excreationist

Basically I'm a materialist and I think that our consciousness can be explained in terms of purely physical processes. (i.e. without a soul)

I wrote this a while ago...

Perhaps "consciousness" emerges in the "pre-operational stage" while the toddler is asking lots of questions about how the world works and has their first memories of things that they can still recall - and is able to think about the distant future (Christmas), etc...
Anyway, an important part I think involves being able to use language - that way you can call yourself "I". And with language you can access more memories than before - usually memories are only recalled when something in our immediate environment has been associated with them... language lets us recall ideas even though the things the words represent mightn't be able to be seen or have much relevance to our immediate experiences... e.g. we could be sitting outside but be thinking about what we want to do in the next year...or where all the plants and animals came from - or what happens after we die, etc.

I defined "awareness" earlier as something animals like mammals and maybe some birds, etc, can possess... "consciousness" is a more sophisticated kind of this. I think awareness is an active process - there are always goals and "drives" that motivate the system to seek more information. A passive system wouldn't move and wouldn't seek or avoid anything. If it didn't have any desires there would be no desire for it to make sense of the incoming data. By desires I mean "drives" - like the desire for some newness, the desire to avoid bodily pain, the desire to conserve energy at times, the desire for connectedness/coherence (order/predictability), etc. These desires would increase and decrease over time. e.g. if we seek newness too much, eventually our desire for relaxation or coherence outweighs it so we seek those other desires instead.

Titanpoint

Blade Runner

dk

Psychology in modern times might be described as “the science of the phenomena of the mind, of the processes or states of human consciousness”. Turning the definition inside out, consciousness understands psychology as a reflection of “the mind’s processes, states and phenomena” upon itself. In pschology consciousness defies description because the mind serves as subject, agent and object. Whatever we can know of the phenomena of consciousness becomes the product of the mind folded into itself, perhaps better discribed as the sub-conscious.

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development (sensor, pre-operational, concrete, and formal) explore the stages of measurable intelligence, not consciousness. Piaget ignores informal grades of intelligence necessary to integrate time, emotion with perception in memory for later reflection, from the beginning. Upon reflection of the most trivial memory the fetus/infant becomes aware of themselves as a concrete fixture in a temporal world symbolized by a sequence of mysterious events. The point is Piaget made no comment on consciousness.

Smilin

An amoeba or any other single-celled organism will comprehend and react to a volatile chemical (i.e. acid) introduced into their environment. Is this evidence that primitive life forms possess the state of consciousness?

Smilin

Okay, that's an interesting thought..
So consciousness is a function of brain development...

That would state that all life without a brain, or a an advanced form of a brain (however that is determined) CANNOT possess consciousness... (assuming they aren't aware of their existance)

Okay, the notion of an 'advanced brain'...
That means we would have to determing exactly at which
point the brain of any life form would be able to 'become aware of it's existance'. Next, we would have to determine what it is about the brain that produces consciousness?

Your opinion.. any further thoughts?

Smilin

interesting.. yet you didn't give a definition of what consciousness truly is..

as far as 'states' of consciousness... what other states (other than awareness) would exist?

Smilin

okay.. then from a neurologic standpoint, I deduce that when we are sleeping, consciousness ceases to exist? Would that be a correct observation?

I would also argue whether or not a person in a coma is aware of their state or not. They're are medical drugs which can induce coma-like states, yet we are still fully aware of our surroundings. (I've experienced that myself personally; I was given pain killers after a surgery, I was in a coma-like state, couldn't move, open my eyes, etc... yet I could hear, comprehend and was totally aware of my surroundings)

Based upon my personal experience, I'd argue against your positon.

Smilin

Nice points,,
Which leads me to ask.. is consciousness primarily a function of humans? If not, what is it about life forms that determine it.

If so, when does it cease to exist in human beings?

Smilin

Yes, I'm sure many have similar experiences to share...

I was driving home from the East coast one time, approaching Knoxville, TN. The next memory I experienced was the sound of my car veering off the interstate into the gravel on the other side of the city. I drove through major traffic, navigated several interstate splits with NO MEMORY of it all. Talk about being freaked out.

Was I in a different 'level of consciousness'? If yes, then awareness is not a description of consiousness, if no, then consciousness can occur without awareness.

doghouse

Based on these two statements, you seem to be saying that the ability to recall something correlates to consciousness. That is, you can recall a dream so you were conscious during the dream. And because you can’t recall your drive to work, you were unconscious during the drive.

Let’s start with your drive to work. The ability to recall an event is influenced by selective attention. Selective attention allows us to process the important signals, to understand them, and to remember them. If you don’t pay attention to a specific stimuli, you are still aware of the stimuli, but the memory of the event is very transient, lasting for only a few seconds or less, and is quickly overwritten by following stimuli. This is called sensory memory and has been well established experimentally

Selective attention happens all the time. For example, as I type this I just realized that Muddy Waters is singing on my CD. I can’t recall what song was before this, because I was not paying attention. But I was still conscious. Right? Taken to the extreme, I don’t remember what I had to eat on a specific date a year ago. But that doesn’t mean I was unconscious. In other words, just because you can’t remember an event now doesn’t mean you were never aware of the event.

Consider the alternative; say a patient with advanced dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. Such patients cannot form new memories. But that doesn’t mean they are unconscious.

Now for sleep. When dreaming, you are certainly seeing things, hearing things, etc. -- you are having experiences. But they are not experiences with the environment -- the real world. Therefore, this doesn’t fulfill the criteria of being aware of the environment and wouldn’t indicate consciousness. Just because you can remember this experience doesn’t mean you were aware of the environment at the time.

Of course my comments are dependent on the definition I provided. The neurologist's view of consciousness is derived from observations of brain structure and function. And within this framework, consciousness and memory are not the same.

The philosophers may very well have different views on this and I’ll defer to others that want to discuss the philosophical aspects of consciousness.