannot see left side of scene: NEGLECT
Do not realise, and so their conscious perception of the world is also an illusion to them
Wegner (2003)
We think our thoughts influence our actions
>just an illusion created in out brain
Initiation of the thought about an action is simultaneous to the brain planning an action
>Once we commit the action, we assume that our thoughts drove us to do so
Headphones and confederate gently forces action
Libet (1985)
Free will experiment
>Ptp told to move hand when they want whilst watching a clock hand rotating
>Then report position of clock hand when they decided to act
>Brain activity actually began before they ptp is aware of their intention to act
NO FREE WILL?
