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Scientists had a very early interest in unconscious processing (also called implicit or subliminal perception ). We know that there can be perception without consciousness. People can think for themselves that they have not perceived anything consciously, while their behavior shows that they have observed something.We do not assume that we have two selves: one for conscious processing and one for unconscious processing. In earlier experiments, conscious experiences were defined in terms of what people themselves said they had observed. This sounds logical, but this method has a disadvantage. Whether someone says that he or she has perceived something consciously depends on how careful someone is with his or her judgment. There is no clear limit to indicate between when someone has observed something or not. Behaviorists did not want to be dependent on whether people said they had observed something. They wanted to make objective measuring instruments so that there was no need for them. This is a strange idea, since saying whether you have observed something,is as reliable (or unreliable) as pressing a button to make it clear that you have observed something. Marcel showed that people react faster to a target if the prime matches this. Marcel made the primes unrecognizable to participants by placing a visual distractor on the image immediately after the prime appeared. People could not consciously perceive the prime. Even so, the target was reacted even faster. This phenomenon is also called ' semantic priming' .Cheesman and Merikle distinguished between:objective threshold value, andsubjective threshold value.The objective threshold value represents the level of detection in which a distinction is made between perceptual information on the basis of random phenomena. The subjective threshold value is about the...
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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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