PSYA01H3 Chapter 5: Chapter 5 - Conciousness.docx
Document Summary
A person"s subjective experience of the world and the mind. Conscious is not simply being awake, the defining feature of it is experience. Conscious experience is essential to what it means to be human. Doctors use a consciousness meter to see how awake the patient is when they give anesthetic. Psychologists try to understand what it is to be human. They hope to include an understanding of phenomenology (how things seem to the conscious person, in their understanding of mind and behavior. ) Consciousness is a mystery of psychology because other people"s minds cannot be perceived directly and because the relationship between mind and body is perplexing. Two mysteries of consciousness: the problem of other minds and the mind/body problem. The fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others. There is no clear way to distinguish a conscious person from someone who might do and say all the same things as a conscious person but who is not conscious.
