Consciousness
This page lists various connotations of the term "consciousness" in use in scientific research today. The fact that so many different conceptions of this term are being applied highlights the striking contrast between the conceptual exposition and the familiarity of consciousness.[1]
Some of the distinctions below are from (Metzinger, 2008).[1]
Contents
- 1 Logical structures of the term consciousness
- 2 Meanings of the term consciousness
Logical structures of the term consciousness
We first distinguish various different logical structures of the term "consciousness" that are being employed, such as the type of predicate and the class of referents.
Unary predicate of organisms
Often, the term "consciousness" is being used as a unary predicate, i.e. it is a predicate that takes one "variable". This variable often describes organisms, persons, subjects or the like.
Example: Consciousness in this sense could refer to whether a person is in a state of wakefulness, capable of processing and reacting to stimuli.
Unary predicate of mental states
Binary predicate of organisms
The term "conscious" is also being used as a binary predicate, i.e. a predicate which takes two "variables". In one way of using the term, one of the variables refers to persons or organisms, and the other refers to objects of perception or thinking.
Example: A person is conscious of a red tomato.
This connotation of consciousness includes both pre-conceptual attention of external objects or states of one's body, as well as conceptually structured consciousness of objects (e.g. in a description).[1] It is an intentional notion of consciousness, as according to this notion, consciousness is always about something.
Binary predicate of mental states
Meanings of the term consciousness
In what follows, we aim to list and distinguish the various types of meaning of the term "consciousness" that are being considered in the interdisciplinary literature. Many overlap in their respective meaning or reference to some extent.
Conscious perception of a stimulus
In many neuroscientific studies, the term consciousness is understood as referring to the conscious perception (or not) of a particular stimulus. Typical examples are visual masking experiments.
Arguably, this conception of consciousness is the primary target of global neuronal workspace theory and its prediction of conscious "ignition", a sudden, late and sustained firing in GNW neurons should a stimulus be perceived consciously.[2]
Conscious mechanism
Some publications talk about a brain mechanism being conscious or not. This may be taken to implicitly refer to the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), where a mechanism "is conscious" if it is part of the NCC.
Phenomenal consciousness
At least two connotations of phenomenal consciousness exist.
General
The general sense of the term from phenomenology, cf. phenomenal consciousness - meaning from phenomenology.
Chalmers' axiomatization
A notion defined in (Chalmers 1996)[3], cf. phenomenal consciousness - Chalmers' definition.
Pure subjective experience
This can roughly be paraphrased as "pure subjective experience"[4]
Access consciousness
The term has originally been introduced by (Block, 1995)[5]. Following (Shea, 2012)[6], it could be defined as follows:
- Definition
Subject instantiates property , being access conscious of iff
- has a mechanism for making information directly available for us in directing a wide range of behaviours; and
- is making the information that directly available for directing a wide range of potential behvaiours of .
Some criticize this notion of consciousness and argue that it should merely be called "access", rather than "access consciousness".[7]
Introspective consciousness
- Definition
- Introspective consciousness is a perception-like awareness of current states and activities in our own mind. The current activities will include sense-perception: which latter is the awareness of current states and activities of our environment and our body.[8]
For a distinction of various forms of introspection and general information on the neuroanatomical basis of consciousness, cf. introspection.
Conscious and unconscious processing
Wakefulness
Qualia
Cf. qualia.
Level of consciousness
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Metzinger, Encyclopedia entry Bewusstsein, 2008
- ↑ Dehaene, Stanislas, Jean-Pierre Changeux, and Lionel Naccache. "The global neuronal workspace model of conscious access: from neuronal architectures to clinical applications." Characterizing consciousness: From cognition to the clinic?. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. 55-84.
- ↑ Chalmers, David J. The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. Oxford university press, 1996.
- ↑ Thomas Metzinger. The problem of consciousness. In Thomas Metzinger, editor, Con- scious experience, pages 3–37. Imprint Academic, 1995.
- ↑ Block, Ned. "On a confusion about a function of consciousness." Behavioral and brain sciences 18.2 (1995): 227-247.
- ↑ Shea, Nicholas. "Methodological encounters with the phenomenal kind." Philosophy and phenomenological research 84.2 (2012): 307.
- ↑ Citation missing.
- ↑ Güven Güzeldere; Is consciousness the perception of what passes in one's own mind?, 1995, citing Amstrong D. The nature of mind and other essays, 1980
