What are the Metaphysical aspects behind the concept of consciousness?
To answer this question we need to know what exactly is metaphysics. According to the available sources we know that Metaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest .With this we try to question the aspects which are not yet properly answered by science and still is a hot topic of debates and discussion. So what are metaphysical aspects of consciousness that we need to answer. Basically we need to define what exactly is consciousness and how it could be distinguished
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Some call it a state of awareness or a state of state of being aware of external object, ability to experience and feel or even wakefulness. There has been many historical debates on the concept of consciousness. The concept of consciousness came into existence as like the word soul did. Many great philosophers like Descartes and Locke have worked on the philosophical concept of consciousness to jot down its essential properties. Field of interest of the philosophers is the metaphysical aspect of the conscious state. Whether such a state exists or not. If yes, whether it is fundamentally coherent with our intuitions or not. How could the mechanism of consciousness be explained? How can it be related to physical being of a person or his language or it could be understood by distinguishing between physical and mental conditions of a person/ being. Can consciousness be achieved by a non living thing like machine or Artificial …show more content…
Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 9 (20):533-544 ). We also define consciousness as an aspect of reality that manifests itself. To understand what exactly is consciousness we need to make first person and third person perspective. First person to make us know about what is getting into ones brain from surrounding through his senses and what thought process is involved to take up a decision by the mind. Third person to gather empirical data for describing the output of this thought process through his body to the surroundings. Using the descriptive data from them we could possibly construct model of various forms of consciousness. There has also been many philosophical debates on the range of properties that manifests in conscious
However, advancements in the field made it possible to better understand that not only was psychology more complex than concepts of consciousness, but also that there were many other mental aspects at play. Consciousness has since been redefined to express the idea of awareness – both of personal being and the environment that exists around it. It is through cognitive neuroscience, which is the study of the brain in relation to its mental processes, that scientists can better understand the level of consciousness. Knowing how the body reacts at various levels, what human control exists in each and how they contribute to the activities of the brain can likely explain a lot about human behavior. Within cognitive neuroscience, the latest research is able to the show the ways in which brain activity centered on imagined thoughts, personal ideals and concepts and the inner working of this organ direct behavior among individuals of varying backgrounds and physical
The subjectiveness of one’s conscious experience is what makes it special and unique to that one organism, which is why ant
What seems special about this passage is a third realization: that this moment of consciousness will not be converted into
But, with this being, there is no consciousness inside. It lives, acts, and breathes as if it were a normal human, with nothing to differentiate it from a being that has a consciousness. David Chalmers uses this example to help emphasize the idea of consciousness, and how
1. Professor Dennett does not believe in the "hard" problem of consciousness as he believes that any aspect of it that is based in reality will have a scientific basis. The issue is that many people see the aspects of consciousness that there is a scientific basis as not real consciousness; which can actually be seen in the comments on that very video. As different pieces of consciousness become explainable, the definition in people's minds seems to change. I agree with him in the fact that the hard problem of consciousness does not exist.
Cleanthes argues that animals must have consciousness because they are built from the same complex and perfect systems that human beings are built from. He cannot accept that minds so similar to our own cannot be as “complex and purposeful” (pg. 2). Philo refutes Cleanthes’ argument with three points. First of all, Philo says “nature is not perfect, and is often defective, or excessive (pg.2)”. We need rain, but too much rain causes floods, which causes destruction.
For Schopenhauer, our consciousness is in the service of our will. It is common in the philosophy world that for us to know our very being, essence, and meaning we have to look inside our very own self and in successfully doing that, we also figure out the essence or meaning of the universe for we are as one with it. Everything that is within the universe is all connected for we are like river; we flow in the same direction which connects everything in it and with one mean or end. But for Schopenhauer, there is only one relative object that is present in each and every one of us – our physical body. But Schopenhauer classified our physical body in two categories; one is the Will, it is subjective and within, and the other one is the representation, objective and outside or external.
When looking at the debate between Naturalism versus Christian View, focus is on how did we get where we are today with complex thoughts and behaviors. Naturalists look at this question from the aspects of everything just coming into being through natural occurrences. For a Naturalist, they like to look for scientific evidence to back up their idea that the universe came together through evolutionary principles over time. One question that Naturalists have a difficult time answering deals with the conscious. What is a conscious and why do we have it?
2 Epiphenomenal Qualia Uts Shrestha Frank Jackson attempts to show that physicalism (the doctrine that the entire world is purely physical or is reducible to a physical phenomenon) is false, or at the very least is not comprehensive. In his attempt, Jackson, presents the Knowledge argument and the Modal argument. The knowledge argument seems to be stronger of the two. It holds that there is an essence of the mind and consciousness that cannot be deducted by a(any) purely physicalist truth.
Being that the mind is physical, there must be some aspects of consciousness that can be reduced. The reducible qualities of consciousness include the functional aspects of the brain—behavior, information processing, reaction to stimuli, etc. On the other hand, there is the subjective experience that arises from these physical processes. Can the subjective part of consciousness be explained by physical processes? I do not think that is possible.
Qualia, in the broader sense of the word, is understood as the qualitative properties of conscious experience or the phenomenal character of experience (i.e. what it is like subjectively to undergo the experience). The meaning of the term “qualia” will differ based on which philosopher’s views you support. In this paper, I will be focusing on Dennett’s views; there are other views on qualia but I will not be examining these views in my essay. Since centuries past, countless studies have attempted to uncover the root cause of qualia and understand how it relates to the notion of consciousness, but a definite conclusion has yet to be reached.
Philosophy of mind has a dilemma: On the one hand, much of reality is explainable with purely physical terms. This forms the foundation of modern science, one of the main pillars of the modern world. On the other hand, with human beings, there is least an appearance of a mental realm, because we seem to have features such as free will. This appearance is recognizable even to those who are committed to physicalism.
Within the unconscious mind exists three different apparatuses: Id, Ego, and
As well as Freud’s view on what a dreams function could be. Lastly I will discuss how dreams sooth the soul before death. Flanagan’s reason for believing that consciousness is an adaptation stems from various questions in his book he starts my saying “what functions does consciousness serve” (Flanagan,
The body is again seen as a centring focus and felt sense is recognized as a process that continues all the time, walking or sleeping around is basically the dreambody. New insights can be generated through the dreamdoor, which is by amplifying the dreaming process. Altered state is a mental state induced by psychological agents which deviates from the normal walking state of