Consciousness
Chapter 1: Consciousness
What is consciousness?:
• The awareness of our internal and external environments is an ever-changing array of thoughts, feelings and sensations known as consciousness.
• Your consciousness consists of all the thoughts, feelings and memories you are aware of at any given moment. It is easy to manipulate.
• Consciousness is personal because it consists of your understanding of the world around you.
• Consciousness is selective because you pay attention to something's in the environment and ignore others.
• Consciousness is continuous because its contents are blended into one another with no specific beginning or end.
• Finally, consciousness is changing, as your thoughts are constantly moving from topic to topic.
• Sometimes consciousness is filled with internal thoughts and feelings while at other times it is external sensations.
• Something that cannot be seen and is unique to everyone is difficult to conceptualize; however, people have not stopped theorizing about consciousness.
• Descartes is one of the most well-known people to of theorized about consciousness. He wanted to see if anything could be said to exist certainty.
• Descartes had the conclusion that the only thing he could be sure of was that he existed (cogito ergo sum- I think therefore I am). He described himself as a 'thinking thing'.
• He was the first philosopher to clearly link the mind with consciousness and identify it as a non-physical thing separate from the brain (Descartes, 1641).
• This resulted in a school of thought know as dualism, this school of thought hosts a variety of views about the relationship between mind and matter.
• Dualism claims that mental phenomena such as consciousness are in some respects non-physical.
• William James (1842-1910) adopted the philosophy of dualism as the underpinning of psychology.
• He thought that the most appropriate way to define human consciousness was to compare it to a stream, this is because similar
What is consciousness?:
• The awareness of our internal and external environments is an ever-changing array of thoughts, feelings and sensations known as consciousness.
• Your consciousness consists of all the thoughts, feelings and memories you are aware of at any given moment. It is easy to manipulate.
• Consciousness is personal because it consists of your understanding of the world around you.
• Consciousness is selective because you pay attention to something's in the environment and ignore others.
• Consciousness is continuous because its contents are blended into one another with no specific beginning or end.
• Finally, consciousness is changing, as your thoughts are constantly moving from topic to topic.
• Sometimes consciousness is filled with internal thoughts and feelings while at other times it is external sensations.
• Something that cannot be seen and is unique to everyone is difficult to conceptualize; however, people have not stopped theorizing about consciousness.
• Descartes is one of the most well-known people to of theorized about consciousness. He wanted to see if anything could be said to exist certainty.
• Descartes had the conclusion that the only thing he could be sure of was that he existed (cogito ergo sum- I think therefore I am). He described himself as a 'thinking thing'.
• He was the first philosopher to clearly link the mind with consciousness and identify it as a non-physical thing separate from the brain (Descartes, 1641).
• This resulted in a school of thought know as dualism, this school of thought hosts a variety of views about the relationship between mind and matter.
• Dualism claims that mental phenomena such as consciousness are in some respects non-physical.
• William James (1842-1910) adopted the philosophy of dualism as the underpinning of psychology.
• He thought that the most appropriate way to define human consciousness was to compare it to a stream, this is because similar