What is consciousness?

Psychology B

Consciousness: what is consciousness?

Consciousness is an = area of psychology which has experienced a substantial increase in research interes= t in recent years, with major conferences being held on the subject and new theo= ries advanced. It is not a new area of study – psychologists and philosoph= ers have been interested in consciousness for several hundred years – but advances in neuroscience have opened up new routes for psychological investigation across cognitive psychology, including the area of consciousn= ess.

Before we go any fur= ther, perhaps we should consider what it is that we mean by consciousness. Workin= g in groups, try to answer the following questions:

·        What are y= ou ‘conscious’ of right now?

·        Did my ask= ing that question change what you were conscious of?

·        What do we= mean by ‘consciousness’?

·        What do we= mean when we say we felt ‘self-conscious’= or that we did something ‘unconsciously’?

·        Are there = times in our lives when we lose consciousness?

Different debates ex= ist as to what consciousness is, and theorists have defined different types of consciousness as a result, which we will return to later. Often, consciousn= ess may become intertwined with other psychological processes such as memory, perception and thinking – think about sensory memory, for example = 211; are you conscious of a smell, o= r is it a fleeting short term memory of a smell that you have just experienced? = Are you conscious of the clock on t= he wall, or has its ticking attracted your attention and caused you to look at= it and perceive it, and then to think about it? Braisby (2002) describes consciousness as the ‘raw feel or experience’ underpinning these phenomena – for example, the experience of ‘= what coffee is like’.

Historical overview of consciousness=

<= ![endif]>        &= nbsp;       I think, therefore I am

How true is this sta= tement? Is it our ability to ‘think’ which makes us human? How are our = mind and our brain related, if at all?

These questions have= been studied for centuries, as far back as ancient Greece and the philosopher Pl= ato, who proposed a theory of ‘dualism’ – of the mind separate from the physical brain. This idea was taken up by the 17^th cent= ury philosopher Descartes, who argued that the body could be reduced to its physical components, like a machine, while the mind, or soul, dealt with thinking, reasoning and moral decision making. This dualist viewpoint was opposed by monists, who argued that all aspects of the ‘mind’ c= an in principle be traced to physical states, that the mind is simply a proper= ty of the brain.

In modern psychology, questions of consciousness and the mind-brain debate were very much marginalised by the dominant Behaviourist school in the first part of the 2= 0^th century; latter developments in cognitive psychology and biological psychol= ogy from the 1960s onwards now suggest that the mind is an ‘emergent property’ of the brain, that brain activities give rise to mental sta= tes, but that these mental states are not simply the sum of brain activities, but are the result of an interaction between the mind and the brain. Sperry and= Gazzaniga (1987) argue that the conscious mind also i= nfluences the brain in directing and controlling behaviour.

Exercise

You are walking home= late at night through a residential area. You sense something moving behind you and think that you hear footsteps and heavy breathing.

How would you describe your ‘conscious’ state in this situation?

How might your brain/physiological system = and your conscious mind react to the situation and interact with each othe= r?

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Types of consciousness

Young and Block (You= ng, 1991, Young and Block 1996) identify four different types of consciousness:=

Access Consciousn= ess

Access consciousness= refers to awareness of one’s own mental processes, such as reasoning during a problem solving task. This can be measured using a technique known as ‘protocol analysis’, in which individuals are asked to ‘t= alk through’ the activity they are engaged in.

Try this example:

Working with a partn= er, explain the steps that you would go through to solve the following equation= :

Calculate the value = of x if a =3D 6, b =3D 3 and y =3D 4.

x =3D (a x b) –= ; b² + y

Hopefully, you were = able to solve the equation (the answer is 13) and you were consciously aware of the steps you were taking to do so!

Phenomenal Consci= ousness

Phenomenal conscious= ness refers to the consciousness of an ‘experience’ or a ‘feeling’ – such as the example we used earlier of ‘what is coffee like? Nagel (1974) argues that we can only describe t= his experience by actually having it – otherwise, all we are describing is information about ‘coffee’ which we could gain from other sourc= es, such as using a thermometer to test the temperature or looking to see if it= was milky or black. Nagel wrote a famous article on phenomenal consciousness entitled ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, arguing that if bats are conscious, there must be an experience of ‘b= eing a bat’ which only bats can have.

Can you think of any= other examples of phenomenal consciousness, of experiences that you have had which others could only share by repeating that activity?

Monitoring consci= ousness

Monitoring conscious= ness usually involves automatic processes – in fact, we often only notice = them when they go wrong, and we put the car keys in the fridge and pour orange j= uice on our cereal! These are explained by the use of automatic and controlled cognitive processes – for example, when you first start learning to drive, you must complete a lot of tiring controlled processes – check= the mirror, put the clutch down, change gear etc. Experienced drivers, however,= may feel that they do many of these things ‘automatically’ – = and may even feel that they have driven home on ‘autopilot’, without being consciously aware of it! Young and Block argue that the fact that we sometimes make mistakes during these processes, however, shows that consciousness is involved – in the form of ‘monitoring consciousness’.

Self consciousnes= s

Young and Block defi= ne self consciousness as an awareness of ourselves now, in the past and in the futu= re, and Braisby (2002) identifies a number of clini= cal examples where patients who have suffered a head injury or other trauma may have lost their ‘self consciousness’, such as HM, an elderly man who underwent an operation for epilepsy at the age of 25. HM’s operat= ion had serious side effects, which left him unable to form new long term memor= ies. As a result, HM believes that he is still 25, and that long-dead family and friends are still alive and well – his sense of ‘self’ was frozen at the time of the operation.

·        How would = you describe yourself?

·        What would= be the consequences of losing your sense of self?

·        Can you th= ink of other, more common, conditions where an individual’s sense of self mi= ght also become impaired?

Exercise

Write a brief accoun= t of your day so far. Working in pairs, go through each of your accounts and try= to identify how you have used the four different types of consciousness over t= he course of the day.