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It seems like we only have one consciousness. If you look at the brain, then you see that there is complexity and diversity. Often there are multiple processes that take place simultaneously through different brain routes. Yet we feel that everything forms a unity. We feel that only one exists and that we experience things not as isolated but as a whole. How come?Dualists believe that everyone has a consciousness that is something other than their brains. Eccles believed as dualist that the mind plays an active role in selecting and integrating neural activity. This would result in a unified whole. But how should this happen? Where does the interaction between the mind and the brain take place? This problem recurs in all dualistic theories. The dualist Libet has the answer that the feeling of unity is achieved through a mental field of consciousness. That is why split brain patients still behave as one person. When you pick up a coin and throw it in the air, there are immense things happening in your brain. For example, various brain areas are active for observing color, movement and shape. There are also auditory processes under way. There is no specific place or a specific moment in which all this information comes together so that the falling coin can be seen as a unified whole. Yet we do have the feeling that everything is processed as a whole and that the coin falls, as it were, in one go. How can you see the coin as one moving object?This problem is described as the visual binding problem and more generally as the 'binding problem'. This problem can be described at different levels, for example at the neural level and at the phenomenological level. Some people think that the binding problem is the same as understanding how attention works. So if you focus your attention on a cast coin long enough, the characteristics...
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The problem of consciousness is related to some of the oldest questions of philosophy: what does the world consist of? Who am I? It relates to the mind-body problem: what is the relationship between the physical and the mental?
Despite the fact that we are learning more and more about the functioning of the brain, consciousness remains a mystery. In the past, they used the term 'élan vital' to explain how non-living things could be made alive. Nowadays this concept is no longer used, since we know that biological processes are responsible for this. Some scientists believe that the same will also happen with the term consciousness. Once we understand how brain processes create a sense of consciousness, then we might not need to use this term anymore.
Consciousness requires some sort of dualism: objectivity vs. subjectivity, inner vs. outer, mind vs. body...
For example: Take a pencil in your hand and look at it. You see the pencil from your own unique perspective, which you cannot share with others. The pencil is part of the outside world, your experience with the pencil is part of your inner world.
The way philosophers view the consciousness problem can generally be divided into monist theories, which suggest that there are one kind of things in the world, and dualist theories, which suggest that there are two kinds of things. Some theories state that the mental world is fundamental and some theories state that the physical world is fundamental.
Monistic theories assume that the world consists of only one kind of matter (body or mind). Some monistic theories state that everything consists of the mind, according to these theories we only have ideas and perceptions of a pencil. We do not know if a pencil really exists. People who assume this are called mentalists or idealists. Berkeley supported this principle. The disadvantage of this perspective is that we can never know for certain whether objects with fixed characteristics exist.
Materialists are also monists. They believe that there is only matter. An example for this is the identity theory, which states that mental experiences are the same as physical experiences. Another example is functionalism, which assumes that mental experiences are the same as functional experiences.
Epiphenomenalism assumes that physical processes cause mental events, but that mental events have no effect on physical events. Huxley was a supporter of this idea. He did not deny that consciousness or subjective experiences existed, but stated that they have no (causal) connection with physical processes. He used
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