Consciousness As Determined Through the Times
Consciousness is understood in a variety of ways. In one belief, a person is conscious when awake, but unconscious when sleeping or comatose. Yet people also do things requiring perception and thought unconsciously even when they are awake. A person can be conscious of their physical surroundings, pain and even a wish or fantasy. In short a creature is conscious if it is aware of itself and that it is a physical and emotional being. Consciousness is a psychological condition defined by the English philosopher John Locke as "the perception of what passes in a man's own mind".1 Consciousness is defined and perceived differently in many psychological view points. For instance the earlier views around the 19th century was diversely considered. Most perceived consciousness as a substance or "mental stuff" unlike an object from the physical world. Others deferred that the conscious mind was what separated man from lower forms of life. It is an attribute characterized by sensation and voluntary movement which described the difference between normal waking state of animals and men and their condition when asleep.2 Other descriptions included an analysis of consciousness as a form of relationship or act of the mind towar
the second difficulty for the transparency doctrine was that it made the mind impossible for objective science. What is known introspectively to a single person would be utterly private and therefore can not be viewed scientifically. Scientific method demands objectivity and reportable data. The behaviorists John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner and the philosopher Gilbert Ryle rebelled against the idea of an inner sense and denied the very existence of consciousness in the strong sense exhibited by Locke, Descartes and the introspective psychologists.3 Ryle insisted that mind is an illusory concept and that it is really nothing more than a collection of observable behaviors. Similarly, the behaviorists argued that behavioral responses to environmental stimuli are merely responses to the stimuli and do not inherently represent hidden mental states or events. Accordingly, psychology should be the science of behavior, not of introspection.4 Though most researchers believe that consciousness will someday be explained as a neuronal activity, a few suspect that it transcends brain functioning and depends on physical laws not yet fully understood. One radical view of this sort has been advanced by British neuroscientist John Smythies. He calls his theory extended materialism. This belief is much unlike Descartes theory that consciousness has no material basis and in turn does not have "space" in a material dimension. Smythies' conception of space, however, is not limited to the familiar three dimensions that, along with time, define the standard physical framework of reality.6
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1073
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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