PSYA01H3 Lecture : Chapter notes
Document Summary
Historically, people have taken 3 philosophical positions about the nature of consciousness: consciousness is not a natural phenomenon. (natural phenomena are those subject to the laws of nature that all scientists attempt to discover: laws purely involving matter and purely physical forces. ) It is supernatural and cannot be understood by the human mind. consciousness is a natural phenomenon but also that, for various reasons, we cannot understand it. So, consciousness exists because of the nature of the human brain, but just how this occurs is unknown. people are indeed conscious; that this consciousness is produced by the activity of the human brain and that there is every reason for us to be optimistic about ability to understand this phenomenon. To understand consciousness, we must not mix it up with processes such as perceiving, remembering or thinking. Consciousness is the awareness of these processes, not the processes themselves.
