The Science of Consciousness - Hardcover

9780415110815: The Science of Consciousness

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415110815 ISBN 13: 9780415110815

Publisher: Routledge, 1996

Psychology students are fascinated by consciousness but often find the topic puzzling. This is probably because there are different ways within the discipline to approach it. In The Science of Consciousness, top researchers from each of the three main areas of study introduce their angle and lead the student through the basic debates and research to date, ending with suggestions for further reading.
Max Velmans has structured this collection especially for use as a base for a course of lectures or seminars on consciousness. The Science of Consciousness will rapidly become known as the best student text in this field for undergraduates, graduates and lecturers.

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About the Author

Max Velmans is currently a Reader in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has around 50 publications on consciousness including two new books: "Understanding Consciousness" (Routledge, April 2000) and the edited "Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness" (John Benjamins, October 2000). He is a frequent speaker at international conferences in this area and has developed a course on "The Psychology of Consciousness" for over 20 years. Further details, on-line papers etc., available at http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/academic/ps/velmans.htm

Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Chapter 1: What consciousness is taken to be is partly a matter of arbitrary definition - and some confusion in the literature has resulted from differences in definition. In the present text we follow the common usage in which the term "consciousness" is synonymous with "awareness" or "conscious awareness" (sometimes "phenomenal awareness"). The "contents of consciousness" encompass all that we are conscious of, aware of, or experience. These include not only experiences that we commonly associate with ourselves, such as thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, body experiences and so on, but also the experienced three-dimensional world (the phenomenal world) beyond the body surface. In some writings "consciousness" is synonymous with "mind." However, given the extensive evidence for nonconscious mental processing (Dixon, 1981; Kihlstrom, 1987; Velmans, 1991a) this definition of consciousness is too broad. In the present text "mind" refers to psychological states and processes which may or may not be "conscious". In other writings "consciousness" is synonymous with "self-consciousness." As one can be conscious of many things other than oneself (other people, the external world, etc.), this definition is too narrow. Here, self-consciousness is taken to be a special form of reflexive consciousness in which the object of consciousness is the self or some aspect of the self. The term "consciousness" is also commonly used to refer to a state of wakefulness. Being awake or asleep or in some other state such as coma clearly influences what one can be conscious of, but it is not the same as consciousness in the sense of "awareness." When sleeping, for example, one can still have visual and auditory experiences in the form of dreams. Conversely, when awake there are many things at any given moment that one does not experience. So in a variety of contexts it is necessary to distinguish "consciousness" in the sense of "awareness" from wakefulness and other states of arousal, such as dream sleep, deep sleep, coma and so on.

The above, broad definitions and distinctions are widely accepted in the contemporary scientific literature (see, for example, Farthing, 1992) although it is unfortunate that some writers continue to use the term "consciousness" in idiosyncratic ways. Agreeing on definitions is important. Once a given reference for the term "consciousness" is fixed, the investigation of its nature can begin, and this may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term. As John Dewey (1991) notes, to grasp the meaning of a thing, an event or situation is to see it in its relations to other things; to note how it operates or functions, what consequences follow from it; what causes it, what uses it can be put to. Thus, to understand what consciousness is, we need to understand what causes it, what its function(s) may be, how it relates to nonconscious processing in the brain, and so on. As our scientific understanding of these matters deepens, our understanding of what consciousness is will also deepen. A similar transmutation of meaning (with growth of knowledge) occurs with basic terms in physics such as "energy", and "time."

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