PS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Autopilot, Visual Cortex, Wilhelm Wundt
States of Consciousness
What is consciousness?
● Seems like an easy question to answer
● This question has been around for a long time
● Wundt and colleagues studied consciousness
● Consciousness: moment to moment awareness of ourselves and environment
What are the properties of consciousness?
● Subjective & Private → others cannot directly know our reality (and vice versa)
● Dynamic → ever-changing (change by day/time/age)
● Self-reflective → mind is aware of its own consciousness
● Changes within and between individuals over time, only individual has ownership over it
History of the question: What is consciousness?
● Seemed ideally suited for psychology
● Wundt and Titchener
● Difficult topic, no agreement → shift from consciousness and cognition to behaviourism
Consciousness
● Infer much from absence of consciousness
● Perform many mental functions without being aware of it (implicit/explicit, memory)
● Blindsight: sight is not only seeing, 2 separate pathways that observe different aspects
of vision
○ New path from eyeball through thalamus to visual cortex of brain
○ Older path goes through the brainstem and eventually is relayed to higher
centres of brain and is concerned with reflexive behaviour)
○ Visual cortex damaged but can use other pathway to guess direction of
movement they cannot see
○ Blindsight acts as autopilot
Does the absence of conscious thought = the unconscious
● Term “unconscious”
○ Freud
○ Someone who holds experiences or parts of knowledge about themselves below
their ability of being able to retrieve it
○ Most of what drives you is unconscious ( of an iceberg is underwater)
● “Nonconscious”
○ Running on some sort of automatic pilot
● Preconscious can be brought to mind
Measuring Consciousness
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Document Summary
Seems like an easy question to answer. This question has been around for a long time. Consciousness: moment to moment awareness of ourselves and environment. Subjective & private others cannot directly know our reality (and vice versa) Self-reflective mind is aware of its own consciousness. Changes within and between individuals over time, only individual has ownership over it. Difficult topic, no agreement shift from consciousness and cognition to behaviourism. Perform many mental functions without being aware of it (implicit/explicit, memory) Blindsight: sight is not only seeing, 2 separate pathways that observe different aspects of vision. New path from eyeball through thalamus to visual cortex of brain. Older path goes through the brainstem and eventually is relayed to higher centres of brain and is concerned with reflexive behaviour) Visual cortex damaged but can use other pathway to guess direction of movement they cannot see. Does the absence of conscious thought = the unconscious.
