Quiz 4 - Consciousness Flashcards
Meanings of Consciousness
Awake - not asleep
Conscious of something - awareness of oncoming car - we are aware of much less than we think
Conscious of self - Descarte’s “I think therefore I am” - awareness of what is doing the action or having the experience
Creature vs mental state consciousness
Creature consciousness - creature has ability to have mental state consciousness - whether or not such creature is conscious at any given moment
mental state consciousness - whether some particular mental state is conscious or not
Automatization of Consciousness
As we get better at something it becomes automated - we can think about other things while doing it ie driving
We become less conscious of the activity
It gets so fast that thinking about it causes you to make a mistake
Babies may be more conscious than thought as they haven’t habituated anything
Consciousness is not the main event
Much of brain function is not or does not require consciousness
AI can do a lot of things without consciousness
We don’t know a lot about it
Possibly the rest of the brain is conscious but not available to ‘us’
We see this in split brain patients
Like an iceberg only a small part of the mind is available to reflect/control consciousness
We can only be conscious of a limited number of things at once
Relying on memory to tell us we were conscious
Intuition
We perceive, decide, believe something without notion of how the idea came about
Can be caused by automation
We have genetic and learned intuitions
We cannot tell the difference
When can we trust instincts
Old brain processes are mostly impenetrable
Consciousness and free will
Time lapse exists between conscious decisions and actual doing of it
Gap in time - mind thought of it after doing it
Qualia
The ‘qualities’ of consciousness ‘what it is like’ to see, hear, taste, etc. ie Quale (plural of qualia) what the colour red looks like or what pain feels like
Philosophy debates whether qualia are reducible to physical processes and states ie seeing something in person vs reading about it
Consciousness disorders
Blind sight - one eye does not process sight
Hemisphere neglect - deficit of awareness of one side of space
Severed corpus colosseum - split brain (epileptic surgery)
Thought Alienation - belief of thoughts in head are not your own
Brain Function
Left brain controls right side of body, right side of sight
Right brain controls left side of body, left side of sight
Language is on left side of brain
Zombie philosophy
What mental processes need consciousness?
Zombie - not conscious but acting
Behavioural zombie - behaves like human
Neurological zombie - behaviour zombie brain is not human
If zombies real - maybe dualism is correct
Dualism is the belief there is some kind of mental substance that is not physical
Higher order thought model
A class of consciousness theories are functional
They claim things are conscious when involved with abstract or high level belief
Self in-state happy
They have problems with qualia
Baar’s global workspace model
Consciousness highlights certain parts of memory that are viewable by other parts of brain
Information available to many parts of brain at once - metaphor email to all vs to an individual
Dennett’s multiple drafts model
There are multiple processes in the mind tht interpret things like multiple drafts of the same story
They compete for control over other parts of your mind
There is no set point at which something becomes conscious
Integrated information theory
A bunch of elements in a state or out of state ie on or off
They can change each other - integration
Such a thing will be conscious
Your own brain might have more than one - or one that changes size
New take on automatic driving
Capacity of system to integrate information = consciousness
Pure conscious - could but might do or not - meditation
