Consciousness: A Philosophical And Cognitive Science

The purpose of this paper is to review some of the current research regarding consciousness from both a philosophical and a cognitive science perspective looking at questions such as what is consciousness? If asked, could you point at it? Is consciousness biochemical? Does philosophy still have anything to offer to the field? We have drugs that alter cognitive processes but are these processes together what constitutes consciousness? Is introspection a by-product of these processes or is it the root of consciousness? Is it possible that we are extremely complexed behavior machines highly trained to react to our environments and one another? If consciousness exists, can it be replicated like intelligence and learning? First, the word

The issue is that humans have subjective experiences. This means that there is something it is like to be that person and only that person alone with that experience. We can’t explain how or why this occurs. As a tribal animal it would make more sense for there to be less (or no) discrepancy between our individual shared experiences. We can say that a being is conscious in this sense when there is something it is like to be that being and not another due to an experience. A mental state is conscious when there is something it is like to be in that state for that individual. We take this for granted but this is a powerful and unique ability. “Conscious states include states of perceptual experience, bodily sensation, mental imagery, emotional experience, occurrent thought, and more.” There is something it is like to hear a violin, to feel hate, to visualize the Grand Canyon, to feel shame, and to think that one is lost. These states have a phenomenal character, with phenomenal properties describing what it is like to be in the state. These qualia are not shared between individuals in equity. Also, let us not forget our singular ability to be introspective of these phenomenal properties. (Chalmers

The brain has been influenced by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution influencing perception and when considering the mind, giving us the ability of introspection among many other things. Why would we need the ability to be introspective if all we needed to do was to survive, to react to our environment like our non-hominid ancestors still do. What was the (recent) selective pressure that forced the mind to become a human quality? If consciousness is a human attribute then when did it evolve? Why? If the mind really is a by-product than destroying it in some way shouldn’t have any real consequence. That’s a strike against Huxley because this is obviously not the case. It would be absurd to think we could destroy the mind while leaving everything else in tacked. And if we could would we still be human? There are very real ways of stopping our mind (perception, volitions, emotions, personality, etc.) from functioning but not without altering the physical