Consciousness: Encyclopedia II - Consciousness - Philosophical approaches

Consciousness - Philosophical approaches

Some philosophers suggest that consciousness resists or even defies definition. Others believe it can be usefully distinguished between phenomenal consciousness and access or psychological consciousness, while still others disagree. There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including: behaviorism, dualism, idealism, functionalism, phenomenalism, physicalism, emergentism, and mysticism. John Locke's chapter XXVII "On Identity and Diversity" in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) has been said to be one of the first modern conceptualization of consciousness as the repeated self-identification of one-self, through which moral responsibility could be attributed to the subject.

Consciousness - Phenomenal and access consciousness

Philosophers call our current experience phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness), as contrasted with access consciousness (A-consciousness). Phenomenal consciousness is simply experience, it is moving, coloured forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the center. These experiences, considered independently of any impact on behavior, are called qualia. The hard problem of consciousness was formulated by Chalmers in 1996, dealing with the issue of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its neurological basis" (Block 2004). Daniel Dennett(1988) suggests that what people think of as qualia are judgements and consequent behaviour. He extends this analysis (Dennett (1996)) by arguing that phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of access consciousness, denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem."

Access consciousness is the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So, when we perceive, information about what we perceive is often access conscious; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember, information about the past (e.g., something that we learned) is often access conscious; and so on. Chalmers thinks that access consciousness is less mysterious than phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of consciousness. Dennett disagrees, asserting that the totality of consciousness can be understood in terms of impact on behavior, as studied through heterophenomenology.

Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as subconscious events.

Consciousness - The description and location of phenomenal consciousness

Although it is the conventional wisdom that consciousness cannot be defined, philosophers have been describing phenomenal consciousness for centuries. Rene Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in the seventeenth century, containing extensive descriptions of what it is to be conscious. Descartes described conscious experience as imaginings and perceptions laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point. Each thing appears as a result of some quality (qualia) such as colour, smell, etc. Other philosophers, such as Nicholas Malebranche, John Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, also agreed with much of this description, although some avoid mentioning the viewing point. The extension of things in time was considered in more detail by Kant and James. Kant wrote that "only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times (successively)." William James stressed the extension of experience in time and said that time is "the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible." These philosophers also go on to describe dreams, thoughts, emotions, etc.

When we look around a room or have a dream, things are laid out in space and time and viewed as if from a point. However, when philosophers and scientists consider the location of the form and contents of this phenomenal consciousness, there are fierce disagreements. As an example, Descartes proposed that the contents are brain activity seen by a non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans), which he identified as the soul. This idea is known as Cartesian Dualism. Another example is found in the work of Thomas Reid who thought the contents of consciousness are the world itself, which becomes conscious experience in some way. This concept is a type of Direct realism. The precise physical substrate of conscious experience in the world, such as photons, quantum fields, etc. is usually not specified.

Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of consciousness are an aspect of minds and do not involve matter at all. This is a type of Idealism. Yet others, such as Leibniz, have considered that each point in the universe is endowed with conscious content. This is a form of Panpsychism. Panpsychism is the belief that all matter, including rocks for example, is sentient or conscious. The concept of the things in conscious experience being impressions in the brain is a type of representationalism, and representationalism can be a form of indirect realism.

Some philosophers, such as David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett, believe that qualia exist in terms of judgements or beliefs about things in the world, and are therefore meaningless when separated from behavior, while other philosophers insist that qualia cannot be understood in terms of belief. Dennett believes that "ineffable, intrinsic, private" qualia do not exist (Dennett 1988). However, Dennett does not believe that we lack conscious, phenomenal experience.

It is sometimes held that consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain processing. The general label 'emergence' applies to new phenomena that emerge from a physical basis without the connection between the two explicitly specified.

Some theorists hold that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap. Colin McGinn believes that the problem cannot be solved, and Chalmers criticizes purely physical accounts of mental experiences based on the idea that philosophical zombies are logically possible and supports property dualism. But others have proposed scientific theories to explain the explanatory gap, such as Quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness, and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness to explain the correspondence between brain activity and experience. As yet there is little evidence from brain studies to support these theories.

Evidence from parapsychology of psychokinesis or telepathy, if substantiatied, might support the theory that the location of consciousness is not confined to the brain. However, no evidence has been substantiatied.

Consciousness - Access consciousness

There have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Philosophers who have explored this problem include Gerald Edelman, G. Spencer-Brown, Edmund Husserl and Daniel Dennett.

Some philosophers have concentrated on reflexive processes to link one instant to the next, some on discriminations and differences between things in conscious experience and others on the overall behaviour of the organism.

G. Spencer-Brown provides an example of the analysis of consciousness as a process, the process in this case being differentiating one thing from another.G. Spencer-Brown proposes in Laws of Form that the root of cognition is the ability to perceive dualism, i.e., in its most simple construct, the capability of differentiating a "this" from a "that." A mathematician, he captured this concept of elementary content-in-context in an abstraction: an algebraic and tautological symbol he referred to as the "Mark," also referred to as a "distinction." Francisco Varela, a co-founder of the Integral Institute, and Humberto Maturana also identify "distinction" as the elementary act of cognition. By definition, this concept extends the notion of "consciousness" well beyond that solely evidenced by humans and lends itself to the idea of a "scale" of consciousness.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Philosophical approaches", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki