Good points from Ed. In many ways I'm reminded of Searle's (and
others') notion that consciousness is intrinsically intentional. One is
never simply "conscious"; one is always "conscious of something." It
has an inherent "aboutness," a content. (Sometimes that content is
consciousness itself, which is when things get really weird.)
I have a question, though: if I am completely engrossed in a pain, in
what sense would I not be conscious? Even though in this case the pain
and the awareness of that pain cannot be physically separated, they can
be conceptually separated, and so we have that "aboutness" -- but in
this case without the pain there is no consciousness (the consciousness
just is the pain) and the pain is not something that can live apart from
conscious awareness.
As long as there is a subjective awareness of something, I think you get
consciousness. Of course, defining "awareness" then gets to be a
problem... But a fun one.
m
PS And then we have to consider someone doing zazen who is conscious,
but is not conscious of anything. That's an issue for the intentional
definition of consciousness...
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"Mauchly's Test of Sphericity:
Tests the null hypothesis that the error covariance matrix of the
orthonormalized transformed dependent variables is proportional
to an identity matrix."
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SPSS
________________________________
From: Pollak, Edward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 8:20 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Re: states of consciousness
Peter wrote
> On Feb 25, 2007, at 8:14 AM, Pollak, Edward wrote:
>
>> It's quite rare that I disagree with Stephen but this is one
of
>> those times.
>>
>> Stephen wrote
>> "......We generally accept two kinds as uncontroversial:
either >> we're conscious or we're not. And we know someone is conscious
>> when they're aware of their surroundings."
"(1) One can answer the first point, e.g. 'X is conscious" only
if we can clearly specify 'consciousness'. But this is a concept the
borders of which are not specify-able. (2) Is someone day dreaming not
conscious? Someone focused on a, say, severe pain... Someone absorbed
in a book... etc., etc.? And, if someone cannot verbally describe the
surroundings is she/he not aware? I just set these as examples to
point to the fact that it is not so
easy to say what is and is not being conscious."
---------
1) Why are the borders of consciousness not specifiable? What
is stopping us from developing a good definition? Is it not possible
that, rather than consciousness being a fuzzy concept, it is merely our
definition of it that are fuzzy? I suggest that the latter possibility
may have the greater heuristic value.
2) Jaynes would argue that daydreaming is eminently conscious
but that dreaming may or may not be conscious. He argues, for example,
that young children dream differently from adults. Is "someone focused
on severe pain" conscious? It depends what you mean by "focused." If he
is simply experiencing the pain, no he is no more conscious than any
other vertebrate experiencing severe pain. But if he is focusing on what
he is experiencing, that would qualify as consciousness. As for a
person absorbed in a book: he would not be conscious according to my
definition (or even the standard definition of "attending to one's
thoughts, perceptions, emotions, etc.). If he sat back and started
thinking about what he just read, he would be "consciousing."
Is someone conscious if he cannot verbally describe the
surroundings? Yes, so long as he can attend to and think about his
perceptions (although that might be hard to prove without the ability to
communicate).
Here's the problem: A person is not conscious or unconscious. A
person is conscious OF SOMETHING or not conscious of something. e.g., As
I drive home from school I am often thinking about my lectures and how I
did that day and how I could have explained things better. I am, at that
time, conscious of my memories and thoughts. I am not, however,
conscious of my driving as the steering wheel turns & the brake is
applied without my conscious awareness. Of course, I can become
conscious of driving at any time. as soon as I start thinking about
driving I become conscious of driving and might, therefore erroneously
conclude that I was conscious of driving all the time.
If consciousness is a verb rather than a noun, then it needs to
be acting on something. i.e., you must be "consciousing about something"
in the same sense that you are not in a state of thinking. Rather, when
you think, you are always thinking about something.
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm
<http://mywebpages.comcast.net/epollak/home.htm>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, bluegrass fiddler
and herpetoculturist...... in approximate order of importance.
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