Consciousness- Lecture 11

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

Definition: Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness or of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.

Question 2

James (1890)

Answer 2

Exploring consciousness is like “trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks”

Question 3

Access Consciousness

Answer 3

Information we use in thinking, speech or action
e.g. attention, priming, sleep
(fairly understood)

Question 4

Phenomenal consciousness

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

Dualism (Cartesian)

Answer 5

The physical world and subjective experience

>Mind and brain are two different entities that meet in the pineal gland

Question 6

Implicit assumption of dualism

Answer 6

Mind influences the brain
>non-physical entity affecting a physical entity
»has been criticised

Question 7

idealist solution to consciousness

Answer 7

Only things in our mind really exist, eliminating the need for the physical world to exist

Question 8

The behaviourist solution to consciousness

Answer 8

Extreme opposite to idealism

• Mental states do not exist
• Notion of consciousness is meaningless
• All reaction to environment with no internal subjective intuition

Question 9

The materialist solution

Answer 9

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)

Question 10

Consciousness and cognitive psychology

Answer 10

Studies complex processes:
-Thinking
-Attention
Focuses on access consciousness mostly
Often relies on participants phenomenal experience

Question 11

Change blindness

Answer 11

When a new object/stimulus is introduced into individuals visual field, however goes unnoticed unless attention is directed towards it

Question 12

Rensink et al. (1997)

Answer 12

CHANGE BLINDNESS
Spot the difference- with brief blank screen between
»>Focused attention is necessary to see change

Question 13

Simons and Chabris (1999)

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Posner (1980)

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Studies on Magic

Answer 15

Magic is misdirected attention

Question 16

Linking Attention to consciousness

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Subliminal Persuasion

Answer 17

Unconsciously persuading individuals to carry out a task

Subliminal messages- something that unconsciously may influence someone to act

Question 18

Vicary (1950s)

Answer 18

Can unconsciously influence someone to buy products:
>Flashing very short messages every 5s between something they are paying attention to
-e.g. drink coke

Question 19

McConell et al (1958)

Answer 19

No proof that subliminal advertising is effective despite claims in commercial world- ‘boosting sales’

Question 20

Moore (1996)

Answer 20

Evidence of subliminal persuasion in modern life:

Disney accused of inserted subliminal messages into films

Question 21

Subliminal Priming

Answer 21

Subliminal stimuli may influence our cognitive processes in the short term in the form of priming

Question 22

Bar and Biederman (1998)

Answer 22

Empirical evidence for subliminal priming

First demonstration of facilitatory visual recognition priming by unidentified pictures

Question 23

Dehaene et al (1998)

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Automaticity

Answer 24

Automated actions:
>fast
>require little attention
>unavailable to consciousness
>practice leads to automated actions

Question 25

Stroop effect

Answer 25

Meaning of words automatically processed- hard to inhibit as it is automatic

Question 26

Fournier et al (1995)

Answer 26

Children who are poor readers (less practice reading) experience less slowing down as they don’t have to inhibit the automatic response

Question 27

Norman and Shallice (1986)

Answer 27

Supervisory attentional system (SAS) controls allocation of attention and decides which process will become conscious
>SAS described as little human

Question 28

Homunculus problem

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Dennett (1991)

Answer 29

The Cartesian theatre- homunculus
>All processes come together in a single place
dualist trap

Question 30

Baars (2002)

Global Workspace theory

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

Issues with global workspace theory

Answer 31

> 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

Question 32

Consciousness and Materialism

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Chalmers (1996)

Answer 33

Consciousness and Zombies
Problems with materialism
Zombies> complete replica of human but without consciousness

Question 34

Consciousness as an illusion

Perceptual illusions

Answer 34

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

Question 35

Consciousness as an Illusion

Neuropsychological evidence

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Wegner (2003)

Answer 36

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

Question 37

Libet (1985)

Answer 37

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?