Psyc 358: psychology of consciousness
The Expansion of William James
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| The Expansion of William James
In 1890, he published the Principles of Psychology, in which he linked the study consciousness to the mind. Characteristics of consciousness at the level of mind: 1. SUBJECTIVITY- a) It belongs uniquely to you. Nobody else can share your exact conscious experience. b) You are the subject of your consciousness. "The universal conscious fact is not that feelings and thoughts exist but that 'I think' or 'I feel'." 2. CHANGE- The contents of consciousness are constantly changing as attention wanders from thought to thought. "No state of consciousness, once gone, can recur and be identical with what it was before." Assumption: Consciousness exists as a series of STATES. Buddhist analogy: Mind is like a monkey in a tree, jumping from branch to branch, and never staying still. James' analogy: Attention is like a spotlight that shines on a part of our field of awareness. That spotlight is pretty focused; the beam is bright and focused, although we can be aware of things that are slightly in the shadows A second analogy used by James is of a stream. The term "stream of consciousness" is the steady flow of thoughts that move through our awareness. 3. CONTINUITY Perceived continuity as opposed to actual continuity. There was no doubt in James' mind that consciousness is discontinuous. For example, he would say that we lose consciousness when we sleep. But when we wake up, we're the same person we were when we went to sleep, with the same idenity, the same memory, maybe even the sam thoughts in our mind. "Even when there is a time-gap, the consciousness after it FEELS as if it belonged together with the consciousness before it, as another part of the same self." 4. INTENTIONALITY-- In this case, "intentionality" means "about something." Nobody can be conscious, James claimed, without being conscious OF something. 5. SELECTIVITY-- James" "We actually ignore most of the things before uss." Attention is selective; it filters out irrelevant information. Otherwise, we would have what James called a "blooming, buzzing confusion." For most of his life--and especially after 1890--James experimented with different drugs: nitrous oxide, chloral hydrate, amyl nitrate, and peyote. In using these drugs, James had a number of "mystical" experiences, which he wrote about "The Varieties of Religious Experience." James described mystical experiences as having the following properties: 1. Ineffability-- "Beyond description." There are no adequate words or concepts to describe these experiences. 2. Noetic quality-- From the Greek "gnosis" which means "to know." But noetic as used by James means to know directly, without the mediation of anything or anyone. Example: I may understand your experience to some degree, but if I could actually penetrate your consciousness, maybe I could. "Brainstorm" with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood. Noetic experiences can be revelatory: can produce insights or illumination. 3. Transiency-- These experiences can't be sustained (by James). 4. Passivity- Having the sense that things enter your awareness of their own accord. James made the claim that such experiences bestow certain powers or virtues on the individual: the capacity for happiness, clarity, and compassion. These experiences also suggest a level of consciousness that has nothing to do with the mind, with intellect, concepts, judgment or analysis. At the level of "spirit," consciousness has these characteristics: 1. NOT subjective- It exists beyond all concepts, including the self concept. Morevoer, this consciousnes cannot be unique yours because you don't exist in this condition. Plus, there is a sense of connectedness to all things. 2. NOT changing-- The Buddhists use the metaphor of the mind being the clouds and the spirit being the sky. There is no flow of thoughts that can constantly change; the contents that we know as thoughts don't exist at this level. 3. NOT seemingly continuous but actually so-- There are no time-gaps at this level of consciousness. It exists without disruption as an ongoing backgroup to all conscious experience. 4. NOT intentional-- There can be consciousness without contents. "Pure consciousness." 5. NOT selective-- Instead of selectivity, there is receptivity. Arthur Deikman makes the distinction of "intake of the environment rather than manipulation." 8/23/07- "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." --Albert Einstein
Dissociation between mind and consciousness: There is evidence of mind without consciousness
This is the riddle of how the material and immaterial levels of reality interact. Originally, Descartes was interested in this question: How does the spiritual realm, in the form of "the soul," enter into the physical realm, in the form of "the body"? Dualism-- That these two realms, material and immaterial, are essentially independent, and that they intersect at one point only: the pineal gland. Before Descartes, there were cultures that used the term "mind-body-spirit". Leibniz (1695)- psychophysical parallelism: the material and immaterial realms are parallel; neither causes the other but they may correlate. Berekeley (1710)- immaterialism: the material universe has to be perceived by consciousness in order to exist, and so consciousness is fundamental. Solipsism-- The premise that only "I" exist or am conscious; "you" exist only to the degree that my consciousness creates you. LaMettrie (1748)- Revived materialism: matter is fundamental. Consciousness is a function of bodily states. epiphenomenalism--mental states have no causal relevance in the universe; they are a "by product" of physical events. Chalmers-- Easy and hard problem: The easy problem, with respect to consciousness, is understanding the characteristics of consciousness, the distinctions between conscious and unconscious, sleep and waking, etc. The hard problem is understanding how the brain gives rise to consciousness. The mind-body problem has changed. It started out as the question of how the soul enters the body, and now it has been reduced to the question of how the brain creates consciousness. Spinoza (1677) --double-aspect theory: mind and matter are two aspects of the same thing. Lewes (1876)- neutral monism: there is only kind of "stuff" in the universe, and mind and matter differ only in terms of the arrangement of that "stuff" or the perspective from which it is perceived. Viewed from a subjective point of view, this "stuff" is mental, and from an objective point of view, it's "physical." Consciousness at the level of mind may be limited in terms of time and space, but consciousness at the level of spirit does not need to be. That is why there is distinction between "great spirits" and "mediocre minds." Mind and matter are form. Joseph Campbell ("The Hero with a Thousand Faces") Creation myths are all based on the idea of a "cosmogonic cycle". There is a cyclical process by which formlessness gives rise to form, and in turn form returns to formlessness. This cycle of creation and destruction goes on at all times. Formless consciousness is the first principle, the foundation from which all form is created and the ultimate source to which all form returns. Formless, universal consciousness (spirit) imbues all things, has no limits, cannot be confined in space or time. It transcends all things and at the same time encompasses them. Our personal consciousness is like a well that taps an aquifer. Jung called that aquifer the "collective unconscious." Download 338.85 Kb. Share with your friends:
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