Abstract Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) Where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence, and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing? Input analysis is thought to be initially “preconscious” and “pre-attentive” - fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by “conscious,” “focal-attentive” analysis, which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity. The present target article reviews evidence that consciousness performs none of these functions. Consciousness nearly always results from focal-attentive processing (as a form of output) but does not itself enter into this or any other form of human information processing. This suggests that the term “conscious process” needs reexamination. Consciousness appears to be necessary in a variety of tasks because they require focal-attentive processing; if consciousness is absent, focal-attentive processing is absent. From a first-person perspective , however, conscious states are causally effective. First-person accounts are complementary to third-person accounts. Although they can be translated into third-person accounts, they cannot be reduced to them.
Part 1. Theoretical Perspectives: Social, Cognitive, and Neural Mechanisms Underlying Self-Conscious Emotions. Tracy, Robins, The Self in Self-Conscious Emotions: A Cognitive Appraisal Approach. Tangney, Stuewig, Mashek, What's Moral about the Self-Conscious Emotions? Leary, How the Self Became Involved in Affective Experience: Three Sources of Self-Reflective Emotions. Beer, Neural Systems for Self-Conscious Emotions and Their Underlying Appraisals. Gruenewald, Dickerson, Kemeny, A Social Function for Self-Conscious Emotions: The Social Self Preservation Theory. Part 2. Developmental Contexts and Processes. Lagattuta, Thompson, The Development of Self-Conscious Emotions: Cognitive Processes and Social Influences. Hart, Matsuba, The Development of Pride and Moral Life. Lewis, Self-Conscious Emotional Development. Part 3. Cultural Influences. Goetz, Keltner, Shifting Meanings of Self-Conscious Emotions across Cultures: A Social-Functional Approach. Fessler, From Appeasement to Conformity: Evolutionary and Cultural Perspectives on Shame, Competition, and Cooperation. Edelstein, Shaver, A Cross-Cultural Examination of Lexical Studies of Self-Conscious Emotions. Wong, Tsai, Cultural Models of Shame and Guilt. Li, Fischer, Respect as a Positive Self-Conscious Emotion in European Americans and Chinese. Part 4. Specific Emotions: Function and Conceptualization. Miller,Is Embarrassment a Blessing or a Curse? Tracy, Robins, The Nature of Pride. Gilbert, The Evolution of Shame as a Marker for Relationship Security: A Biopsychosocial Approach. Elison, Harter, Humiliation Causes, Correlates, and Consequences. Ferguson, Brugman,White, Eyre, Shame and Guilt as Morally Warranted Experiences. Part 5. Special Topics and Applications. Lickel, Schmader, Spanovic, Group-Conscious Emotions: The Implications of Others' Wrongdoings for Identity and Relationships. Stuewig, Tangney, Shame and Guilt in Antisocial and Risky Behaviors. Roberts, Goldenberg, Wrestling with Nature: An Existential Perspective on the Body and Gender in Self-Conscious Emotions. Bosson, Prewitt-Freilino, Overvalued and Ashamed: Considering the Roles of Self-Esteem and Self-Conscious Emotions in Covert Narcissism. Scheff, Runaway Nationalism: Alienation, Shame, and Anger.Part 6. Assessment. Robins, Noftle, Tracy, Assessing Self-Conscious Emotions: A Review of Self-Report and Nonverbal Measures.
New studies suggest consciousness can't be judged solely by behavior, whether it's a chatbot discussing philosophy or a bee searching for nectar。 Researchers are increasingly focusing on the internal mechanisms of brains and computers, concluding that today's AI is likely not conscious while leaving open the possibility for both conscious insects a
Abstract Voluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological “readiness potentials” (RPs). With spontaneous acts involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins at about—550 ms. Such RPs were used to indicate the minimum onset times for the cerebral activity that precedes a fully endogenous voluntary act. The time of conscious intention to act was obtained from the subject's recall of the spatial clock position of a revolving spot at the time of his initial awareness of intending or wanting to move (W). W occurred at about—200 ms. Control experiments, in which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of any perceived event. For spontaneous voluntary acts, RP onset preceded the uncorrected Ws by about 350 ms and the Ws corrected for S by about 400 ms. The direction of this difference was consistent and significant throughout, regardless of which of several measures of RP onset or W were used. It was concluded that cerebral initiation of a spontaneous voluntary act begins unconsciously. However, it was found that the final decision to act could still be consciously controlled during the 150 ms or so remaining after the specific conscious intention appears. Subjects can in fact “veto” motor performance during a 100–200-ms period before a prearranged time to act. The role of conscious will would be not to initiate a specific voluntary act but rather to select and control volitional outcome. It is proposed that conscious will can function in a permissive fashion, either to permit or to prevent the motor implementation of the intention to act that arises unconsciously. Alternatively, there may be the need for a conscious activation or triggering, without which the final motor output would not follow the unconscious cerebral initiating and preparatory processes.
A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
Your trip starts impacting the planet before you even leave home。 Here are a few pointers for keeping your footprint small
Understanding the extent and limits of non-conscious processing is an important step on the road to a thorough understanding of the cognitive and cerebral correlates of conscious perception. In this article, we present a critical review of research on subliminal perception during masking and other related experimental conditions. Although initially controversial, the possibility that a broad variety of processes can be activated by a non-reportable stimulus is now well established. Behavioural findings of subliminal priming indicate that a masked word or digit can have an influence on perceptual, lexical and semantic levels, while neuroimaging directly visualizes the brain activation that it evokes in several cortical areas. This activation is often attenuated under subliminal presentation conditions compared to consciously reportable conditions, but there are sufficiently many exceptions, in paradigms such as the attentional blink, to indicate that high activation, per se, is not a sufficient condition for conscious access to occur. We conclude by arguing that for a stimulus to reach consciousness, two factors are jointly needed: (i) the input stimulus must have enough strength (which can be prevented by masking) and (ii) it must receive top-down attention (which can be prevented by drawing attention to another stimulus or task). This view leads to a distinction between two types of non-conscious processes, which we call subliminal and preconscious. According to us, maintaining this distinction is essential in order to make sense of the growing neuroimaging data on the neural correlates of consciousness.
Entropy is a dimensionless quantity that is used for measuring uncertainty about the state of a system but it can also imply physical qualities, where high entropy is synonymous with high disorder. Entropy is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, with a particular focus on the psychedelic state. The psychedelic state is considered an exemplar of a primitive or primary state of consciousness that preceded the development of modern, adult, human, normal waking consciousness. Based on neuroimaging data with psilocybin, a classic psychedelic drug, it is argued that the defining feature of "primary states" is elevated entropy in certain aspects of brain function, such as the repertoire of functional connectivity motifs that form and fragment across time. Indeed, since there is a greater repertoire of connectivity motifs in the psychedelic state than in normal waking consciousness, this implies that primary states may exhibit "criticality," i.e., the property of being poised at a "critical" point in a transition zone between order and disorder where certain phenomena such as power-law scaling appear. Moreover, if primary states are critical, then this suggests that entropy is suppressed in normal waking consciousness, meaning that the brain operates just below criticality. It is argued that this entropy suppression furnishes normal waking consciousness with a constrained quality and associated metacognitive functions, including reality-testing and self-awareness. It is also proposed that entry into primary states depends on a collapse of the normally highly organized activity within the default-mode network (DMN) and a decoupling between the DMN and the medial temporal lobes (which are normally significantly coupled). These hypotheses can be tested by examining brain activity and associated cognition in other candidate primary states such as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and early psychosis and comparing these with non-primary states such as normal waking consciousness and the anaesthetized state.
Subliminal stimuli can be deeply processed and activate similar brain areas as consciously perceived stimuli. This raises the question which signatures of neural activity critically differentiate conscious from unconscious processing. Transient synchronization of neural activity has been proposed as a neural correlate of conscious perception. Here we test this proposal by comparing the electrophysiological responses related to the processing of visible and invisible words in a delayed matching to sample task. Both perceived and nonperceived words caused a similar increase of local (gamma) oscillations in the EEG, but only perceived words induced a transient long-distance synchronization of gamma oscillations across widely separated regions of the brain. After this transient period of temporal coordination, the electrographic signatures of conscious and unconscious processes continue to diverge. Only words reported as perceived induced (1) enhanced theta oscillations over frontal regions during the maintenance interval, (2) an increase of the P300 component of the event-related potential, and (3) an increase in power and phase synchrony of gamma oscillations before the anticipated presentation of the test word. We propose that the critical process mediating the access to conscious perception is the early transient global increase of phase synchrony of oscillatory activity in the gamma frequency range.
This article provides educators at all levels with a theoretical rationale for place-conscious education; it also discusses pedagogical pathways, and institutional challenges, to place-consciousness. Drawing on insights from phenomenology, critical geography, bioregionalism, ecofeminism, and other place-conscious traditions, the author gathers diverse perspectives on “place” to demonstrate the profoundly pedagogical nature of human experience with places. Five “dimensions of place” are described that can shape the development of a socio-ecological, place-conscious education: (a) the perceptual, (b) the sociological, (c) the ideological, (d) the political, and (e) the ecological. After discussing these, the author reframes several place-conscious educational traditions. The article concludes with an analysis of the possibilities for place-conscious education in an era that defines institutional accountability by standards and testing.
The relationships between spatial attention and conscious perception are currently the object of intense debate. Recent evidence of double dissociations between attention and consciousness cast doubt on the time-honored concept of attention as a gateway to consciousness. Here we review evidence from behavioral, neurophysiologic, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging experiments, showing that distinct sorts of spatial attention can have different effects on visual conscious perception. While endogenous, or top-down attention, has weak influence on subsequent conscious perception of near-threshold stimuli, exogenous, or bottom-up forms of spatial attention appear instead to be a necessary, although not sufficient, step in the development of reportable visual experiences. Fronto-parietal networks important for spatial attention, with peculiar inter-hemispheric differences, constitute plausible neural substrates for the interactions between exogenous spatial attention and conscious perception.
How can conscious and unconscious influences of memory be measured? In this article, a process-dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby, 1991) was used to separate automatic (unconscious) and consciously controlled influences within a task. For recall cued with word stems, automatic influences of memory (a) remained invariant across manipulations of attention that substantially reduced conscious recollection and (b) were highly dependent on perceptual similarity from study to test. Comparisons with results obtained through an indirect test show the advantages of the process-dissociation procedure as a means of measuring unconscious influences. The measure of recollection derived from this procedure is superior to measures gained from classic test theory and signal-detection theory. The process-dissociation procedure combines assumptions from these 2 traditional approaches to measuring memory. Dissociations between performance on direct and indirect tests of memory supply examples of effects of the past in the absence of remembering (for reviews, see Hintzman, 1990; Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988). In an indirect test, sub-jects are not asked to report on memory for an event as they
I. PRELIMINARIES 1. Two Concepts of Mind 2. Supervenience and Explanation II. THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 3. Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained? 4. Naturalistic Dualism 5. The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment III. TOWARD A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 6. The Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition 7. Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia 8. Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation IV. APPLICATIONS 9. Strong Artificial Intelligence 10. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Notes Bibliography
Can conscious processing be inferred from neurophysiological measurements? Some models stipulate that the active maintenance of perceptual representations across time requires consciousness. Capitalizing on this assumption, we designed an auditory paradigm that evaluates cerebral responses to violations of temporal regularities that are either local in time or global across several seconds. Local violations led to an early response in auditory cortex, independent of attention or the presence of a concurrent visual task, whereas global violations led to a late and spatially distributed response that was only present when subjects were attentive and aware of the violations. We could detect the global effect in individual subjects using functional MRI and both scalp and intracerebral event-related potentials. Recordings from 8 noncommunicating patients with disorders of consciousness confirmed that only conscious individuals presented a global effect. Taken together these observations suggest that the presence of the global effect is a signature of conscious processing, although it can be absent in conscious subjects who are not aware of the global auditory regularities. This simple electrophysiological marker could thus serve as a useful clinical tool.
OBJECTIVE: To establish consensus recommendations among health care specialties for defining and establishing diagnostic criteria for the minimally conscious state (MCS). BACKGROUND: There is a subgroup of patients with severe alteration in consciousness who do not meet diagnostic criteria for coma or the vegetative state (VS). These patients demonstrate inconsistent but discernible evidence of consciousness. It is important to distinguish patients in MCS from those in coma and VS because preliminary findings suggest that there are meaningful differences in outcome. METHODS: An evidence-based literature review of disorders of consciousness was completed to define MCS, develop diagnostic criteria for entry into MCS, and identify markers for emergence to higher levels of cognitive function. RESULTS: There were insufficient data to establish evidence-based guidelines for diagnosis, prognosis, and management of MCS. Therefore, a consensus-based case definition with behaviorally referenced diagnostic criteria was formulated to facilitate future empirical investigation. CONCLUSIONS: MCS is characterized by inconsistent but clearly discernible behavioral evidence of consciousness and can be distinguished from coma and VS by documenting the presence of specific behavioral features not found in either of these conditions. Patients may evolve to MCS from coma or VS after acute brain injury. MCS may also result from degenerative or congenital nervous system disorders. This condition is often transient but may also exist as a permanent outcome. Defining MCS should promote further research on its epidemiology, neuropathology, natural history, and management.
Wallace Chafe demonstrates how the study of language and consciousness together can provide an unexpectedly broad understanding of the way the mind works. Relying on analyses of conversational speech, written fiction and nonfiction, the North American Indian language Seneca, and the music of Mozart and of the Seneca people, he investigates both the flow of ideas through consciousness and the displacement of consciousness by way of memory and imagination. Chafe draws on several decades of research to demonstrate that understanding the nature of consciousness is essential to understanding many topics of linguistic importance, such as anaphora, tense, clause structure, and intonation, as well as stylistic usages such as the historical present and free indirect style. This book offers a comprehensive picture of the dynamic natures of language and consciousness for linguists, psychologists, literary scholars, computer scientists, anthropologists, and philosophers.
Abstract When the stored representation of the meaning of a stimulus is accessed through the processing of a sensory input it is maintained in an activated state for a certain amount of time that allows for further processing. This semantic activation is generally accompanied by conscious identification, which can be demonstrated by the ability of a person to perform discriminations on the basis of the meaning of the stimulus. The idea that a sensory input can give rise to semantic activation without concomitant conscious identification was the central thesis of the controversial research in subliminal perception. Recently, new claims for the existence of such phenomena have arisen from studies in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual pattern masking. Because of the fundamental role played by these types of experiments in cognitive psychology, the new assertions have raised widespread interest. The purpose of this paper is to show that this enthusiasm may be premature. Analysis of the three new lines of evidence for semantic activation without conscious identification leads to the following conclusions. (1) Dichotic listening cannot provide the conditions needed to demonstrate the phenomenon. These conditions are better fulfilled in parafoveal vision and are realized ideally in pattern masking. (2) Evidence for the phenomenon is very scanty for parafoveal vision, but several tentative demonstrations have been reported for pattern masking. It can be shown, however, that none of these studies has included the requisite controls to ensure that semantic activation was not accompanied by conscious identification of the stimulus at the time of presentation. (3) On the basis of current evidence it is most likely that these stimuli were indeed consciously identified.
Self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame, pride) are fundamentally important to a wide range of psychological processes, yet they have received relatively little attention compared to other, more “basic ” emotions (e.g., sadness, joy). This article outlines the unique features that distinguish self-conscious from basic emotions and then explains why generally accepted models of basic emotions do not adequately capture the self-conscious emotion process. The authors present a new model of self-conscious emotions, specify a set of predictions derived from the model, and apply the model to narcissistic self-esteem regulation. Finally, the authors discuss the model’s broader implications for future research on self and emotion. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, experiences such profound shame from failing to achieve the American dream that he commits suicide by the final act of the play. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is so overwhelmed by guilt after murdering her king, she
Abstract— A method has been developed for the simultaneous measurement of the rates of glucose consumption in the various structural and functional components of the brain in vivo. The method can be applied to most laboratory animals in the conscious state. It is based on the use of 2‐deoxy‐D‐[ 14 C]glucose ([ 14 C]DG) as a tracer for the exchange of glucose between plasma and brain and its phosphorylation by hexokinase in the tissues. [ 14 C]DG is used because the label in its product, [ 14 C]deoxyglucose‐6‐phosphate, is essentially trapped in the tissue over the time course of the measurement. A model has been designed based on the assumptions of a steady state for glucose consumption, a first order equilibration of the free [ 14 C]DG pool in the tissue with the plasma level, and relative rates of phosphorylation of [ 14 C]DG and glucose determined by their relative concentrations in the precursor pools and their respective kinetic constants for the hexokinase reaction. An operational equation based on this model has been derived in terms of determinable variables. A pulse of [ 14 C]DG is administered intravenously and the arterial plasma [ 14 C]DG and glucose concentrations monitored for a preset time between 30 and 45min. At the prescribed time, the head is removed and frozen in liquid N 2 ‐chilled Freon XII, and the brain sectioned for autoradiography. Local tissue concentrations of [ 14 C]DG are determined by quantitative autoradiography. Local cerebral glucose consumption is calculated by the equation on the basis of these measured values. The method has been applied to normal albino rats in the conscious state and under thiopental anesthesia. The results demonstrate that the local rates of glucose consumption in the brain fall into two distinct distributions, one for gray matter and the other for white matter. In the conscious rat the values in the gray matter vary widely from structure to structure (54‐197 μmol/100 g/min) with the highest values in structures related to auditory function, e.g. medial geniculate body, superior olive, inferior colliculus, and auditory cortex. The values in white matter are more uniform (i.e. 33–40 μmo1/100 g/min) at levels approximately one‐fourth to one‐half those of gray matter. Heterogeneous rates of glucose consumption are frequently seen within specific structures, often revealing a pattern of cytoarchitecture. Thiopental anesthesia markedly depresses the rates of glucose utilization throughout the brain, particularly in gray matter, and metabolic rate throughout gray matter becomes more uniform at a lower level.
The recordable cerebral activity (readiness-potential, RP) that precedes a freely voluntary, fully endogenous motor act was directly compared with the reportable time (W) for appearance of the subjective experience of 'wanting' or intending to act. The onset of cerebral activity clearly preceded by at least several hundred milliseconds the reported time of conscious intention to act. This relationship held even for those series (with 'type II' RPs) in which subjects reported that all of the 40 self-initiated movements in the series appeared 'spontaneously' and capriciously. Data were obtained in at least 6 different experimental sessions with each of 5 subjects. In series with type II RPs, onset of the main negative shift in each RP preceded the corresponding mean W value by an average of about 350 ms, and by a minimum of about 150 ms. In series with type I RPs, in which an experience of preplanning occurred in some of the 40 self-initiated acts, onset of RP preceded W by an average of about 800 ms (or by 500 ms, taking onset of RP at 90 per cent of its area). Reports of W time depended upon the subject's recall of the spatial 'clock-position' of a revolving spot at the time of his initial awareness of wanting or intending to move. Two different modes of recall produced similar values. Subjects distinguished awareness of wanting to move (W) from awareness of actually moving (M). W times were consistently and substantially negative to, in advance of, mean times reported for M and also those for S, the sensation elicited by a task-related skin stimulus delivered at irregular times that were unknown to the subject. It is concluded that cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any (at least recallable) subjective awareness that a 'decision' to act has already been initiated cerebrally. This introduces certain constraints on the potentiality for conscious initiation and control of voluntary acts.