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

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Property dualism: the exemplification of two kinds of property by one kind of substance

Property dualism

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Composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.

Property dualism: the exemplification of two kinds of property by one kind of substance
Biological Naturalism states that consciousness is a higher level function of the human brain's physical capabilities.
Huxley explained mental properties as like the steam on a locomotive

Substance dualism, on the other hand, is the view that there exist in the universe two fundamentally different kinds of substance: physical (matter) and non-physical (mind or consciousness), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which inhere in those respective substances.

Portrait after Frans Hals

René Descartes

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French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra.

French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic who invented analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra.

Portrait after Frans Hals
The house where Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine
Graduation registry for Descartes at the University of Poitiers, 1616
In Amsterdam, Descartes lived at Westermarkt 6 (Maison Descartes, left).
René Descartes at work
L'homme (1664)
Cover of Meditations
A Cartesian coordinates graph, using his invented x and y axes
Handwritten letter by Descartes, December 1638
Principia philosophiae, 1644

Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious.

The souls of Pe and Nekhen towing the royal barge on a relief of Ramesses II's temple in Abydos.

Soul

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Belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".

Belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".

The souls of Pe and Nekhen towing the royal barge on a relief of Ramesses II's temple in Abydos.
Depiction of a soul being carried to heaven by two angels by William Bouguereau
The Damned Soul. Drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti c. 1525
Depiction of the soul on a 17th century tombstone at the cemetery of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow
The Neolithic Manunggul burial jar from the Tabon Caves, Palawan, Philippines, depicts a soul and a psychopomp journeying to the spirit world in a boat (c. 890–710 BCE)
Charon (Greek) who guides dead souls to the Underworld. 4th century BCE.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.
The structure of the souls of plants, animals, and humans, according to Aristotle, with Bios, Zoê, and Psūchê

There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood.

Wakefulness

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Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute

Monism

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Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

Distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute
A diagram with neutral monism compared to Cartesian dualism, physicalism and idealism.
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The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain.

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).

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

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Paper by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, first published in The Philosophical Review in October 1974, and later in Nagel's Mortal Questions .

Paper by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, first published in The Philosophical Review in October 1974, and later in Nagel's Mortal Questions .

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).
"What Is it Like to Be a Bat?" was written by Thomas Nagel
Daniel Dennett has been a vocal critic of the paper's assertions

The paper presents several difficulties posed by consciousness, including the possible insolubility of the mind-body problem owing to "facts beyond the reach of human concepts", the limits of objectivity and reductionism, the "phenomenological features" of subjective experience, the limits of human imagination, and what it means to be a particular, conscious thing.

Self

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The self is an individual as the object of its own reflective consciousness.

Logician Kurt Gödel

Orchestrated objective reduction

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Logician Kurt Gödel
A: An axon terminal releases neurotransmitters through a synapse and are received by microtubules in a neuron's dendritic spine. B: Simulated microtubule tubulins switch states.

Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) is a theory which postulates that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons, rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons.

Feeling

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Often used as being the same as emotion.

Often used as being the same as emotion.

Examples of six basic emotions
Sensitive, sculpture by M. Blay (c. 1910)

"Feeling" usually refers to the conscious subjective experience of emotions (see next section).

Higher-order theories of consciousness

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Higher-order theories of consciousness postulate that consciousness consists in perceptions or thoughts about first-order mental states.