Brief Summary for All Required Topics for the Consciousness Exam
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Course
Consciousness (6462PI002Y)
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
This document contains a table with keywords/topics sorted and color-coded by week. The keywords/topics are the ones posted by the course coordinators as required material for the exam. There are brief explanations for each keyword/topic for quick and efficient studying. It gives a great overall vi...
Week 1 – The Problem
there is an “inner theater” inside the head which is managed by a “homunculus” who also has an
Cartesian Theatre
inner theater equally managed by his/her homunculus, and so on and on.
Cartesian Materialism consciousness is not separate from the brain, there must be a place where it all comes together
Consciousness (definition of) no accepted definition, (e.g. what is it like to be, the qualia experience)
during saccades, even seemingly obvious visual changes can go unnoticed (we have a very poor
Change Blindness
trans-saccadic memory)
Descartes’ theory on the the body is extended, the mind is non-extended; they interact via the pineal gland
relationship between (Spatiotemporal Pinealism)
conscious mind and body
Dualism (property vs. substance: the word consists of 2 different substances (mind & matter)
substance) property: only 1 substance, but can be described in both physical and mental terms
Easy problems the mechanisms which can be addressed by mainstream cognitive science (e.g. attention)
mental states are produced by physical events but mental states cannot have an effect on
Epiphenomenalism
physical events (the causation is only one-way)
there is a black box in every attempt to answer the connection between physical processes and
Explanatory Gap
subjective experiences (e.g. neurons firing *magic* subjective feeling of love)
a monist materialist theory about the nature of mental states; mental states are identified by
Functionalism
what they do rather than by what they are made of
Hard problem how do physical processes in the brain give subjective experience?
Idealism consciousness is the ultimate source of reality, not physical things (e.g. Berkeley, type of monism)
Identity theory mental states = brain states (monist materialist theory)
Inattentional blindness failing to perceive an unexpected stimulus (result of a lack of attention) e.g. invisible gorilla
Mary has always been colorblind, and studies colors throughout her whole life. She can explain
Mary, the color scientist everything about them. Does she know everything about color? Will she be surprised the first
time she actually sees color?
Monism approaches to there is only one substance (mental vs physical) idealism vs physicalism/materialism
consciousness (epiphenomenalism, functionalism, identity theory)
Mysterianism a physical understanding of consciousness lies beyond our understanding
consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe (e.g. like energy and matter); material
Panpsychism
things have awareness or mental properties (but only primitive)
= a being physically indistinguishable from an actual or possible human being but lacks
Philosophers’ zombie consciousness; invented to prove that not everything in the world is physical, and consciousness is
not physical
= materialism, a monist theory (there is only matter); e.g. epiphenomenalism, functionalism,
Physicalism
identity theory
Qualia the subjective quality of perceptions (e.g. feeling the wind on your face)
the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component
Reductionism
parts
Thought Experiments (in typically used in philosophy to make arguments, to clarify concepts and to debunk reasoning
philosophy) fallacies (in relation with the hard problem and qualia)
William James and the consciousness is an uninterrupted 'flow', a continuum, and it cannot be broken into constituent
“stream of consciousness” parts (<> structuralism)
Nagel, 1974, consciousness and subjective experience cannot, at least with the contemporary
‘What is it like to be a bat’
understanding of physicalism & reductionism, be satisfactorily explained with the concepts of
thought experiment
physics
Week 2 – The Brain
how objects, background and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single
Binding problem
experience
two dissimilar images are presented simultaneously to each eye, and perception alternates
Binocular Rivalry
between them
Bi-stable perception one stimulus can be seen in 2 different ways, but not at the same time (e.g. dancing girl)
brainstem: primitive, essential function
reticular activating system: cortex-activation, sleep-wake, & attention
Brain (functions of different cerebellum: motor control
regions) thalamus: sensory inputs
limbic system: hippocampus (memories), amygdala (emotion & reward), hypothalamus
(autonomic nervous system), cingulate gyrus (emotion, pain, motivation)
Eliminative materialism consciousness = brain activity; the mental states we assume to exists actually don’t exist
Global Workspace Theory of only a few things are available to consciousness while many unconscious processes are going on
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