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An important question is: when did consciousness arise? It seems plausible to say that a few billion years ago there was no consciousness on this planet. How can awareness arise from unconscious matter? James presented the central problem and wanted to investigate how consciousness can arise without mental matter or soul. There are two central questions here:When does consciousness arise during the human evolution?Which contemporary beings are conscious? An interesting question is when consciousness has developed during the evolution of man. There is disagreement about how and when consciousness has developed. Some scientists believe that consciousness has developed gradually. Greenfield believes that consciousness is not an all-or-nothing principle, but develops in different sizes. Some scientists believe that everything has a consciousness; even stones.Pan psychologists believe in this latest vision, but argue that stones have a more simple form of consciousness than, for example, snails. Pan psychologists believe that consciousness was already present before evolution took place. The complexity of consciousness could, however, have been developed according to this vision. Others believe that consciousness can only arise when there is a brain. According to this vision, consciousness is the result of the evolution of complex brain structures. Then finally there are people who believe that the consciousness has been developed fairly recently. This view assumes that social skills have gone hand in hand with the development of consciousness. How can your consciousness help you survive so that you can eventually pass on your genes? Baars answers that consciousness can save you from danger: you are fleeing from a ferocious bear. Velmans suggests that life without consciousness does not...
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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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