Consciousness 1

Consciousness
Consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience,
awareness, the ability to experience "feeling", wakefulness, the
understanding of the concept "self", or the executive control system of
the mind.[1] It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety of mental
phenomena.[2] Although humans realize what everyday experiences
are, consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note (e.g. John
Searle in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy):[3]

"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of

our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the
most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."
—Schneider and Velmans, 2007[4]
Consciousness in medicine (e.g., anesthesiology) is assessed by
observing a patient's alertness and responsiveness, and can be seen as a
continuum of states ranging from alert, oriented to time and place, and
communicative, through disorientation, then delirium, then loss of any
meaningful communication, and ending with loss of movement in
Representation of consciousness from the 17th
response to painful stimulation.[5] century.

Consciousness in psychology and philosophy typically means

something beyond what it means for anesthesiology, and may be said in many contexts to imply four characteristics:
subjectivity, change, continuity, and selectivity.[1] [6] Philosopher Franz Brentano has suggested intentionality or
aboutness (that consciousness is about something). However, within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on
whether intentionality is a requirement for consciousness.[7]
Consciousness is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science,
cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Issues of practical concern include how the presence of
consciousness can be assessed in severely ill or comatose people;[8] whether non-human consciousness exists and if
so how it can be measured; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and whether computers can
achieve a conscious state.[9] [10] [11]

Etymology
The word "conscious" is derived from Latin conscius meaning "1. having joint or common knowledge with another,
privy to, cognizant of; 2. conscious to oneself; esp., conscious of guilt".[12] A related word was conscientia, which
primarily means moral conscience. In the literal sense, "conscientia" means knowledge-with, that is, shared
knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by writers such as Cicero.[13] Here, conscientia is the
knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else.[14]
René Descartes (1596–1650) is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use "conscientia" in a way that does not
seem to fit this traditional meaning. Descartes used "conscientia" the way modern speakers would use "conscience."
In Search after Truth he says "conscience or internal testimony" (conscientia vel interno testimonio).[15]
Shortly thereafter, in Britain, the neo-Platonist theologian Ralph Cudworth used the modern meaning of
consciousness in his "True Intellectual System of the Universe" (1678) and associated the concept with personal
identity, which is assured by the repeated consciousness of oneself. Cudworth's use of the term also remained
intertwined with moral agency. While there were no elaborate theories of consciousness in the seventeenth century,
there was an awareness of the idea of consciousness. Cudworth was the first English philosopher to make extensive
Consciousness 2

use of the noun "consciousness" with a specific philosophical meaning.[16]

Twelve years later, Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) connected consciousness with
personal identity.[17] Locke argued that being the same person from one time to another was not dependent upon
having the same soul or same body, but instead the same consciousness.[18] Locke defined consciousness as “the
perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.”[19] Locke had much influence on the 18th Century view of
consciousness: in Samuel Johnson's celebrated Dictionary (1755), Johnson uses this definition of "consciousness."

Philosophical approaches
There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including behaviorism, dualism, idealism, functionalism,
reflexive monism, phenomenalism, phenomenology and intentionality, physicalism, emergentism, mysticism,
personal identity, and externalism.

Phenomenal and access consciousness

Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) is simply experience;[20] it is moving, colored forms, sounds,
sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses at the center. These experiences, considered
independently of any impact on behavior, are called qualia. The hard problem of consciousness, formulated by
David Chalmers in 1996, deals with the issue of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in terms of its
neurological basis".[21]
Access consciousness (A-consciousness) is the phenomenon whereby information in our minds is accessible for
verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So, when we perceive, information about what we perceive is
often access conscious; when we introspect, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember,
information about the past (e.g., something that we learned) is often access conscious, 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. Daniel Dennett denies that there is a "hard problem", asserting that the totality of
consciousness can be understood in terms of impact on behavior, as studied through heterophenomenology. There
have been numerous approaches to the processes that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Dennett
suggests that what people think of as phenomenal consciousness, such as qualia, are judgments and consequent
behavior.[22] He extends this analysis by arguing that phenomenal consciousness can be explained in terms of access
consciousness, denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem."[22] Chalmers, on
the other hand, argues that Dennett's explanatory processes merely address aspects of the easy problem. Eccles and
others have pointed out the difficulty of explaining the evolution of qualia, or of 'minds', which experience them,
given that all the processes governing evolution are physical and so have no direct access to them. There is no
guarantee that all people have minds, nor any way to verify whether one does or does not possess one.
Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access consciousness are known as
subconscious events.

The description and location of phenomenal consciousness

For centuries, philosophers have investigated phenomenal consciousness. René Descartes, who coined the famous
dictum 'cogito ergo sum', wrote Meditations on First Philosophy in the seventeenth century.[23] According to
Descartes, all thought is conscious.[24] Conscious experience, according to Descartes, included such ideas as
imaginings and perceptions laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point, and appearing as a result of some
quality such as color, smell, and so on. (Modern readers are often confused by this Descartes' notion of
interchangeability between the terms 'idea' and 'imaginings.')
Descartes defines ideas as extended things, as in this excerpt from his Treatise on Man:
Consciousness 3

Now among these figures, it is not those imprinted on the external sense organs, or on the internal
surface of the brain, which should be taken to be ideas - but only those that are traced in the spirits on
the surface of gland H [where the seat of the imagination and the 'common sense' is located]. That is to
say, it is only the latter figures which should be taken to be the forms or images which the rational soul
united to this machine will consider directly when it imagines some object or perceives it by the
senses.[25]
Thus Descartes does not identify mental ideas with activity within the sense organs, or even with brain activity, but
rather with the "forms or images" that unite the body and the "rational soul," through the mediating 'gland H'. This
organ is now known as the pineal gland. Descartes notes that, anatomically, while the human brain consists of two
symmetrical hemispheres the pineal gland, which lies close to the brain's centre, appears to be singular. Thus he
extrapolated from this that it was the mediator between body and soul.[25]
Philosophical responses, including those of Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Reid, John Locke, David Hume and
Immanuel Kant, were varied. Malebranche, for example, agreed with Descartes that the human being was composed
of two elements, body and mind, and that conscious experience resided in the latter. He did, however, disagree with
Descartes as to the ease with which we might become aware of our mental constitution, stating 'I am not my own
light unto myself'.[26] David Hume and Immanuel Kant also differ from Descartes, in that they avoid mentioning a
place from which experience is viewed; certainly, few if any modern philosophers have identified the pineal gland as
the seat of dualist interaction.
When we look around a room or 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 an example, Descartes proposed that the contents are brain activity
seen by a non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans), which, in Meditations on First Philosophy, he
identified as the soul.[27] 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. The precise physical substrate of conscious experience in the world,
such as photons, quantum fields, etc. is usually not specified.
Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of consciousness are an aspect of
minds and do not necessarily involve matter at all. This is a type of Idealism. Yet others, such as Leibniz, have
considered that each point in the 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 impressions in the brain is a type of representationalism, and
representationalism is a form of indirect realism.
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 hold that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap. Colin McGinn takes the New
Mysterianism position that it can't be solved, and 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,[28] reflexive monism, and Electromagnetic theories of consciousness to explain the correspondence
between brain activity and experience.
Parapsychologists and some philosophers e.g. Stephen Braude sometimes appeal to the concepts of psychokinesis or
telepathy to support the belief that consciousness is not confined to the brain.
Consciousness 4

Philosophical criticisms
Locke's "forensic" notion of personal identity founded on an individual conscious subject would be criticized in the
19th century by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud following different angles. Martin Heidegger's concept of the Dasein
("Being-there") would also be an attempt to think beyond the conscious subject.
Marx considered that social relations ontologically preceded individual consciousness, and criticized the conception
of a conscious subject as an ideological conception on which liberal political thought was founded. Marx in
particular criticized the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considering that the so-called
individual natural rights were ideological fictions camouflaging social inequality in the attribution of those rights.
Later, Louis Althusser would criticize the "bourgeois ideology of the subject" through the concept of interpellation
("Hey, you!").
Nietzsche, for his part, once wrote that "they give you free will only to later blame yourself", thus reversing the
classical liberal conception of free will in a critical account of the genealogy of consciousness as the effect of guilt
and ressentiment, which he described in On the Genealogy of Morals. Hence, Nietzsche was the first one to make the
claim that the modern notion of consciousness was indebted to the modern system of penalty, which judged a man
according to his "responsibility", that is by the consciousness through which acts can be attributed to an individual
subject: "I did this! This is me!". Consciousness is thus related by Nietzsche to the classic philosopheme of
recognition which, according to him, defines knowledge.[29]
According to Pierre Klossowski (1969), Nietzsche considered consciousness to be a hypostatization of the body,
composed of multiple forces (the "Will to Power"). According to him, the subject was only a "grammatical fiction":
we believed in the existence of an individual subject, and therefore of a specific author of each act, insofar as we
speak. Therefore, the conscious subject is dependent on the existence of language, a claim that would be generalized
by critical discourse analysis (see for example Judith Butler).
Michel Foucault's analysis of the creation of the individual subject through disciplines, in Discipline and Punish
(1975), would extend Nietzsche's genealogy of consciousness and personal identity - i.e. individualism - to the
change in the juridico-penal system: the emergence of penology and the disciplinization of the individual subject
through the creation of a penal system that judged not the acts as it alleged to, but the personal identity of the
wrong-doer. In other words, Foucault maintained that, by judging not the acts (the crime), but the person behind
those acts (the criminal), the modern penal system was not only following the philosophical definition of
consciousness, once again demonstrating the imbrications between ideas and social institutions ("material ideology"
as Althusser would call it); it was by itself creating the individual person, categorizing and dividing the masses into a
category of poor but honest and law-abiding citizens and another category of "professional criminals" or recidivists.
Gilbert Ryle has argued that traditional understandings of consciousness depend on a Cartesian outlook that divides
into mind and body, mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of
individuals, or persons, acting in the world. Thus, by saying 'consciousness,' we end up misleading ourselves by
thinking that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic understandings.
The failure to produce a workable definition of consciousness also raises formidable philosophical questions. It has
been argued that when Antonio Damasio[30] defines consciousness as "an organism's awareness of its own self and
its surroundings", the definition has not escaped circularity, because awareness in that context can be considered a
synonym for consciousness.
The notion of consciousness as passive awareness can be contrasted with the notion of the active construction of
mental representations. Maturana and Varela[31] showed that the brain is massively involved with creating worlds of
experience for us with meager input from the senses. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins[32] sums up the
interactive view of experience: "In a way, what sense organs do is assist our brains to construct a useful model and it
is this model that we move around in. It is a kind of virtual reality simulation of the world."
Consciousness 5

Consciousness and language

Because humans express their conscious states using language, it is tempting to equate language abilities and
consciousness. There are, however, speechless humans (infants, feral children, aphasics, severe forms of autism), to
whom consciousness is attributed despite language lost or not yet acquired. Moreover, the study of brain states of
non-linguistic primates, in particular the macaques, has been used extensively by scientists and philosophers in their
quest for the neural correlates of the contents of consciousness.
Julian Jaynes argued to the contrary, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, that
for consciousness to arise in a person, language needs to have reached a fairly high level of complexity. According to
Jaynes, human consciousness emerged as recently as 1300 BCE or thereabouts. He defines consciousness in such a
way as to show how he conceives of it as a type of thinking that builds upon non human ways of perceiving, for
example (p. 55)...
Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is built up like a vocabulary or
lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the
same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more adequate
decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a repository. And it is intimately bound up with
volition and decision.
...and page 65...
It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an analog "I" that can observe that
space, and move metaphorically in it.
...and perhaps most tellingly, page 66...
there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in behavior first.
Some philosophers, including W.V. Quine, and some neuroscientists, including Christof Koch, contest this
hypothesis, arguing that it suggests that prior to this "discovery" of consciousness, experience simply did not
exist.[33] Ned Block argued that Jaynes had confused consciousness with the concept of consciousness, the latter
being what was discovered between the Iliad and the Odyssey.[34] Daniel Dennett points out that these approaches
misconceive Jaynes's definition of consciousness as more than mere perception or awareness of an object. He notes
that consciousness is like money in that having the thing requires having the concept of it, so it is a revolutionary
proposal and not a ridiculous error to suppose that consciousness only emerges when its concept does.
More recently, Merlin Donald, seeing a similar connection between language and consciousness, and a similar link
to cultural, and not purely genetic, evolution, has put a similar proposal to Jaynes' forward - though relying on less
specific speculation about the more recent pre-history of consciousness. He writes...
To understand consciousness fully, the generation of culture must be explained. Enculturation has been
neglected as a possible formative process in its own right, but we have no alternative other than to give it pride
of place in any evolutionary theory.[35]
He argues that an earlier "symbol using culture" must have preceded both the personal symbol using of individual
consciousness, as well as language itself.
The idea that language and consciousness are not innate to humans, a characteristic of human nature, but rather the
result of cultural evolution, beginning with something similar to the culture of chimpanzees, goes back before
Darwin to Rousseau's Second Discourse.
Consciousness 6

Vedanta
According to Vedanta, awareness is not a product of physical processes and can be considered under four aspects.
The first is waking consciousness (jagaritasthana), the identification with “I” or “me” in relationship with
phenomenal experiences with external objects. The second aspect is dream consciousness (svapna-sthana), which
embodies the same subject/object duality as the waking state. The third aspect of consciousness is deep sleep
(susupti), which is non-dual as a result of holding in abeyance all feelings, thoughts, and sensations. The final aspect
is the consciousness that underlies and transcends the first three aspects (turiya) also referred to as a trans-cognitive
state (anubhava) or a state of self-realization or freedom from body-mind identification (moksha).[36] Gaudiya
Vedanta recognizes a fifth aspect of consciousness in which God becomes subordinate to bhakti.[37]

Scientific approaches

Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience

For a long time in scientific psychology, consciousness as a research topic or explanatory concept had been banned
.[38] Research on topics associated with consciousness were conducted under the banner of attention. Modern
investigations into consciousness are based on psychological statistical studies and case studies of consciousness
states and the deficits caused by lesions, stroke, injury, or surgery that disrupt the normal functioning of human
senses and cognition. These discoveries suggest that the mind is a complex structure derived from various localized
functions that are bound together with a unitary awareness.
Several studies point to common mechanisms in different clinical conditions that lead to loss of consciousness.
Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a condition in which an individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain,
but maintains sleep-wake cycles with full or partial autonomic functions. Studies comparing PVS with healthy,
awake subjects consistently demonstrate an impaired connectivity between the deeper (brainstem and thalamic) and
the upper (cortical) areas of the brain. In addition, it is agreed that the general brain activity in the cortex is lower in
the PVS state. Some electroneurobiological interpretations of consciousness characterize this loss of consciousness
as a loss of the ability to resolve time (similar to playing an old phonographic record at very slow or very rapid
speed), along a continuum that starts with inattention, continues on sleep, and arrives to coma and death .[39] It is
likely that different components of consciousness can be teased apart with anesthetics, sedatives and hypnotics.
These drugs appear to differentially act on several brain areas to disrupt, to varying degrees, different components of
consciousness. The ability to recall information, for example, may be disrupted by anesthetics acting on the
hippocampal cortex. Neurons in this region are particularly sensitive to anesthetics at the time loss of recall occurs.
Direct anesthetic actions on hippocampal neurons have been shown to underlie EEG effects that occur in humans
and animals during loss of recall.[40]
Brain chemistry affects human consciousness. Sleeping drugs (such as Midazolam = Dormicum) can bring the brain
from the awake condition (conscious) to the sleep (unconscious). Wake-up drugs such as flumazenil reverse this
process. Many other drugs (such as alcohol, nicotine, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), heroin, cocaine, LSD, MDMA,
caffeine), have a consciousness-changing effect.
The bilateral removal of the centromedian nucleus (part of the Intra-laminar nucleus of the Thalamus) appears to
abolish consciousness, causing coma, PVS, severe mutism and other features that mimic brain death. The
centromedian nucleus is also one of the principal sites of action of general anaesthetics and anti-psychotic drugs.
This evidence suggests that a functioning thalamus is necessary, but not sufficient, for human consciousness.
Neurophysiological studies in awake, behaving monkeys point to advanced cortical areas in prefrontal cortex and
temporal lobes as carriers of neuronal correlates of consciousness. Christof Koch and Francis Crick argue that
neuronal mechanisms of consciousness are intricately related to prefrontal cortex — cortical areas involved in higher
cognitive function, affect, behavioral control, and planning. Rodolfo Llinas proposes that consciousness results from
recurrent thalamo-cortical resonance where the specific thalamocortical systems (content) and the non-specific
Consciousness 7

(centromedial thalamus) thalamocortical systems (context) interact in the gamma band frequency via time
coincidence. According to this view the "I" represents a global predictive function required for intentionality.[41] [42]
Experimental work of Steven Wise, Mikhail Lebedev and their colleagues supports this view. They demonstrated
that activity of prefrontal cortex neurons reflects illusory perceptions of movements of visual stimuli. Nikos
Logothetis and colleagues made similar observations on visually responsive neurons in the temporal lobe. These
neurons reflect the visual perception in the situation when conflicting visual images are presented to different eyes
(i.e., bistable percepts during binocular rivalry). The studies of blindsight — vision without awareness after lesions
to parts of the visual system such as the primary visual cortex — performed by Lawrence Weiskrantz and David P.
Carey provided important insights on how conscious perception arises in the brain.
An alternative and more global approach to analyzing neurophysiological (electromagnetic) correlates of
consciousness is referred to by Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts as Operational Architectonics. This still-untested
theory postulates that phenomenal patterns/objects/thoughts are matched with and generated by underlying
neurophysiological activity's spatial-temporal patterns (indexed as Operational Modules of different complexity) that
can be revealed directly from EEG.[43] [44] [45]
The Neuroscience of free will also seems to provide relevant insights to the understanding of consciousness.

Experimental philosophy
A new approach has attempted to combine the methodologies of cognitive psychology and traditional philosophy to
understand consciousness. This research has taken place in the new field called experimental philosophy, which
seeks to use empirical methods (like conducting experiments to test how ordinary non-experts think) to inform the
philosophical discussion.[46] The aim of this type of philosophical research on consciousness has been to try to get a
better grasp on how exactly people ordinarily understand consciousness. For instance, work by Joshua Knobe and
Jesse Prinz suggests that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally,[47] and another
suggestion has been that there is actually no such phenomenon as consciousness.[48] Further, Justin Sytsma and
Edouard Machery have written about the proper methodology for studying folk intuitions about consciousness.[49]

Evolutionary psychology
Consciousness can be viewed from the standpoints of evolutionary psychology or evolutionary biology approach as
an adaptation because it is a trait that increases fitness.[50] Consciousness also adheres to John Alcock's theory of
animal behavioral adaptations because it possesses both proximate and ultimate causes.[51]
The proximate causes for consciousness, i.e. how consciousness evolved in animals, is a subject considered by Sir
John C. Eccles in his paper "Evolution of consciousness." He argues that special anatomical and physical properties
of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness.[52] Budiansky, by contrast, limits consciousness to
humans, proposing that human consciousness may have evolved as an adaptation to anticipate and counter social
strategems of other humans, predators, and prey.[53] Alternatively, it has been argued that the recursive circuitry
underwriting consciousness is much more primitive, having evolved initially in premammalian species because it
improves the capacity for interaction with both social and natural environments by providing an energy-saving
"neutral" gear in an otherwise energy-expensive motor output machine.[54] Another theory, proposed by Shaun
Nichols and Todd Grantham, proposes that it is unnecessary to trace the exact evolutionary or causal role of
phenomenal consciousness because the complexity of phenomenal consciousness alone implies that it is an
adaptation.[55] Once in place, this recursive circuitry may well have provided a basis for the subsequent development
of many of the functions that consciousness facilitates in higher organisms, as outlined by Bernard J. Baars.[56]
Konrad Lorenz sees the roots of consciousness in the process of self-exploration of an organism that sees itself
acting and learns a lifetime. Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge
Consciousness 8

Functions of Consciousness

Functions of Consciousness
Function Purpose

Definition and context-setting Relating global input to its contexts, thereby defining input and removing ambiguities

Adaptation and learning Representing and adapting to novel and significant events

Editing, flagging, and debugging Monitoring conscious content, editing it, and trying to change it if it is consciously "flagged" as an error

Recruiting and control function Recruiting subgoals and motor systems to organize and carry out mental and physical actions

Prioritizing and access control Control over what will become conscious

Decision-making or executive Recruiting unconscious knowledge sources to make proper decisions, and making goals conscious to allow
function widespread recruitment of conscious and unconscious "votes" for or against them

Analogy-forming function Searching for a partial match between contents of unconscious systems and a globally displayed (conscious)
message

Metacognitive or self-forming Reflection upon and control of our own conscious and unconscious functioning
function

Auto-programming and Maintenance of maximum stability in the face of changing inner and outer conditions
self-maintenance function

Physical
Since the dawn of Newtonian science with its vision of simple mechanical principles governing the entire universe,
some philosophers have been tempted by the idea that even consciousness could be explained in purely physical
terms. The first influential writer to propose such an idea explicitly was Julien Offray de La Mettrie, in his book
L'homme machine (Man as machine).[57]
The most influential modern physical theories of consciousness are based on psychology and neuroscience. Theories
proposed by neuroscientists such as Gerald Edelman[58] and António Damásio,[59] and by philosophers such as
Daniel Dennett,[60] seek to explain access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness in terms of neural events
occurring within the brain. Many other neuroscientists, such as Christof Koch,[61] have explored the neural basis of
consciousness without attempting to frame all-encompassing global theories. At the same time, computer scientists
working in the field of Artificial Intelligence have pursued the goal of creating digital computer programs that can
simulate or embody consciousness.
Some theorists—most of whom are physicists—have argued that classical physics is intrinsically incapable of
explaining the holistic aspects of consciousness, but that quantum theory provides the missing ingredients. The most
notable theories falling into this category include the Holonomic brain theory of Karl H. Pribram and David Bohm,
and the Orch-OR theory formulated by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. 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 many scientists and philosophers consider the
arguments for an important role of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing.

Functions
Many of us 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. Many psychologists, such as radical
behaviorists, and many philosophers, such as those that support Ryle's approach, would maintain that behavior can
Consciousness 9

be explained by non-conscious processes akin to artificial intelligence, and might consider consciousness to be
epiphenomenal or only weakly related to function.
Regarding the primary function of conscious processing, a recurring idea in recent theories is that phenomenal states
somehow integrate neural activities and information-processing that would otherwise be independent (see review in
Baars, 2002). This has been called the integration consensus. However, it remained unspecified which kinds of
information are integrated in a conscious manner and which kinds can be integrated without consciousness.
Obviously not all kinds of information are capable of being disseminated consciously (e.g., neural activity related to
vegetative functions, reflexes, unconscious motor programs, low-level perceptual analyses, etc.) and many kinds can
be disseminated and combined with other kinds without consciousness, as in intersensory interactions such as the
ventriloquism effect (cf., Morsella, 2005).
Ervin László argues that self-awareness, the ability to make observations of oneself, evolved. Émile 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 technological progress
can be explained by some features of collective consciousness (collective self - concepts) and collective intelligence

Tests
As there is no clear definition of consciousness and no empirical measure exists to test for its presence, it has been
argued that due to the nature of the problem of consciousness, empirical tests are intrinsically impossible. However,
several tests have been developed that attempt an operational definition of consciousness and, try to determine
whether computers and non-human animals can demonstrate through behavior, by passing these tests, that they are
conscious.
In medicine, several neurological and brain imaging techniques, like EEG and fMRI, have proven useful for physical
measures of brain activity associated with consciousness. This is particularly true for EEG measures during
anesthesia that can provide an indication of anesthetic depth, although with still limited accuracies of ~ 70 % and a
high degree of patient and drug variability seen.

Turing
Though often thought of as a test for consciousness, the Turing test (named after computer scientist Alan Turing,
who first proposed it) is actually a test to determine whether or not a computer satisfied his operational definition of
"intelligent" (which is not synonymous with consciousness and self-awareness). This test is commonly cited in
discussion of artificial intelligence. The essence of the test is based on "the Imitation Game", in which a human
experimenter attempts to converse, via computer keyboards, with two others. One of the others is a human (who, it is
assumed, is conscious) while the other is a computer. Because all of the conversation is via keyboards (teletypes, in
Turing's original conception) no cues such as voice, prosody, or appearance will be available to indicate which is
human and which is the computer. If the human is unable to determine which of the conversants is human, and
which is a computer, the computer is said to have "passed" the Turing test (satisfied Turing's operational definition
of "intelligent").
The Turing test has generated a great deal of research and philosophical debate. For example, Daniel Dennett and
Douglas Hofstadter argue that anything capable of passing the Turing test is necessarily conscious,[62] while David
Chalmers, argues that a philosophical zombie could pass the test, yet fail to be conscious.[63]
It has been argued that the question itself is excessively anthropomorphic. Edsger Dijkstra commented that "The
question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can
swim", expressing the view that different words are appropriate for the workings of a machine to those of animals
even if they produce similar results, just as submarines are not normally said to swim.
Consciousness 10

Philosopher John Searle developed a thought experiment, the Chinese room argument, which is intended to show
problems with the Turing Test.[64] Searle asks the reader to imagine a non-Chinese speaker in a room in which there
are stored a very large number of Chinese symbols and rule books. Questions are passed to the person in the form of
written Chinese symbols via a slot, and the person responds by looking up the symbols and the correct replies in the
rule books. Based on the purely input-output operations, the "Chinese room" gives the appearance of understanding
Chinese. However, the person in the room understands no Chinese at all. This argument has been the subject of
intense philosophical debate since it was introduced in 1980, even leading to edited volumes on this topic alone.
The application of the Turing test to human consciousness has even led to an annual competition, the Loebner Prize
[65]
with "Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable
from a human's." For a summary of research on the Turing Test, see here [66].

Mirror
See also the concept of the Mirror stage by Jacques Lacan
With the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, one is interested in whether animals are able to
recognize themselves in a mirror. The classic example of the test involves placing a spot of coloring on the skin or
fur near the individual's forehead and seeing if they attempt to remove it or at least touch the spot, thus indicating
that they recognize that the individual they are seeing in the mirror is themselves. Humans (older than 18 months)
and other great apes, bottlenose dolphins, pigeons, elephants[67] and magpies[68] have all been observed to pass this
test. The test is usually carried out with an identical 'spot' being placed elsewhere on the head with a non-visible
material as a control, to assure the subject is not responding to the touch stimuli of the spot's presence.

Delay
One problem researchers face is distinguishing nonconscious reflexes and instinctual responses from conscious
responses. Neuroscientists Francis Crick and Christof Koch have proposed that by placing a delay between stimulus
and execution of action, one may determine the extent of involvement of consciousness in an action of a biological
organism.
For example, when psychologists Larry Squire and Robert Clark combined a tone of a specific pitch with a puff of
air to the eye, test subjects came to blink their eyes in anticipation of the puff of air when the appropriate tone was
played. When the puff of air followed a half of a second later, no such conditioning occurred. When subjects were
asked about the experiment, only those who were asked to pay attention could consciously distinguish which tone
preceded the puff of air.
Ability to delay the response to an action implies that the information must be stored in short-term memory, which is
conjectured to be a closely associated prerequisite for consciousness. However, this test is only valid for biological
organisms. While it is simple to create a computer program that passes, such success does not suggest anything
beyond a clever programmer.[33]

Merkwelt
The merkwelt (German; English: "way of viewing the world", "peculiar individual consciousness") is a concept in
robotics, psychology and biology that describes a creature or android's capacity to view things, manipulate
information and synthesize to make meaning out of the universe.
In biology, a shark's merkwelt for instance is dominated by smell due to its enlarged olfactory lobes whilst a bat's is
dominated by its hearing, especially at ultrasonic frequencies. In literature, a character's merkwelt can be defined by
their particular consciousness. For the collective, the plural is merkwelten. It is related to the original German
meaning of zeitgeist and indeed a merkwelt can be thought of as a more general, individual zeitgeist.[69] [70] [71]
Consciousness 11

To have a merkwelt, the individual must be self-aware. This "self-awareness" may involve thoughts, sensations,
perceptions, moods, emotions, and dreams. This term was particularly developed by the German biologist Jakob von
Uexküll who framed it as part of his theory of umwelt. This basically stated that any living 'observer' of the broader
environment or umwelt through their particular werkwelt or 'mechanical viewing' (that is to say, the organs through
which they view the world- their eyes, ears, mouth etc. in humans and electrical sensors in sharks for instance) could
have a merkwelt or 'perceptual universe'. In essence, his theory posits that the way each human or certain type of
aware animal perceives of their environment both through their experiences, the particular way their organs perceive
their environment and the way in which their consciousness processes this information (how their brain works).[72]

See also

Cognitive science Philosophy

• Attention • 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness
• Binocular rivalry • Bodymind
• Blindsight • Donald Davidson's swamp man thought experiment ("Knowing One Own's Mind",
• Change blindness 1987)
• Cognitive science • Dream argument
• Iconic memory • False Consciousness (Marxism)
• Level of consciousness • Freedom of thought
• Multistable perception • Homunculus
• Neural correlates of consciousness • Mental body
• Neural Darwinism • Mind
• Primary consciousness • Mind at Large
• Psyche (psychology) • Mind-body problem
• Reticular activating system • Multiple Drafts theory (Daniel Dennett) cf. also Marvin Minsky
• Short term memory • New Mysterianism
• Society of Mind • Personhood Theory
• Split brain • Philosophy of mind
• Stream of consciousness (psychology) • Philosophy of perception
• Unconscious mind • Political consciousness, pertaining to marxist and post-marxist conceptions of
• Visual short term memory consciousness.
• Qualia
• Stream of consciousness
Spirituality
• Supervenience
• Vijñāna (viññāṇa) — consciousness as a concept in • Theory of mind
Buddhism • Aboutness
• Higher consciousness
• Mindstream
Sociology and Socio-linguistics
• Krishna consciousness or bhakti
• Sociology of human consciousness

Physical hypotheses about

consciousness Groups
• Orch-OR theory • Association for Consciousness Exploration
• Electromagnetic theories of consciousness • Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
• Holonomic brain theory • Mind and Life Institute
• Quantum mind • Mind Science Foundation
• Simulated Reality
• Externalism
Consciousness 12

Notes
[1] Farthing, 1992
[2] van Gulick, 2004
[3] Searle, 2005, In Honderich, 2005
[4] Schneider and Velmans, 2007, pp.1-6 In Velmans & Schneider, 2007; For a similar comment see also Güzeldere, 1995 In Block, Flanagan &
Güzeldere, 1997, pp.1-67
[5] Güzeldere, 1995 In Block, Flanagan & Güzeldere, 1997, pp.1-67
[6] James, W. 1910 In Block, Flanagan & Güzeldere
[7] cf. Searle, 2005 In Honderich, 2005, s.v. consciousness
[8] Late recovery from the minimally conscious state: ethical and policy implications. Fins JJ, Schiff ND, Foley KM. Neurology. 2007 January
23;68(4):304-7. Abstract at Pubmed, retrieved 27 February 2007 (http:/ / www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/ entrez/ query. fcgi?db=pubmed&
cmd=Retrieve& dopt=AbstractPlus& list_uids=17242341& query_hl=3& itool=pubmed_docsum)
[9] Samuel Butler first raised the possibility of mechanical consciousness in an article signed with the nom de plume Cellarius and headed
"Darwin among the Machines", which appeared in the Christchurch, New Zealand, newspaper The Press on June 13, 1863: retrieved from
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION, Project Gutenberg eBook Erewhon (http:/ / www. gutenberg. org/ etext/ 1906), by Samuel Butler.
Release Date: March 20, 2005.
[10] Stuart Shieber (ed): The Turing test : verbal behavior as the hallmark of intelligence, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2004, ISBN
978-0-262-69293-9
[11] Steven Marcus: Neuroethics: mapping the field. Dana Press, New York 2002. ISBN 978-0-9723830-0-4.
[12] The Classic Latin Dictionary, Follett Publishing Company, 1957
[13] Hastings, James; Selbie (2003). Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Part 7. Kessinger Publishing. p. 41. ISBN 0766136779. note: "In the
sense of 'consciousness,' consientia is rare, but it is exceedingly common in most writers after Cicero with the meaning 'conscience'."
[14] Melenaar, G.. Mnemosyne, Fourth Series. 22. Brill. pp. 170–180. note: reference only that Cicero had been using the word. (http:/ / www.
jstor. org/ pss/ 4429733)
[15] Heinämaa, Sara (2007). Consciousness: from perception to reflection in the history of philosophy. Springer. pp. 205–206.
ISBN 978-1-4020-6081-6.
[16] Gaukroger, Stephen (1991). The Uses of antiquity: the scientific revolution and the classical tradition. D. Reidel Publishing Company. p. 79.
ISBN 0-7923-1130-2.
[17] Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Chapter XXVII)" (http:/ / ebooks. adelaide. edu. au/ l/ locke/ john/ l81u/ B2.
27. html). Australia: University of Adelaide. . Retrieved August 20, 2010.
[18] "John Locke (1632-1704)" (http:/ / www. iep. utm. edu/ locke/ ). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. . Retrieved August 20, 2010.
[19] "Science & Technology: consciousness" (http:/ / www. britannica. com/ EBchecked/ topic/ 133274/ consciousness). Encyclopedia
Britannica. . Retrieved August 20, 2010.
[20] "consciousness, phenomenal" (http:/ / philosophy. uwaterloo. ca/ MindDict/ p-consciousness. html). University of Waterloo. . Retrieved
August 20, 2010.
[21] Block, N. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
[22] Dennett, D. (2004). Consciousness Explained, p. 375. Harmondsworth: The Penguin Press, Middlesex, England. ISBN 0971399037-6.
[23] "Descartes' Epistemology" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ descartes-epistemology/ #4). Stanford University. July 20, 2010. . Retrieved
August 21, 2010.
[24] Tiles, Mary (1994). Bachelard, science and objectivity. Cambridge University Press. p. 36. ISBN 0-521-24803-5.
[25] "Descartes and the Pineal Gland" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ pineal-gland/ ). Stanford University. November 5, 2008. . Retrieved
Aug.22, 2010.
[26] Cottingham, John (1996). Western Philosophy: an anthology. Blackwell Publishing. p. 155. ISBN 0-631-18627-1.
[27] Dy, Jr., Manuel B. (2001isbn=971-12-0245-X). Philosophy of Man: selected readings. Goodwill Trading Co.Inc.. p. 97.
[28] Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA, Neves CF. Natural world physical, brain operational, and mind phenomenal space-time. Phys Life Rev,
2010, doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2010.04.001
[29] See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §355.
[30] Damasio. A. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 4.
[31] Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela. 1980. Autopoesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Boston: D. Reidel.
[32] Dawkins, R. 2003. A Devil's Chaplain; Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 46.
[33] Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Englewood, Colorado: Roberts and Company Publishers.
[34] Ned Block, "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" Philosophical Topics 22, 1994.
[35] A Mind So Rare p.202
[36] Yegan Pillay, Katherine K. Ziff and Christine Suniti Bhat, Vedānta Personality Development: A Model to Enhance the Cultural Competence
of Psychotherapists, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 12, Number 1 / April, 2008, OUP
[37] Tripurari, Swami, Entering the Fifth Dimension (http:/ / www. swami. org/ pages/ sanga/ 1999/ 1999_14. php), Sanga, 1999.
[38] Hendriks-Jansen, Horst (1996). Catching ourselves in the act: situated activity, interactive emergence, evolution, and human thought.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p. 114. ISBN 0-262-08246-2.
Consciousness 13

[39] Mariela Szirko: "Effects of relativistic motions in the brain and their physiological relevance", Chapter 10 (pp. 313-358) in: Helmut
Wautischer, editor, Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action, A Bradford Book: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1st edition, 2007.
[40] McIver, M.B.; Mandema, J.W.; Stanski, D.R.; Bland, B.H. (1996). "Thiopental uncouples hippocampal and cortical synchronized
electroencephalographic activity". Anesthesiology 84 (6): 1411–1424. doi:10.1097/00000542-199606000-00018. PMID 8669683.
[41] Llinas R.. (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
[42] Llinas R.,Ribary, U. Contreras, D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal basis for consciousness" Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, B.
353:1841-1849
[43] Fingelkurts An.A. and Fingelkurts Al.A. Operational architectonics of the human brain biopotential field: Towards solving the mind-brain
problem. Brain and Mind, vol. 2, pp. 261-296, 2001.
[44] Fingelkurts An.A. and Fingelkurts Al.A. Timing in cognition and EEG brain dynamics: discreteness versus continuity. Cognitive Proces.,
vol. 7, pp. 135-162, 2006.
[45] Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA, Neves CF. Phenomenological architecture of a mind and operational architectonics of the brain: The
unified metastable continuum. New Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 221–244, 2009.
[46] Knobe, J. (forthcoming). Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness (http:/ / www. scientificamerican. com/ article.
cfm?id=can-a-robot-an-insect-or). Scientific American: Mind.
[47] Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz. (2008). Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies (http:/ / www. unc. edu/ ~knobe/
consciousness. pdf). Phenomenology and Cognitive Science.
[48] Sytsma, Justin (2009) Phenomenological Obviousness and the New Science of Consciousness (http:/ / philsci-archive. pitt. edu/ archive/
00004438/ ). In [2008] Philosophy of Science Assoc. 21st Biennial Mtg (Pittsburgh, PA): PSA 2008 Contributed Papers.
[49] Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery. (2009). How to Study Folk Intuitions about Consciousness (http:/ / www. unc. edu/ ~knobe/
Sytsma-Machery. pdf). Philosophical Psychology.
[50] Freeman and Herron. Evolutionary Analysis. 2007. Pearson Education, NJ.
[51] Alcock, J. Animal Behavior 5th Ed. 1993. Sinauer Assoc. Cunderland, MA
[52] Eccles, John C. "Evolution of consciousness." 1992. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 89 pp. 7320-7324
[53] Budiansky, Stephen. If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness. 1998. The Free Press, NY.
[54] Peters, Frederic "Consciousness as Recursive, Spatiotemporal Self-Location" (http:/ / precedings. nature. com/ documents/ 2444/ version/ 1)
[55] Nichols, Shaun, and Grantham, Todd."Adaptive Complexity and Phenomenal Consciousness." 2000. Philosophy of Science Vol. 67 pp.
648-670.
[56] Baars, Bernard J. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. 1993. Cambridge University Press.
[57] Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1996). Ann Thomson. ed. Machine man and other writings. Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9780521478496.
[58] Edelman GM (1993). Bright air, brilliant fire: on the matter of the mind. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465007646.
[59] Damasio A (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Press.
ISBN 978-0-15-601075-7.
[60] Dennett D (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little & Company. ISBN 978-0-316-18066-5.
[61] Koch C (2004). The Quest for Consciousness. Englewood, CO: Roberts & Company. ISBN 978-0-9747077-0-9.
[62] Dennett, D.C. and Hofstadter, D. (1985). The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul (ISBN 978-0-553-34584-1)
[63] Chalmers, D. (1997) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789 Please check
ISBN|0195117891
[64] Searle, J. (1980). "Minds, Brains and Programs". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417–424.
[65] http:/ / www. loebner. net/ Prizef/ loebner-prize. html
[66] http:/ / cogsci. ucsd. edu/ %7easaygin/ tt/ ttest. html
[67] Elephants see themselves in the mirror - life - 30 October 2006 - New Scientist (http:/ / www. newscientist. com/ article/
dn10402-elephants-see-themselves-in-the-mirror. html)
[68] "Was Elstern wahrnehmen" (http:/ / www. ruhr-uni-bochum. de/ rubin/ rbin2_00/ natur/ artikel1/ index. html) german article
[69] White Shark Physiology and Neurology (http:/ / www. elasmo-research. org/ education/ white_shark/ sensory_bio. htm)
[70] Senses and Merkwelt (http:/ / csep10. phys. utk. edu/ astr161/ lect/ sense/ sense. html)
[71] Psychology Text (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=9XEgQfsS38sC& pg=PA23& lpg=PA23& dq=merkwelt+ (perceptual+ universe)&
source=blots=pd6KLK1M5Y& sig=lREbsJe-GmyEksXYUaKgmqpm0JY& hl=en& ei=LmcaSveJHZOIkQXzxFA& sa=X& oi=book_result&
ct=result& resnum=3)
[72] Jakob von Uexküll, Mondes animaux et monde humain
Consciousness 14

References
• Block, N., Flanagan, O., & Güzeldere, G. (1997). The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical debates
Cambridge, MA: MIT.
• Carruthers, P. (2007). In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (version Sep 11, 2007) http://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/consciousness-higher/
• Farthing, G. W. (1992). The Psychology of Consciousness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• van Gulick, R. (2004). Consciousness. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (version Aug 16, 2004) http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
• Nagel, T. (1974). What it is like to be a bat. Philosophical Review 83. October, 435-450.
• Searle (2005). Consciousness. In Honderich, T. (Ed.) (2005). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2nd ed.).
Oxford.
• Velmans, M., & Schneider, S. (Eds.) (2007). The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Malden, MA:
Blackwell.
• McKenna, T., McKenna, D. (1975). "The Invisible Landscape - Mind, Hallucinogens, and I Ching". Seabury
Press.

Further reading
• Baars, B. (1997) In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press. 2001 reprint: ISBN 978-0-19-514703-2
• Baars, Bernard J and Stan Franklin. (2003) How conscious experience and working memory interact. Trends in
Cognitive Science 7: 166–172.
• Yaneer Bar-Yam (2003). Dynamics of Complex Systems, Chapter 3 (http://necsi.org/publications/dcs/
Bar-YamChap3.pdf).
• Blackmore, S. (2003) Consciousness: an Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-515343-9
• Blackmore, S. (2005) "Conversations on Consciousness". Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN
978-0-19-280623-9
• Block, N. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/
block/papers/ecs.pdf)
• Carter, Rita. (2002) Exploring Consciousness. UC Berkeley Press. ISBN 0-520-23737-4
• Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511789-9
• Chalmers, D. (2002) The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American, January 2002. (http://consc.net/
papers/puzzle.pdf)
• Cleermans, A. (Ed.) (2003) The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration, and Dissociation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850857-1
• Rodney M. J. Cotterill (1998). Enchanted Looms : Conscious networks in brains and computer. Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0521794626.
• Crick, F.H.C. (1994) "The Astonishing Hypothesis". London Simon & Schuster Ltd. ISBN 0-671-71295-0
• Eccles, J.C. (1994) How the Self Controls its Brain, (Springer-Verlag).
• Franklin, S., B.J. Baars, U. Ramamurthy, and Matthew Ventura. (2005) The role of consciousness in memory.
Brains, Minds and Media 1: 1–38, pdf.
• Halliday, Eugene, Reflexive Self-Consciousness, ISBN 0-872240-01-1
• Harnad, S. (2005) What is Consciousness? (http://cogprints.org/4414/01/harnad-searle.html) New York
Review of Books 52(11).
Consciousness 15

• Harnad, S. (2008) What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes (http://eprints.ecs.
soton.ac.uk/16601/1/julian-voices.htm)
• James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience (http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/james/james5.
htm#115)
• Immanuel Kant (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith with preface by Howard Caygill.
Pub: Palgrave Macmillan. (http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html)
• Kelly, Edward F., Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson
(2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, xxxi
+ 800 pp. ISBN 978-0-7425-4792-6
• John Locke (1689). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (http://www.gutenberg.net/catalog/world/
authrec?fk_authors=2447)
• Libet, B., Freeman, A. & Sutherland, K. ed. (1999) The Volitional Brain: Towards a neuroscience of free will.
Exeter, UK: Short Run Press, Ltd.
• Llinas R.,Ribary, U. Contreras, D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal basis for consciousness" Phil.
Tranns. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
• Llinas R. (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
• Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One: the Self-model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (2000) The Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN
978-0-262-13370-8
• Morgan, John H. (2007) In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious Consciousness. Cloverdale Books,
South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0
• Morsella, E. (2005) The Function of Phenomenal States: Supramodular Interaction Theory. Psychological
Review, 112, 1000-1021.
• Neumann, Erich. The origins and history of consciousness, with a foreword by C.G. Jung. Translated from the
German by R.F.C. Hull. New York : Pantheon Books, 1954.
• Penrose, R., Hameroff, S. R. (1996) 'Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections', Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 3 (1), pp. 36–53.
• Peters, Frederic (2008) "Consciousness as Recursive, Spatiotemporal Self-Location" http://precedings.nature.
com/documents/2444/version/1
• Pharoah, M.C. (online) Looking to systems theory for a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience and
evolutionary foundations for higher order thought (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/m.pharoah/) Retrieved
December 14, 2007.
• Sanz, R., López, I., Rodríguez, M. and Hernández, C. (2007) 'Principles for Consciousness in Integrated
Cognitive Control'. Neural Networks, 20, pp. 938–946.
• Scaruffi, P. (2006) The Nature Of Consciousness. Omniware.
• Searle, J. (2004) Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Sternberg, E. (2007) Are You a Machine? The Brain, the Mind and What it Means to be Human. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books.
• Tolle, Eckhart (1999) The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library. pp 36–37.
ISBN 978-1-57731-152-2
• Velmans, M. (2000) Understanding Consciousness. London: Routledge/Psychology Press.
• Velmans, M. and Schneider, S. (Eds.)(2006) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. New York: Blackwell..
Consciousness 16

External links

Academic journals & newsletters

• Anthropology of Consciousness
• Journal of Consciousness Studies (http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html)
• Consciousness and Cognition (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622810/
description#description)
• Psyche (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/)
• Science & Consciousness Review (http://www.sci-con.org)
• ASSC e-print archive (http://eprints.assc.caltech.edu/) containing articles, book chapters, theses, conference
presentations by members of the ASSC.

Philosophy resources
• Publications of the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies, including Daniel Dennett (http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/
incpages/publctns.shtml)
• David Chalmers' directory of online papers on consciousness (http://consc.net/online.html)
• Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies (http://www.unc.edu/~knobe/consciousness.pdf) an
article describing the folk intuitions about what is a conscious agent
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
• Consciousness (General) (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/)
• Animal Consciousness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/)
• Higher Order Theories of Consciousness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/)
• Consciousness and Intentionality (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentionality/)
• Representational Theory of Consciousness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/
consciousness-representational/)
• Unity of Consciousness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/)
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
• Consciousness (http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/consciou.htm)
• Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness (http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/consc-hi.htm)

Miscellaneous sites
• You won't find consciousness in the brain (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527427.
100-you-wont-find-consciousness-in-the-brain.html) (on why consciousness cannot be measured or grasped by
the same scientific methods and techniques as the brain)
• What Consciousness is: A Definition and Framing of the Problem (http://cnx.org/content/m34114/latest/)
• History of Consciousness Graduate Program, (http://humwww.ucsc.edu/HistCon/) ("consciousness as forms
of human expression and social action manifested in historical, cultural, and political contexts") at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, headed by Dr. Angela Davis* Online lecture videos (http://klab.caltech.edu/cns120/
videos.php), from an undergraduate course taught by Christof Koch at Caltech on the neurobiological basis of
consciousness in 2004.
• Piero Scaruffi's annotated bibliography on the mind (http://www.scaruffi.com/mind.html)
• Anesthesia and Drug effects on consciousness (http://www.stanford.edu/group/maciverlab/)
• Brain Atlas, Brain Maps, Neuroinformatics (http://brainmaps.org)
• Online course in consciousness (http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/) at University of Virginia
• A survey course (http://grove.ufl.edu/~psy4930/) at University of Florida
Consciousness 17

• Edinburgh thesis (http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~charles/thesis/Fox_Consciousness_Thesis.ps) (.ps) on

consciousness including up-to-date reviews
• The Mystery of Consciousness (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394-1,00.html)
TIME.com
• Helen Keller Language and Consciousness (http://www.percepp.com/keller.htm)
• Quantum-Mind (http://www.quantum-mind.co.uk)

Video
• Jill Bolte Taylor - My Stroke of Insight (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229)
• Christof Koch, Noam Chomsky, Pat Churchland, David Glanzman, David Chalmers- The Mystery of
Consciousness (http://brightsbm.com/interviews/index.php)
Article Sources and Contributors 18

Article Sources and Contributors

Consciousness  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=391220575  Contributors: "alyosha", 'Ff'lo, -xfi-, 00110001, 119, 16@r, 1shaman, 1skyboy, 2004-12-29T22:45Z,
2012WorldPeace, 208.28.189.xxx, 213.253.39.xxx, 213.253.40.xxx, 5Q5, A314268, ALargeElk, Aa arquiza, Aaron McDaid, Aaron.michels, Abimccs, Abu badali, Acmuller, Acummin8,
Agateller, Agquarx, Al1432, Alan347, Alexander Maier, Alexf, Alexkon, Alienus, Alo world, Altenmann, Amerika, Anbro, Ancheta Wis, Andres, Andrew Lancaster, Andrewfhurt, Andrewpmk,
Andris, Angr, Anton H, Antonio Prates, Anypodetos, Aqui, Aranel, Arcadian, Architect of ucadia, ArchonMagnus, Ark, Arrowcatcher, Art LaPella, Astro Calisi, Aucitypops, AustinKnight,
Avirab, B9 hummingbird hovering, BIOEE278WIM2008, Bacchiad, Backin72, Balu.muthu, BarkerJr, Barnham, Baronnet, BashBrannigan, Bdubay, Beezhive, BiT, BillC, Bishopclinics, Bjdehut,
Blainster, Blueelectricstorm, BolonYokte, Borgx, Borislav, Brendanurbanwarrior, Brent Allsop, Brian0918, Bryan8020, Busboy, Byrgenwulf, CALR, CAPS LOCK, CX, Cacycle, Calamitybrook,
Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Capricorn42, Captain Smartass, Carn, Cassowary, Cat Cubed, Cdc, Cedders, Chaos, CharlesC, CharlesGillingham, Cheffoxx, Christian de Quincey, Chun-hian,
Ciphers, Cjwright79, Ckatz, Clicketyclack, Clovis Sangrail, Cognita, Columnist, Compass NW, Con Science, Conceiving consciousness, Consciousnessmystery, Conversion script, Coolmel,
Cowman109, Crimea, Crippled Sloth, Cyde, DCDuring, DFS454, DMR Sekhar, DV8 2XL, Da baum, Danhan, Daniel Case, DanielCD, Danko Georgiev, Danny lost, Danrules2, Dark Charles,
David Ludwig, Dbachmann, Dbfirs, Debatebob, Deeptrivia, DeirdreBar, Deli nk, Dell Adams, Delldot, Desawi, Dharmadhatu, Diamondlady1025, Dianelos, Diva industries, Djhbrown, Dlloader,
Dmr2, Doczilla, Domurchu, DrStein, Dreish, Dungate, EPadmirateur, Ec5618, Edhubbard, EditorASC, Ehheh, Ekotkie, El C, ElTchanggo, Elepnf, Encephalon, EncephalonSeven, Enric Naval,
Eric Kvaalen, Erich gasboy, Eu.stefan, Evil Monkey, Ewlyahoocom, Ezmorsella, Fahrenheit92, Fallenfromthesky, Famousdog, Fan-1967, Father O'Know, FeanorStar7, Fifelfoo, Flameoffire,
Fmorm, Fnielsen, Francois Dongier, Fredeaker, Fritz freiheit, Frmatt, Fuzzypeg, Gaius Cornelius, GalaazV, GameKeeper, Gdje je nestala duša svijeta, Geometer, Gioto, Gkoehler70, Go for it!,
Goethean, Goingstuckey, Graham87, Greensburger, Gregbard, HaeB, Hanasato, Harland1, Harnad, Hcx0331, Hdeasy, Hedonologist, Hephzibah Yohannan, Heron, Hesperian, Hordaland, Hu, Ian
Pitchford, Icut4you, Incka, Indeterminate, Infinity0, Instrument-luthier, Invertzoo, Iridescent, Isnow, Itschris, J04n, JCSBimp, JDPhD, JMD, JNW, JYolkowski, JaGa, Janice Rowe, Javik,
Jayhawk of Justice, Jaymay, Jeff3000, Jefffire, Jiohdi, Jisatsusha, Joesydney, John Hubbard, John Vandenberg, JohnBlackburne, Johnfos, Johnkarp, Jorend, JorisvS, Jrthorpe, Jwaycuilis, Jwdink,
Jwestbrook, KSchutte, Kamal.kr, Karol Langner, Katalaveno, Keepcalmandcarryon, Kees van Zon, Kenny sh, Kenosis, Kesaloma, Kilo-Lima, Kine, Kjdillon, Kmg90, KnowledgeAndVision,
Knverma, Kripkenstein, Kzollman, Lacatosias, Langdell, Lapaz, Larry Rosenfeld, Lcarscad, Letranova, Levineps, LeyteWolfer, Liang9993, LonesomeDrifter, Looie496, Lordvolton, Lova Falk,
Loxley, Ltradical, Lucidish, Lusanaherandraton, Lussmu, Lycurgus, M.karimipour@gmail.com, MPS, Magnus Manske, Male1979, MartinPoulter, MarylandArtLover, Matt McIrvin, Matthew
Auger, Matthew Stannard, MatthewJ, Matthisd, Mattisse, Maurice Carbonaro, Max Velmans, MaxSem, Mbmaciver, McGeddon, Mdd, Meco, Meditationguru, Meldor, Mfu254, Mgbell, Michael
Hardy, Michelferrari, Mike.lifeguard, Mikeybabel01, Mladifilozof, Mnemeson, MortenKringelbach, Mporch, Mr. Billion, MrJones, MrOllie, Msasscts, Mstroeck, Mtcv, Mtrack81, Mykhal,
Myscience, Nachx, Naddy, Narnibird, NawlinWiki, Nbhatla, Ndru01, NeMorgoth, Ned Block, Neotone, NeuronExMachina, Neutrality, Nick Michael, Niculaegeorgepion, Noizy,
Noneofyourbusiness, Nrets, Nullie, Oblivious, Oliver Pereira, Ordago, Ostracon, Ott, PMDrive1061, Patrickwilken, Pawyilee, Pax:Vobiscum, Pcubbage, Pearle, Pekka.virta, Persephone19,
PeterBokulich, Peterburton, Peterdjones, Philos, Pictureuploader, PigFlu Oink, Plumbago, PolarYukon, Pomte, Poor Yorick, Porcher, Preisler, Psb777, Pschelden, Psycan2, Pwjb, Quadell,
QuantumOne, RDF, RG2, RainbowOfLight, RainbowWiki, RandomP, Raven in Orbit, Ray Dassen, Razimantv, Rbarreira, Redaktor, Redheylin, Redquark, Renamed user 4, Renfield,
RepublicanJacobite, RexNL, Reyk, Rhobite, Rich Farmbrough, Richard001, Rick Norwood, Rjclaudio, Rjwilmsi, Rletzgus, Rmallott1, Robinhw, RodC, RolandR, Romanm, Romanpoet, Ross
Burgess, Rsanz, Ruedi33a, Rwiser, RyanParis, Ryanaxp, Ryguasu, S Marshall, Sacramentis, Salvo46, Sam Hocevar, Sam Korn, Sam Spade, Sampackgregory, SamuelRiv, Sandstein, ScAvenger
lv, Scarpy, Schlegel, Schwnj, Sct72, Serpent's Choice, Sfnile, Shadowjams, Shanata, Shato, Shii, Siddhi.powers, Simonster, Sinalet, Skraz, Skywalker, Slehar, SlimVirgin, Slipperyweasel,
Slugmaster, Smilo Don, Snickerson, So Smart s0 Dumb, SoCal, SolidscoreX, Solitude, Spencemac724, Spotfixer, Stampit, Standardfact, Stephen Allison, Stevertigo, Stringanomaly,
Suidafrikaan, Superjova, Svdmolen, Sverdrup, Svick, Sycomonkey, Symane, Szeldich, T. Baphomet, THEN WHO WAS PHONE?, Tartarus, Tassedethe, Tbone55, Tennenrishin, Tesseract2, The
Anome, The Rambling Man, The nnoob, Themfromspace, Thisisborin9, Thseamon, Tiktuk, Tim Shuba, Timl2k4, Timwi, TitchWundt, Tkorrovi, Tmh, Tobias Hoevekamp, Toby D, Tomburns,
Tomisti, Trevorgangstertoth, Tritium6, Tyharvey313, UberScienceNerd, ValorGigo, Vaughan, Vegetator, Velho, Verbal, Vhhkprhi, Vianello, Viriditas, Vishnava, Visualerror, Voice of All,
Voiceofspirit, Vpolavia, WJetChao, WLU, WOT, Wafulz, Walkerma, Wallywilby, Walton One, WatermelonPotion, Waycool27, Wegner48, Weldingfish, WereSpielChequers, Wereon, Wik,
Wiki alf, WikiLaurent, Wikiborg, Wikiik, Wikiklrsc, Wile E. Heresiarch, Willy turner, Wmahan, WpZurp, Xaosflux, Xezbeth, Xiornik, Yashram, Yidisheryid, Yoninah, Youandme, Zachorious,
Zahd, Zoz, Zzuuzz, Лев Дубовой, ‫לוכי לכ‬, ‫کشرز‬, 858 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

Image:RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:RobertFuddBewusstsein17Jh.png  License: Public Domain  Contributors: Robert Fludd

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