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Essay on consciousness
Consciousness and Its Variations
Consciousness and Its Variations
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WHY ARE WE CONSCIOUS?
INTRODUCTION – What is Consciousness? The notion of Consciousness took various definitions through time and even today it still doesn’t have a general accepted definition. A more universal one would be that Consciousness is a state of awareness of one’s surroundings, of the external objects around, or being aware of oneself. From a more psychological perspective, Consciousness represents a state characterized by perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts, where the individual is aware of what he sees, feels, thinks and observes himself, those around him and the environment.
Others consider Consciousness a simply state of being, of existence, triggered by some mechanical patterns which developed through Evolution, while some people think Consciousness is the subjective experience of one individual, a more philosophic approach where one is aware of himself, his existence, his identity, his moralities and the role he has in this world.
Is Consciousness something automatic, rooted in our selves, something inseparable in a being with abilities of
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The implicit one, it is a more primitive one, which represents just the state of awareness of something, which can be found also in others advanced species of animals, like dogs and cats. They become aware of their surroundings and possible danger. It represents the awareness of your existence, the separation of oneself from the others and the world. The reflexive Consciousness is more advanced, and it is specific to the human being. It is the awareness of the self, where an individual take action in a more responsible way, to be aware of what you feel, what you want, what you think. It represents the entire activity of the brain, stimulated by our attention. When someone is paying attention or observes something, it’s an act of the reflexive
Chapter 4 discusses the several states of consciousness: the nature of consciousness, sleep and dreams, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, and meditation. Consciousness is a crucial part of human experience, it represents that private inner mind where we think, feel, plan, wish, pray, omagine, and quietly relive experiences. William James described the mind as a stream of consciousness, a continuous flow of changing sensations, images thoughts, and feelings. Consciousness has two major parts: awareness and arousal. Awareness includes the awareness of the self and thoughts about one's experiences. Arousal is the physiological state of being engaged with the environment. Theory of mind refers to individuals understanding that they and others think,
The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of, all the information that a person is paying attention to at any given time. When Penny revisits the house and the
Consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;
As there are many different schools of Buddhism, each with different principles, there are also many different views on consciousness. First, we'll turn to the "Consciousness-Only School" also known as Yogacara Buddhism. According to the Consciousness-Only school there are eight parts of the consciousness. The five sense-consciousnesses, those related to the senses. There is the sixth consciousness, called the sense-center consciousness, that which forms our conceptions. The seventh is called the thought-center, the consciousness related to will and reasoning. And the eighth consciousness, called the storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness basically "stores" our past experiences. The consciousness are in a constant state of change, the seed is constantly being influenced by the inward flow of perceptions, and the seed itself influences the perceptions (Chan 371). This train of thought is most similar to the existing model of cognition and memory encoding.
On the 1st of November 2013, I performed my first simulation on the module, Foundation Skills for Nursing. This simulation was on checking for vital signs in patients particularly, measuring the blood pressure (BP) which is the force of blood vessels against the walls of the vessels (Marieb and Hoehn, 2010). We also measured the temperature, pulse and respiratory (TPR) rates of a patient. This simulation’s objective was to engage us in practising some basic observation techniques taken on patients in and out of hospitals and to familiarise us on some of the tasks we will be performing when in practise. I will be applying the “What”, “So what”, and “Now what” model of reflection in nursing by Driscoll (2000).
Reality and consciousness has been a philosophical debate for centuries. Reality is described as the state of things like they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. It includes everything that is and has been beyond observable or comprehensible proof. Consciousness is difficult to define, it can be the state or quality of awareness, or being aware of externalities beyond yourself. They can be viewed as opposing ideas and can also be considered dependents, one requiring the other: ‘consciousness creates reality’. Philosopher George Berkely argued that the world is a figment of our minds and solipsism’s philosophical theory states that only one’s own mind is sure to exist, “while not a complete figment of our imagination,
I will commence by defining what makes a mental state conscious. This will be done aiming to distinguish what type of state we are addressing when we speak of a mental phenomenon and how is it, that can have a plausible explanation. By taking this first approach, we are able to build a base for our main argument to be clear enough and so that we can remain committed to.
According to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, author of “The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness,” he responds to consciousness being very difficult to define and explain how or why any physical state is conscious rather than being unconscious. Another primary issue of consciousness is the issue of having experience. When one thinks and perceives, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is a subjective aspect. A majority of people assume that all mental states are conscious, but none of us know that for sure, and so the problem of describing or explicating consciousness collapses into the problem of explaining mentality. Even though perception can give someone access to knowledge, obtaining your personal perspective cannot only seek knowledge as well, but it can show the spiritual or personal aspect towards
Renner, T., Feldman, R., Majors, M., Morrissey, J., & Mae, L. (2011). States of Consciousness. Psychsmart (pp. 99-107). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Consciousness was first described and introduced by Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche (Crick & Koch, 2001). It has been described as a realm of the mind that controls human behaviour. However consciousness is not accessible to conscious introspection, self-examination or a source of knowledge. On the contrary, Christof Koch, a neuroscientist collaborator of Francis Crick, describes unconsciousness as any neuronal activity that does not give rise to conscious sensation, thought or memory (Crick & Koch, 2001). Though unconsciousness differs in many different ways to consciousness, it works in a waking state that deals with cause and effect and the logical spontaneous processes in order to process information. On the contrary unconscious mind is associated with involuntary activities that form connections with thoughts, ideas and reflections, which unconsciousness also has the capability for multi-tasking. Therefore, as Koch explains, unconscious puts humans is an “online” mode, allowing us to override our instinctual ‘offline’ programming.
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).
To what extent if any has your knowledge of psychology helped you to understand other people and grow as a person?
Consciousness is not just the conscience, or the contents of the mind, but is the biological phenomenon permitting to survey the feelings, thoughts, and feelings of our mind. Consciousness is an elaborate rite of passage into these feelings, thoughts an knowledge that makes us humans (Ramamurthi, Gopal, Mohan, & Rao,
Cognitive awareness is not something that someone does but instead it is something that occurs, arising from specific causes and conditions. This is one of the key features of early Buddhist thought. Consciousness, according to Buddhists, is constantly occurring and flowing. This stream of consciousness that goes uninterrupted is called vijñāna. It is noted as the “background consciousness” and exists with another type of consciousness that is a result of processing certain individual moments. Vijñāna stays constant from lifetime to lifetime and only ends when samsara ends which is when someone reaches nirvana.
“Self-awareness is a psychological state in which people are aware of their traits, feelings and behaviour. Alternatively, it can be defined as the realisation of oneself as an individual entity.” (Crisp & Turner, 2010). In other words, self awareness is recognising one’s personality which includes strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs and emotions.