PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Global Workspace Theory, Brain Death, Visual Cortex

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Valerie Wood

Document Summary

Evaluate what it means to be conscious. Identify and evaluate how well psychology contributes to our understanding of consciousness. What does it mean to be conscious? o o. When you are able to report your own mental state. Awareness of subjective experience, yourself, your surroundings, your past and your future. Dualism: philosophical belief that reality consists of two distinct entities: mind and matter (body) Materialism: only one kind of substance in the universe, matter, and that consciousness is a physical phenomenon (physicalism/monism) An operational definition is a specific definition of a phenomenon that allows is to generate testable hypotheses about it- to measure it in some way. Global workspace theory of consciousness: working memory is a global workspace that serves to integrate, access, and coordinate the functioning of large numbers of specialized brain circuits that otherwise operate independently. o o.