Characteristics of Consciousness

1
Characteristics of Consciousness

• Subjectivity
• Change
• Continuity
• Intentionality
• Selectivity

William James (1842-1910) Principles of Psychology
2
Subjectivity

• Every thought is part of a personal
  consciousness The universal fact is not
  feelings and thoughts exist, but I think and
  I feel (William James, 1890)

3
Change

• Within each personal consciousness thought is
  always changing (William James, 1890)
• contents vary
• every moment is unique

4
Continuity

• Within each personal consciousness, thought is
  sensibly continuous.... In talking of it
  hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought,
  of consciousness (William James, 1890)
• no short-term gaps
• no long-term gaps

5
Intentionality

• Human thought appears to deal with objects
  independent of itself that is, it is cognitive,
  or possesses the function of knowing. (William
  James, 1890)
• consciousness has contents
• I am aware of something

6
Selectivity

• Consciousness is always interested more in one
  part of its object than in another, and welcomes,
  rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks...
  (William James, 1890)
• attention as selection
• capacity limitation

7
Contents of Conscious Experience

• Sensory perception
• exteroception
• interoception
• Mental imagery
• Inner speech
• Conceptual thought
• Remembering
• Emotional Feeling
• Volition
• Self-awareness

8
Sensory Perception

• Exteroception
• Perception of things outside the body
• Interoception
• Perception of things inside the body
• Feelings
• Joy, Fear, Anxiety
• Internal sensations
• Pain, Sleeping limbs, Fatigue

9
Mental Imagery

• Visual Imagery
• Counting the windows in your house
• Shepards mental rotation
• Auditory imagery
• Hearing songs in the shower
• Olfactory imagery
• Smelling Phantom Odors
• Somatosensory Imagery
• Physical Self

10
Inner Speech

• Thinking in words to oneself
• Reading
• Following steps in problem solving
• Rehearsing planned actions
• Rehearsing past actions
• Inner speech in dreams

11
Conceptual Thought

• The Abstract Nature of Thought
• The dog chased the cat
• What dog? What cat?
• The triangle is blue
• Is Thought Abstract?
• The birds on the branches were singing
• Robins
• Turkeys

12
Remembering

• Episodic Memory - memory for a specific episode
  of experience
• Proust, in Swanns Way
• Galton, in Galtons Walk
• Nonepisodic Memory
• Procedural memory - remembering how to do it
• Semantic memory - remembering what it is

13
Tulvings Types of Memory

• Anoetic
• Neither awareness of knowledge nor of personal
  engagement
• Noetic
• Awareness of knowledge based on experience, but
  without awareness of personal engagement
• Autonoetic
• Awareness of personal engagement in remembered
  events and experiences

14
Emotional Feeling

• Subjective aspect of emotion
• Two dimensions
• Intensity
• Quality (pleasant vs. unpleasant)
• Primacy of emotion
• Zajonc - the familiarity effect
• Seamon - affect cognition

15
Volition

• Act of deciding upon a course of action will
• Is consciousness necessary to make a decision?
• Is consciousness necessary for purposive
  behavior?
• Consciousness as a part of free will

16
Self-awareness

• Your sense of personal identity and your
  knowledge and beliefs about yourself.
• (Farthing, 1992, p. 40)