Chapter 5: Consciousness Flashcards
(86 cards)
Consciousness
A person’s subjective experience of the world and the mind.
Phenomenology
The study of how thing seem to the conscious person.
The Problem of Other Minds
The fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others.
Experience
Ability to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, anger)
Agency
Ability for self-control, planning, memory.
Behaviourism
Rejects the idea of consciousness since it is unobservable.
The Mind-Body Problem
The issue of how the mind is related to the brain and body.
Rene Descartes
Proposed that the human body is a machine made of physical matter but that the human mind or soul is a separate entity made of “thinking substance”.
What comes first the thinking or the doing?
Neither, the brain starts before either occur.
Turing Test
Observing a conversation between a computer and a human and not being able to tell the difference.
Four Basic Properties of Consciousness
Intentionality, Unity, Selectivity, and Transience
Intentionality
The quality of being directed towards an object.
Unity
The ability to integrate information from all the body’s senses into one coherent whole.
Selectivity
The capacity to include some objects but not others.
Dichotic Listening
A task in which people wearing headphones hear different messages in each ear.
Cocktail-Party Phenomemon
A phenomenon in which people tune in one message even while they filter out others nearby.
Transience
The tendency to change.
Stream of Consciousness
Natural flow of human thought. We can only hold so much information at once.
Minimal Consciousness
A low-level kind of sensory awareness and responsiveness that occurs when the mind inputs sensations and may output behaviour.
Full Consciousness
Know and are able to report your mental status.
Self-Consciousness
Distinct level of consciousness in which the person’s attentions is drawn to the self as an object.
Mirrors
Increase honesty
Disorders of Consciousness
Patient is not able to demonstrate full-consciousness or self-consciousness.
Coma
Look asleep, unable to communicate, completely unaware.