PSY 1010 Lecture 4: States of Consciousness
23 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
Experimental psychology began as the study of conscious experience. Wilhelm wundt had people report personal mental states with the technique of introspection. Watson"s (1919) "psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist" ridiculed consciousness because it could not be studied objectively. Concerns with consciousness returned in the 1960"s as the cognitive revolution occurred in psychology. At the same time, physiological psychologists became interested in altered states of consciousness such as in sleep and dreams, daydreaming, hypnosis, drugs and dissociation. The ability of a system to access its own internal states. This capacity for self-reflection, the ability to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is perhaps the most disgusting feature of human consciousness. Evoluntionary advantage for those who could self reflect. The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. There is something it is like to be a conscious organism.
