Consciousness

1. Consciousness A Hard Question

2. New Area for Psychology • Philosophers have long discussed consciousness. • Descartes: • Dualism—mind and brain are separate. • Materialism (physicalism) • Mind and brain are one. • Consciousness is part of what the brain does. • Scientists are now trying to explore consciousness empirically, seeing it as a product of the brain. • The debate: Will understanding how the brain works mean that we will understand consciousness?

3. Discuss These Questions • What does it mean to be conscious? • Is language required to be conscious? • How do we know if an organism is conscious? • Are humans the only species to experience consciousness? • Can a computer/robot ever be conscious? • What is consciousness?

4. The Difficulty for Scientists • Philosophers argue that consciousness is: • Private • Subjective • Peculiar to the individual • Cannot be directly observed by a 3rd person. • “What it’s like to be me.” • How can we study this if we cannot define it in operational terms?

5. Elements of Consciousness • The experience of consciousness cannot be shared (subjectivity). • Conscious experience is the product of processes that we cannot access (access to information). • Consciousness pulls together our various sensory experiences into one event (unitary experience). • We are aware of our consciousness (self-knowledge). • Our conscious experience is shaped by previous experience (intentionality).

6. Areas of Study • Perception without awareness (subliminal perception). • Brain-damaged individuals who have lost part of their consciousness: • Blindsight (not knowing that we perceived). • Anosognosia

7. Perception without Awareness

8. Perception without Awareness • Evidence: • Participants in many studies have been influenced by material flashed to quickly for conscious awareness • This influence is related to the meaning of the words.

9. Perception without Awareness • Suggests that many of our decisions may be influenced by tings that we are unaware of: • Freudian slips: • A play on words that may reveal a true desires Example: A college photography teacher was quite attracted to a handsome male student. She made an embarrassing slip by asking him to step in to the "bed" with her, when she was in fact asking him to step into the hall.

10. What does this Freudian slip suggest?

11. What was he thinking as he greeted the audience? We are unaware, i.e., unconscious, of the processes the create these slips.

12. Blindsight • Result of damage in the primary visual cortex/ • Individual has no sensation of light or colour from the corresponding areas of the visual field—they say they cannot see an object placed in that part of the field. • When asked to ‘guess’ where the object is they point quite accurately at rates well above chance. • Seems the brain gets some part of the visual information and guides behaviour even though they do not see the object. • To experience blindsight, try the demo at: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindsight.html

13. Anosognosia • Result of damage in the right hemisphere so that patient is paralyzed on left side of body. • Still believe that the useless limbs work perfectly well. • Seem to lack awareness of the paralysis when asked to use the limb.

14. What Can We Learn? • Conditions like blindsight and anosognosia suggest that there may be areas of the brain responsible for conscious awareness. • These conditions also tell us that there is no one area responsible for consciousness. • Neuroscientists, using imaging techniques are looking for patterns of neuronal firing that might lead us to find these areas.