Dr. N.L. Kachhara
Consciousness is a quality of mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science.
Some philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience. Phenomenal consciousness is the state of being conscious, such as when we say "I am conscious." Access consciousness is being conscious of something in relation to abstract concepts, such as when we say, "I am conscious of these words". Various forms of access consciousness include awareness, self - awareness, conscience, stream of consciousness, Husserl's phenomenology, and intentionality. The concept of phenomenal consciousness is closely related to the concept of qualia. In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one' environment, this contrasts with being asleep or being in coma. The term 'level of consciousness' denotes how consciousness seems to vary during anesthesia and during various states of mind, such as day dreaming, lucid dreaming, imagining, etc. Non-consciousness exists when consciousness is not present. Phenomenal consciousness (P- consciousness) is simply experience it is moving, coloured forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the center. These experiences, considered independently of any impact on behaviour, are called qualia. Access consciousness (A-consciousness) is the phenomenon whereby information in our mind is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behaviour. So, when we perceive information about what we perceive is often access consciousness; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access consciousness, when we remember, information about the past (e.g. something that we learned) is often access consciousness, and so on. Chalmers thinks that access consciousness is less mysterious than phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of consciousness. There have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Daniel Dennett (1988) suggests that what people think of as phenomenal consciousness, such as qualia, are judgments and consequent behaviour. He extends this analysis (1996) by arguing that phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of access consciousness, denying the existence of qualia. Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness is known as subconscious events.
When we look around a room or a have a dream, things are laid out in space and time and viewed as if from a point. However, when philosophers and scientists consider the location of the form and contents of this phenomenal consciousness, there are fierce disagreements. As on example, Rene' Descartes proposed that the contents are brain activity seen by a non- physical place without extension, which, he identified as the soul. This idea is known as Cartesian Dualism. Another example is found in the work of Thomas Reid who thought the contents of consciousness are the world itself, which becomes conscious experience in some way. This concept is a type of direct realism. Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of consciousness are an aspect of minds and do not involve matter at all. This is type of Idealism. Yet others, such as Leibniz, have considered that each point in universe is endowed with conscious content. This is a form of Panpsychism. Panpsychism is the belief that all matter including rocks for example, is sentient or conscious. The concept of the things in conscious experience being impression in the brain is a type of representational and representational is a form of direct realism. Some philosophers, such as David Armstrong and Daniel Dennett, believe that qualia exist in terms of judgments or beliefs about things in the world, and are therefore meaningless when separated from behaviour, while other philosophers insist that qualia cannot be understood in terms of belief. Dennett believes that "ineffable, intrinsic, private" qualia do not exist however; he does not believe that we lack conscious, phenomenal experience.
It is sometimes held that consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain processing. The general label 'emergence' applies to new phenomena that emerge from a physical basis without the connection between the two explicitly specified. Some theorists held that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap. Colin McGinnis takes the New Mysterianism position that it can't be solved; the Chalmers criticizes purely physical accounts of mental experiences based on the idea that philosophical zombies are logically possible and supports property dualism. But others have proposed speculative scientific theories to explain the explanatory gap, such as quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness, the Electromagnetic theories of consciousness to explain the correspondence between brain activity and experience. Parapsychologists sometimes use the unproven concepts of psycho kinesis or telepathy to support the dualism belief that consciousness is not confined to the brain.
Modern physical theories of consciousness can be divided into three types; theories to explain behaviour and access consciousness, theories to explain phenomenal consciousness and theories to explain the quantum mechanical (QM) Quantum mind. Theories that seek to explain behaviour are an everyday part of neuroscience, some of these theories of access consciousness, such as Edelman's theory, contentiously identifies phenomenal consciousness with reflex events in the brain. Theories that seek to explain phenomenal consciousness directly, such as space - time theories of consciousness and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness, have been available for almost a century, but have not been confirmed by experiment. Theories that attempt to explain the QM measurement problem include Pribram and Bohm's Holonomic brain theory, Hameroft and Penrose, Orch-OR theory, Spin - Mediated Consciousness Theory and the Many-minds interpretation. Some of these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness, as well as QM interpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has been confirmed by experiment and there are philosophers who argue that QM has no bearing on consciousness. There is also a concerted effort in the field of Artificial Intelligence to create digital computer programs that can simulate consciousness.
Chris King (2003) states, that all quantum objects are constantly faced with bifurcations, which force the system to operate choices. According to King, a new and innovative description of the relation between mind and brain derives from this constant state of choice in which living structures are immersed. This constant state of choice would force living systems into a free will, which would be common to all the levels and structures of life, from molecules to macrostructures, and organisms. This constant state of free will, would originate chaotic dynamics, which organize in fractal structures. Starting from these premises King suggests two separate levels of explanations of consciousness. In first level, information flows from mind to the brain, through free will; in the second level, information flows from the brain to the mind. King considers mind to be immaterial, and its organization would be the consequence of the cohesive properties of - E (syntropy).
People generally agree that our fellow human beings are conscious, and those much simpler life forms, such as bacteria, are not. Many scholars attribute consciousness to higher - order animals such as dolphins and primates; academic research is investigating the extent to which animals are conscious. This suggests the hypothesis that consciousness has co-evolved with life, which would require it to have some sort of added value, especially survival value. People have therefore looked for specific functions and benefits of consciousness. Bernard Boars (1997), for instance, states that "consciousness is a supremely functional adoption" and suggests a variety of functions in which consciousness plays an important, if not essential, role; prioritization of alternatives, problem solving, decision making, brain processes recruiting, action control, error detection, planning, learning, adoption, context creation, and access to information. Autonio Damasio (1999) regards consciousness as part of an organism's survival kit, allowing planned rather than instinctual responses. He also points out that awareness of self allows a concern for one's own survival, which increases the drive to survive, although how far consciousness is involved in behaviour is an actively debated issue. Many psychologists would maintain that behaviour can be explained by consciousness processes akin to artificial intelligence, and might consider consciousness to be epiphenomenal or only weakly related to functions.
Ervin Laszlo argues that self - awareness, the ability to make observations of one self, evolved. Emile Durkheim formulated the concept of so called collective consciousness, which is essential for organization of human, social relations. The accelerating drive of human race to explorations, cognition, understanding and technical process can be explained by some features of collective consciousness and collective intelligence.
