A report on Consciousness

Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century by Robert Fludd, an English Paracelsian physician
John Locke, British Enlightenment philosopher from the 17th century
Illustration of dualism by René Descartes. Inputs are passed by the sensory organs to the pineal gland and from there to the immaterial spirit.
Thomas Nagel argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking "the bat's point of view", it would still be impossible "to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat." (Townsend's big-eared bat pictured).
John Searle in December 2005
The Necker cube, an ambiguous image
A Buddhist monk meditating
Neon color spreading effect. The apparent bluish tinge of the white areas inside the circle is an illusion.
Square version of the neon spread illusion

Sentience or awareness of internal and external existence.

- Consciousness
Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century by Robert Fludd, an English Paracelsian physician

98 related topics with Alpha

Overall
The Painter and the Buyer (1565). In this drawing by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the painter is thought to be a self-portrait.

Self-awareness

3 links

Experience of one's own personality or individuality.

Experience of one's own personality or individuality.

The Painter and the Buyer (1565). In this drawing by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the painter is thought to be a self-portrait.
The mirror test is a simple measure of self-awareness.
Major brain structures implicated in autism.

It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia.

The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way.

Perception

6 links

Organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.

Organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.

The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way.
Humans are able to have a very good guess on the underlying 3D shape category/identity/geometry given a silhouette of that shape. Computer vision researchers have been able to build computational models for perception that exhibit a similar behavior and are capable of generating and reconstructing 3D shapes from single or multi-view depth maps or silhouettes
Cerebrum lobes
Anatomy of the human ear. (The length of the auditory canal is exaggerated in this image).
Though the phrase "I owe you" can be heard as three distinct words, a spectrogram reveals no clear boundaries.
Law of Closure. The human brain tends to perceive complete shapes even if those forms are incomplete.

Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness.

Phenomenology (philosophy)

6 links

Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon "that which appears" and λόγος, lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness.

Mental event

3 links

A mental event is any event that happens within the mind of a conscious individual.

Awareness

2 links

Awareness is the state of being conscious of something.

Portrait of Locke in 1697 by Godfrey Kneller

John Locke

3 links

English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".

English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism".

Portrait of Locke in 1697 by Godfrey Kneller
John Locke's portrait by Godfrey Kneller, National Portrait Gallery, London
Portrait of John Locke by John Greenhill (died 1676)
John Locke by Richard Westmacott, University College London
Locke's signature in Bodleian Locke 13.12. Photo taken at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Page 1 of Locke's unfinished index in Bodleian Locke 13.12. Photo taken at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness.

Philosophical zombie

5 links

A philosophical zombie or p-zombie argument is a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that imagines a hypothetical being that is physically identical to and indistinguishable from a normal person but does not have conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

Introspection

1 links

Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings.

Nagel in 1978

Thomas Nagel

5 links

American philosopher.

American philosopher.

Nagel in 1978
Nagel in 2008, teaching ethics

He continued the critique of reductionism in Mind and Cosmos (2012), in which he argues against the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness.

John Searle in December 2005

Chinese room

5 links

John Searle in December 2005
Sitting in the combat information center aboard a warship – proposed as a real-life analog to the Chinese Room
The "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is given the task of trying to determine which player – A or B – is a computer and which is a human. The interrogator is limited to using the responses to written questions to make the determination. Image adapted from Saygin, et al. 2000.

The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a "mind", "understanding" or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.