Lecture 3 Flashcards
The mind body problem: Dualism
At what age does this happen
What do religions say?
Is the most prominent view in the world
Most people are dualists
At 4-5 kids start dividing things into mental and physical things
Major religions are almost all dualist eg spirit
Cartesian dualism
Mind is made of non physical, non extended space
Body is physical and extended
The problem with dualism
How does mind and body interact?
This problem is so hard, most people give up with dualism
Why is consciousness often neglected in psychology (2 reasons)
Neglected by behaviorism and cognition because
1 - it is hard to study with psychological methods
2 - Once we understand cognitive processes, the mystery of consciousness might explain itself
Idealists (monists?)
What is the issue with this?
posit that the mind is fundamental. The issue with this is that a consistent physical world emerges. How and why is the mind is so fundamental?
“the mind is fundamental. It creates the physical world and thus, matter”
Dr. Boyles stroke changed her reality - dpes that mean her mind created it?
Neutral monists
mental and physical are two different ways to represent the same reality, which is neutral (not physical or mental)
“there is only one reality, neither physical nor mental. Mind and matter are just two ways to represent that one reality.
Materialists
most popular among scientists
Matter is fundamental
“the mind is an illusion, there is only brain”
Materialism - the hard problem
How to account for consciousness?
Most scientists dont and work on easier problems like perception
Massimo Pigliucci
The hard problem is an illusion because consciousness is an illusion
Will there be something left when easy problems are solved?
Patricia Churchland
It is impossible to decide in advance what is a hard and what is an easy problem. Will there be something left when all the easy problems are understood?
The problems with non-dualism (2 things)
Placebo - we believe in a treatment and we get better. Why?
Very hard to explain
Optical illusions
We SEE movement but it isnt moving. Does this imply a disconnect between matter and mind?
Dualism - interactionalist
Mind influences the body and vice versa
Dualism - epiphenomenalism
Brain gives rise to mind. There isnt any interaction, the brain can influence the mind as it creates it but the mind cannot influence the brain
Psychophysical parallelism
Mind and body are perfectly aligned
The world is perfectly set up fot this
2 sides of the same coin
How? Often invoke God - God informs the mind every time something happens to the body. Not really contemplated in science
What is it like to be a bat?
We have no idea!
Thomas Nagel
Paper on experience of a
What is it like to be a bat
Can we ever know what it is like?
Nagel argues this is impossible because consciousness is subjective and privately experienced (phenomenality)
Reductionists argue that careful understanding of the bats brain and perceptual system would make it possible to understand what a bats experience is like
Tracey thought experiment
People vary on their ability to discriminate colours. Tracey, in an experiment, discovered she can see a colour no one else can see.
Stacey can see red1 and red 2. We only see red1
She tried to teach people about red2 but she learned everyone else was red2 colorblind. And so she just uses the term red
Red1 and red2 are not different shades of red. They are as different for tracey as blue and yellow to us
Nonscientific experiments show traceys optical system can separate two wavelengths of light in the red spectrum as clearly as we do yellow and blue
What kind of experience does Tracey have when she sees red2 and red1?
No amount of physical information about traceys optical system will answer this
Even if we modified our brains so we could see red2, we would not know if out experience was the same as hers
It follows that reductionism cannot discover everything, something is left out
How can we think of consciousness (two ideas for ways to study it)
What is it?
We have two options to investigate this.
Use consciousness itself to investigate itself
Take ourselves out of the thing we wish to study
As neuroscientists, we have to explain how the electrical firing of millions of neurons produces private, subjective, conscious experience.
This leads directly into the bloody mind-body problem!!!
The mind-body problem
In human experiences there arte two things that cannot be brought together
1) our private experiences
2) the physical world
The physical world is in fact assumed to exist and we share it with others (whom we assume see it the same way)
Our own experience is inner and private and cannot be shared with anybody
The hard problem (David Chalmers)
The hard problem is to explain how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience.
It is the modern version of the mind-body problem.
There is an EXPLANATORY GAP between the material brain and the subjective world experience
In contrast to the hard problem, there are easy problems, according to Chalmers.
The easy problems are like perception etc
Some claim ther eis no hard problem as the mind does not exist. Some claim there will be nothing left when all the easy problems are solved
Qualia
The content of conscious experiences
Philosophers use qualias (singular quale) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal, private aspects of our mental lives
these have an ineffably subjective quality eg
the redness of red
indescribable smell of turpentine
Some philosophers however claim they dont exist at all (like always, if there is no consciousness or conscious experiences, this is why)
how is understanding done?
Edgar Allen Poe
understanding is done by mimicking.
When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.
facial expressions to understand someone elses expereince
If you see a facial expression and it creates a visual percept there is activation of the sensorimotor system as the brain begins to prepare you to do this expression. You do not need to make the expression, simply making the pattern is enough
Making that pattern evokes the inner state we would experience were we to make that facial expression on our own, normally
Hence we generate an experience in ourselves by imitating what we saw in someone else and this leads to understanding their experience
A reductionist approach would not be able to do this
Experiment to test:
impairing simulation with facial gel mask
Participants divided into 2 groups
each to be shown images of a face, whos expression conveys a blend of angry and sad emotions on a spectrum of 100% angry to 100% sad and at rations in between eg angry:sad 90:10.The same thing done with an image of horse:cow
They were then shown:
(a) a faxation point for 1000ms
(b) a target face or animal to remember for 750ms
(c) a mask
(d) a distraction (another face or animal) and the face again
And asked to say which face they saw
One group was given a gel face mask, preventing the face from moving readily, the other was not.
The hypothesis was that the performance with remembering the the facial expressions would be inhibited because we use the sociomotor system to mimic and then experience this as a part of how we deal with facial expressions and emotions. Since we do not do this with animals, this would be unaffected
RESULTS
FACES remembered with gel were always worse than control
ANIMALS there was no effect of the gel masks
Conclusion: this provides evidence that in order to understand what someones feeling we generate a motor pattern that would make that face, which evokes an inner state. Then we know what others feel. Simulation allows understanding of the other.
How can one understand the inner reality of someone else…
A theory
by simulating, making yourself experience their inner states
Is there an agreed upon definition of consciousness?
No
Materialist perspective on consciousness
Consciousness is identical to the processes we can observe in the brain. Solving the easy problems will allow us to understand consciousness in the end. Consciousness is not an added something to these processes.
Perspective: Consciousness is an illusion
and does not exist. Kind of like the interpreter hypothesis
Perspective: Consciousness does exist and is an added quality to humans
and we have to understand the purpose of it - what does it allow us to do
Some parallels to functionism
Panpsychism (3 ideas)
Extreme: all particles in the universe have some form of experience. Thus consciousness pervades the entire world
Moderate: Every system of sufficient complexity is conscious to some degree. This is not the same as being intelligent but pertains to the idea of sentience
Varela & Maturana: wherever there is life there is consciousness. The related gia theory argues the Earth is alive and thus conscious
The integrated information theory
Tonani
All systems that integrate information have some level of consciousness
The more information integrated, the higher the systems level of consciousness
You can calculate a score (Phi) for the amount of info integrated. High Phi (like humans) are more conscious than low Phi (ants).
Ethical ramifications. DNA and AI are both conscious as they integrate information
Defining consciousness Oxford Dictionary (3)
Attempts at defining consciousness (Oxford Dictionary 5th edition)
‣The state or faculty, or a particular state, of being aware of one’s thought, feelings, actions, etc
‣The totality of the thoughts, feelings, impressions, etc., of a personor group; such a body of thoughts etc relating to a particular sphere; a collective awareness of sense.
‣The state of having the mental faculties awake and active; the waking state.
William James on consciousness
believes it flows and thus cannot be broken down and studied as the broken down thing would not be consciousness
Unconsciousness
Many mental processes occur without conscious input
eg if you are thrown a tennis ball or tomato, you will unconsciously adjust the way you catch it (pressure etc) without thinking
Unconsciousness Freuds evidence
Though one cannot report their unconscious, you can find evidence for its existence
Verbal slips
dreams
rohrschach tests
Free will as an afterthought
interpreter theory
to explain why you did something that you did without conscious thought
Free will and Christianity
May be considered an artifact of christian philosophy. If God created Adam and Eve and they did as He designed, why did they have to leave Eden?
St Augustine decided this was because God gave them free will and they misused it
Buddhism and the east often assume the self is an illusion
What is the self - William James
Divided it into an I and a ME
The I: an experiencing core where there is an awareness and our qualia can be experienced when we are conscious. The experiencing self. This is the part we are experiencing but cannot communicate to others
The ME: a narrative character, something that can be perceived and talked about such as body, character, beliefs, attitudes. When people refer to us, the are referring to the me. This is the part we can show to others but not the part we are experiencing
Self-Awareness
Definition
What does an organism become aware of?
What word might a self-aware organism use to describe things it is directly experiencing?
refers to the capacity to become the object of one’s own awareness. Instead of focusing on external environment, we focus on the internal one. It is a reflective observer, processing self-information
An organism becomes aware that it is awake and actually experiencing specific mental events, emitting behaviors and possessing unique characteristics.
Unsure if it is only humans that can do this
An entity doing this might use the word “I”
Experiment to show human development of the self
The rouge test
Mark kid on head and put in front of a mirror
Under 18 months, looks around for the other person he believes the reflection to be
Over 18 months, gets it and expresses that there is red on his head
Self-Awareness: What is the self?
Dynamic self
West vs east on self
The center of narrative gravity - it is the center of experience (I) but also, this is situated in an ongoing narrative (me)
The dynamic self - the self is a concept, it is not stable but constructed, generated and dynamic. This is the Me. It is the narrative story we make about ourselves, our qualities, who we are in terms of preferences and behaviours. It is totally constructed and there is no “self center” in the mind
Buddhists think the self is an illusion. Westerners think that even if it is a construct it is useful
Materialist view of the self
The “default mode network” in the medial prefrontal cortex and post cingulate cortex is the ares from which the self arises
Some animals pass the rouge test
Great apes, dolphins and elephants
Levels of consciousness
Levels of alertness or responsiveness are associated with pasterns of electrical activity in the brain
EEG
Electroencephalogram - EEG - detects electrical activity in the cortex (not deep)
EOG
EMG
Electrooculogram - eye movements
Electromyogram muscle tenstion
Hypnogram =
EEG+EOG+EMG
Beta waves
15-30 Hz
awake, normal alertness
Alpha waves
9-15 Hz
Physically and mentally relaxed
Awake but drowsy
Maybe going to sleep
Delta waves
Below 4 Hz
Deep, dreamless sleep
Theta waves
4-8Hz Reduced consciousness
dreams, light sleep, REM, meditation
Gamma
30 Hz and up
Alertness (maybe fear)
How much sleep do people need?
Between 6 and 8 hours
those with DEC2 mutation are fine with 6 hours
College students, 9
What does sleep do?
A restorative function - sleep deprivation can kill and is associated with cognitive impairment such as Az
Maybe:
Memory consolidation
Forgetting
(or both)
might allow you to process the real world and come up with insight based solutions
Circadian rhythm
How long
what regulates it?
Occurs across a 24 hour period
Regulated by neurons ion hypothalamus. releases melatonin to control
Nucleus in hypothalamus that is most critical is the suprachiasmic Nucleus (SNC)
Disruptions such as jet lag cause health issues
How is sleep organised (retina)
There is a ganglion (pRGC) which is excited by blue light 470-480 nm
Fires more when eye gets this
pRNC does…
Goes to central SCN in hypothalamus to help regulate the sleep wake cycle
Changes behavior (prepare for waking things)
Goes to olivary protectal nucleus which regulates pupil contraction. This allows eye to adapt to the time of day in terms of how much light to let in
Via input to the SCN influences melatonin secretion
Blue light
Can keep you awake at night due to the pRNC
