PSYC10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 35: Mental Substance, David Chalmers, Res Extensa
12 Jun 2018
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Lecture 35, Thursday, 26 May 2016
PSYC10003 - MIND, BRAIN & BEHAVIOUR 1
LECTURE 35
CONSCIOUSNESS
CONSCIOUSNESS
•What is Consciousness?
•About ‘qualia’ and the ‘hard problem’
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
•The theatre in our head, or is there one unified stream of consciousness?
•Are you conscious of everything that happens?
•Is there a time when consciousness happens?
CONSCIOUSNESS AS A STATE
•Being awake, ‘background consciousness’
•Capacity to be conscious of ‘things’
•Consciousness of one’s self
•Sense of one's personal identity, attitudes, beliefs
•Consciousness of elements
•‘qualia’, subjective experience of ‘redness’ ‘stream of consciousness’
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
→ David Chalmers
•The ‘hard problem’
•According to David Chalmers there are many difficult problems for which we know – at least in
theory – how to approach them: learning, memory, perception, attention, etc.
•However, consciousness is the ‘hard problem’ because we have to bridge the gap between the
objective brain functions and the subjective experience that we want to understand.
•Others say that there is no hard problem, and understanding the ‘easy’ problems will result in
understanding consciousness.
•Is consciousness ‘a thing’? Is there the body/brain and something in addition called
consciousness?
•This seems to be the intuitively correct perspective.
→ Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
•French philosopher, postulated that all animal behaviour, and much of human behaviour can be
explained mechanically – but humans have something extra – a mind with consciousness, free
will, etc.
•Suggests that body and mind are separate.
•But how does the mind interact with the brain and body? Descartes thought this would happen
via the pineal gland in the brain.
•His view is also known as substance
dualism:
•There are two substances:
•1. res cogitans: the mental realm.
•2. res extensa: physical realm.
•However, dualism comes with a
problem: We have to believe in magic
as nothing like that has ever been !
Document Summary
Consciousness: what is consciousness, about qualia" and the hard problem". Consciousness as a state: being awake, background consciousness", capacity to be conscious of things", consciousness of one"s self, sense of one"s personal identity, attitudes, beliefs, consciousness of elements, qualia", subjective experience of redness" stream of consciousness". Is there the body/brain and something in addition called consciousness: this seems to be the intuitively correct perspective. Psyc10003 - mind, brain & behaviour 1 shown. Most researchers would therefore reject dualism: the alternative is monism, which suggests that there is just one thing: either everything is mind (consciousness), or everything is matter (can be explained by physics). Is there one unified stream of consciousness: it has been argued that we are only conscious of what is in our focus of attention. Spotlight" for the stream of consciousness": attention as a bottleneck": pre-conscious sensory filters decide what is available for later, deeper stages of processing.
