Cog & Bio Consciousness

Question 1

The self permeates everything and is what…

Answer 1

The centre of big controversies and social / political debates

Question 2

What is dualism?

Answer 2

Arugumejt central to mind-body problem

Question 3

When do people use the term ‘consciousness’?

Answer 3

When referring to their own private experience or awareness / sentience

Question 4

What does the explanatory gap do?

Answer 4

Clarifies central meaning of ‘consciousness’ - ‘the subjective character of experience’

Question 5

What is the explanatory gap?

Answer 5

How our undeniably, vividly real, private experiences (our qualia) connects to objective reality

Focusing on the subjective side, the problem is to explain qualia in a way consistent with our objective understanding of reality

Question 6

What is the hard problem?

Answer 6

Explaining why and how subjective expenses arises from physical processes in the brain

Question 7

Stream of consciousness:

Answer 7

Subjective life, quale, is phenomenologically experienced
Awareness develops into a stream of consciousness and can become available for further processing by the cognitive system
It can become available for further processing by the cognitive system

Question 8

What is phenomenal consciousness example

Answer 8

Redness of red, taste of sweetness, sound of music

Question 9

What is access consciousness?

Answer 9

What can become available as mental content cognitive system

Question 10

Whenever we study P-c what do we have to do?

Answer 10

Listen to what people say / use their reports of conscious experience

Question 11

What did Nunn, 2009 say?

Answer 11

It might be a good idea if the default meaning of consciousness were to become something like ‘reportable mental context’

Question 12

Me?

Answer 12

The empirical self or objective person

Question 13

Material self?

Answer 13

Body and possessions

Question 14

Social self?

Answer 14

How we behave and are seen by others

Question 15

Spiritual self?

Answer 15

Mental dispositions, abilities, religious aspirations & moral principles - this part includes subjective experience

Question 16

Concepts of consciousness: creature consciousness

Answer 16

Awake vs asleep

Question 17

Concepts of consciousness: transitive consciousness

Answer 17

Aware vs unaware

Question 18

Concepts of consciousness - self consciousness

Answer 18

Aware of myself as such or unaware of myself as such

Question 19

What can self consciousness be understood as?

Answer 19

As an awareness of oneself

Question 20

The teletransporter experiment - what happened if you answered no?

Answer 20

You must be clinging onto idea that it won’t really be ‘you’ who arrives - you still believe in an ‘inner self’

Question 21

The teletransporter experiment - what happens if you pressed yes?

Answer 21

Every cell of your body will be just the same after the journey and all your memories will be intact

Question 22

What is wrong with the body theory?

Answer 22

We change parts of ourselves (e.g get a liver transplant) and we are still us

Question 23

What is the data theory?

Answer 23

What makes us us is the brains data, memories and personality

Question 24

What is the brain theory?

Answer 24

Our brain makes us us

Question 25

What are the 2 selfs proposed in the 2 self theory by Derek Parfit?

Answer 25

Ego theorists Bundle theorists

Question 26

What is ego theory

Answer 26

Because it is literally true - we really are continuing selves

Question 27

What is bundle theory

Answer 27

It is not true, the experience of self must be explained in some other way

Question 28

Ego theorists:

Answer 28

- argue a continuous self is the subject of my experiences, that makes my decisions, who thinks, feels, loves, suffers, acts … Accept the Cartesian theatre

Question 29

Bundle theorists:

Answer 29

- conclude the self is not an entity but more like a bundle of sensations One’s life is a series of impressions that seek to belong to one person but are really just tied together by memory and other relationships

Question 30

Who did bundle theorists base their work off?

Answer 30

David Hume

Question 31

What did David Hume report?

Answer 31

Reported he could never catch himself without a perception, and never found anything but the perception

Question 32

Ego theorists and religion:

Answer 32

- almost all religions are ego theories - based on the assumption that selves exist, whether those selves are conceived as souls, spirits or anything else

Question 33

Existence if personal selves underlie what?

Answer 33

Identity Life after death Moral responsibility

Question 34

What religion rejects the idea of a persisting self?

Answer 34

Buddhism Believes the self is illusory - not what it seems Taught that human suffering is caused by ignorance and clinging to a false notion of self

Question 35

What did Sam Harris do and what did he conclude?

Answer 35

Blends science with his own practice of meditation and introspection Concludes that the conventional self is an illusion

Question 36

What did Thomas metzinger say?

Answer 36

No such thing as selves exist in the world - nobody ever was or had a self All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognised as models The phenomenal self is not a thing, but a process - the subjective experience of being someone emerges if a conscious info processing system operates under a transparent self-model