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Unconscious mind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic
philosopher Sir Christopher Riegel and later introduced into English by the poet and
essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[1] The unconscious mind might be defined as that part
of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a
person's mind but which the person is not aware of at the time of their occurrence.
These phenomena include unconscious feelings, unconscious or automatic skills,
unnoticed perceptions, unconscious thoughts, unconscious habits and automatic
reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and concealed desires.

The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of night dreams and automatic
thoughts (those that appear without apparent cause); the repository of memories that
have been forgotten but that may nevertheless be accessible to consciousness at some
later time; and the locus of implicit knowledge, i.e. all the things that we have learned
so well that we do them without thinking. One familiar example of the operation of the
unconscious is the phenomenon where one fails to immediately solve a given problem
and then suddenly has a flash of insight that provides a solution maybe days later at
some odd moment during the day.

Observers throughout history have argued that there are influences on consciousness
from other parts of the mind. These observers differ in the use of related terms,
including: unconsciousness as a personal habit; being unaware and intuition. Terms
related to semi-consciousness include: awakening, implicit memory, subliminal
messages, trances, hypnagogia, and hypnosis. Although sleep, sleep walking, dreaming,
delirium and coma may signal the presence of unconscious processes, these processes
are not the unconscious mind, but more of a symptom.

Historical overview

The idea of an unconscious mind originated in antiquity[2] and has been explored across
cultures. It was recorded between 2500 and 600 BC in the Hindu texts known as the
Vedas, found today in Ayurvedic medicine.[3][4][5][6] In the Vedic worldview,
consciousness is the basis of physiology[7][8] and pure consciousness is "an abstract,
silent, completely unified field of consciousness"[9] within "an architecture of
increasingly abstract, functionally integrated faculties or levels of mind".[10]

Paracelsus is credited as providing the first scientific mention of the unconscious in his
work Von den Krankheiten (translates as "About illnesses", 1567), and his clinical
methodology created an entire system that is regarded as the beginning of modern
scientific psychology.[11] Shakespeare explored the role of the unconscious[12] in many of
his plays, without naming it as such.[13][14][15] Western philosophers such as Spinoza,
Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, developed a western view of mind
which foreshadowed those of Freud. Schopenhauer was also influenced by his reading
of the Vedas.
 2

Articulating the idea of something not conscious or actively denied to awareness with
the symbolic constructs of language has been a process of human thought and
interpersonal influence for millennia.

The resultant status of the unconscious mind may be viewed as a social construction—
that the unconscious exists because people agree to behave as if it exists.[16] Symbolic
interactionism goes further and argues that people's selves (conscious and unconscious)
though purposeful and creative are nevertheless social products.[17]

[edit] Unconscious processes and the unconscious mind

Neuroscience supports the proposition of the unconscious mind.[18] For example,

researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have found that fleeting images of
fearful faces—images that appear and disappear so quickly that they escape conscious
awareness—produce unconscious anxiety that can be detected in the brain with the
latest neuroimaging machines.[19] The conscious mind is hundreds of milliseconds
behind the unconscious processes.

To understand this type of research, a distinction has to be made between unconscious

processes and the unconscious mind: they are not the same. Neuroscience is more likely
to examine the former than the latter. The unconscious mind and its expected
psychoanalytic contents[20][21][22][23][24][25] are also different from unconsciousness, coma
and a minimally conscious state. The differences in the uses of the term can be
explained, to a degree, by different narratives about what we know. One such narrative
is psychoanalytic theory.[26]

[edit] Freud and the psychoanalytic unconscious

Probably the most detailed and precise of the various notions of 'unconscious mind'—
and the one which most people will immediately think of upon hearing the term—is that
developed by Sigmund Freud and his followers. It lies at the heart of psychoanalysis.

Consciousness, in Freud's topographical view (which was his first of several

psychological models of the mind), was a relatively thin perceptual aspect of the mind.
The unconscious was considered by Freud throughout the evolution of his
psychoanalytic theory a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet
operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the
storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and
memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and
feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious.

Freud divided mind into the conscious mind or ego and two parts of the unconscious:
the id or instincts and the superego. He used the idea of the unconscious in order to
explain certain kinds of neurotic behavior.

In this theory, the unconscious refers to that part of mental functioning of which
subjects make themselves unaware.[27]

Freud proposed a vertical and hierarchical architecture of human consciousness: the

conscious mind, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind—each lying beneath the
 3

other. He believed that significant psychic events take place "below the surface" in the
unconscious mind,[28] like hidden messages from the unconscious—a form of
intrapersonal communication out of awareness. He interpreted these events as having
both symbolic and actual significance.

For psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not include all that is not conscious, rather
only what is actively repressed from conscious thought or what the person is averse to
knowing consciously. In a sense this view places the self in relationship to their
unconscious as an adversary, warring with itself to keep what is unconscious hidden.
The therapist is then a mediator trying to allow the unspoken or unspeakable to reveal
itself using the tools of psychoanalysis. Messages arising from a conflict between
conscious and unconscious are likely to be cryptic. The psychoanalyst is presented as an
expert in interpreting those messages.

For Freud, the unconscious was a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or
desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of
psychological repression. However, the contents did not necessarily have to be solely
negative. In the psychoanalytic view, the unconscious is a force that can only be
recognized by its effects—it expresses itself in the symptom.

Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but are
supposed to be capable of being "tapped" and "interpreted" by special methods and
techniques such as meditation, random association, dream analysis, and verbal slips
(commonly known as a Freudian slip), examined and conducted during psychoanalysis.

Freud's theory of the unconscious was substantially transformed by some of his

followers, among them Carl Jung and Jacques Lacan.

[edit] Jung's collective unconscious

Main articles: Collective unconscious and Carl Jung

Carl Jung developed the concept further. He divided the unconscious into two parts: the
personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a
reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed. The
collective unconscious is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the accumulation of
inherited psychic structures and archetypal experiences. There is considerable two-way
traffic between the ego and the personal unconscious, such as when one's mind wanders
to thoughts irrelevant to the current situation.

[edit] Lacan's linguistic unconscious

Main article: Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory contends that the unconscious is structured like a
language.

The unconscious, Lacan argued, was not a more primitive or archetypal part of the mind
separate from the conscious, linguistic ego, but rather, a formation every bit as complex
and linguistically sophisticated as consciousness itself.
 4

If the unconscious is structured like a language, Lacan argues, then the self is denied
any point of reference to which to be "restored" following trauma or "identity crisis". In
this way, Lacan's thesis of the structurally dynamic unconscious is also a challenge to
the ego psychology of Anna Freud and her American followers. A fundamental premise
of the concept of the Lacanian unconscious is the letter and the function of the signifier
in relation to the unconscious (see "The Purloined Letter" and "The Agent of the Letter
in the Unconscious," in Ecrits). In his later Seminars, Lacan began to explain the
unconscious through the logic of knots.

Lacan's idea of how language is structured is largely taken from the structural linguistics
of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson, based on the function of the signifier
and signified in signifying chains.

The starting point for the linguistic theory of the unconscious was a re-reading of
Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. There, Freud identifies two mechanisms at work
in the formation of unconscious fantasies: condensation and displacement. Under
Lacan's linguistic reading, condensation is identified with the linguistic trope of
metaphor, and displacement with metonymy.

Lacan applied the ideas of de Saussure and Jakobson to psychoanalytic practice. For
example, while de Saussure described the linguistic sign as a relationship between a
signified and an arbitrary signifier, Lacan inverted the relationship, putting in first place
the signifier as determining the signified, and so being closer to Freud's position that
human beings know what they say only as a result of a chain of signifiers, a-posteriori.
Lacan began this work with the case of Emma (1895) from Freud, whose symptoms
were disenchained in a two-phase temporal process[clarification needed]. Its repercussions are
most strongly felt in literary/critical theory, as well as among those who practice
Lacanian analysis.

[edit] Controversy

Today, there are still fundamental disagreements within psychology about the nature of
the unconscious mind. It may simply stand as a metaphor that ought not to be refined.
Outside formal psychology, a whole world of pop-psychological speculation has grown
up in which the unconscious mind is held to have any number of properties and
abilities, from animalistic and innocent, child-like aspects to savant-like, all-perceiving,
mystical and occultic properties.

There is a great controversy over the concept of an unconscious in regard to its

scientific or rational validity and whether the unconscious mind exists at all. Among
philosophers, Karl Popper was one of Freud's most notable contemporary opponents.
Popper argued that Freud's theory of the unconscious was not falsifiable, and therefore
not scientific. He objected not so much to the idea that things happened in our minds
that we are unconscious of, but to investigations of mind that were not falsifiable. If one
could connect every imaginable experimental outcome with Freud's theory of the
unconscious mind, then no experiment could refute the theory.

In the social sciences, John Watson, considered to be the first American behaviourist,
criticized the idea of an "unconscious mind," using a similar line of reasoning, and
instead focused on observable behaviors rather than on introspection.
 5

Unlike Popper, the epistemologist Adolf Grunbaum argued that psychoanalysis could be
falsifiable, but its evidence has serious epistemological problems. David Holmes[29]
examined sixty years of research about the Freudian concept of "repression", and
concluded that there is no positive evidence for this concept. Given the lack of evidence
of many Freudian hypotheses, some scientific researchers proposed the existence of
unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of
a "cognitive unconscious" (John Kihlstrom),[30][31] an "adaptive unconscious" (Timothy
Wilson),[32] or a "dum unconscious" (Loftus & Klinger),[33] which executes automatic
processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the
repressed.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Bouveresse argued that Freudian thought exhibits a
systemic confusion between reasons and causes: the methods of interpretation can give
reasons for new meanings, but are useless to find causal relations (which require
experimental research). Wittgenstein gave the following example (in his Conversations
with Rush Rhees): if we throw objects on a table, and we give free associations and
interpretations about those objects, we'll find a meaning for each object and its place,
but we won't find the causes.

Another contemporary philosopher, John Searle, has written a convincing critique of the
Freudian unconscious. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts"
that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are in principle never
accessible to conscious awareness, is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not
"nonconsious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle
simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every
way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it)
is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it is
being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not
causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the
nonconscious processes of the brain. These ideas are discussed more at length in his
book The Rediscovery of the Mind.

Other critics of Freudian unconscious were Hans Eysenck, Jacques Van Rillaer, Frank
Cioffi, Marshal Edelson, Edward Erwin.

Some stress, however, that these critics did not grasp the real importance of Freud's
conceptions, and rather tried to criticize Freud on the basis of other fields.[citation needed] The
first who really grasped this was Bertrand Russell (see for example: "The impact of
science in society", 1952). But in modern times, many other thinkers, as for example
Althusser, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, managed to grasp the "falsification theory" from
Popper, and the critics from Eysenck, as another expression of Master's discourse: the
aspiration to a so-called scientific society led by evaluation. (For this side of the
controversy, cf. the works of Jean-Claude Milner in France.)

In modern cognitive psychology, many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the
unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or
"automatic" have come into currency. These traditions emphasize the degree to which
cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that
things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as
behavior.[34][35][36][37][38] Active research traditions related to the unconscious include
 6

implicit memory (see priming, implicit attitudes), and nonconscious acquisition of

knowledge (see Lewicki, see also the section on cognitive perspective, below).

[edit] Unconscious mind in contemporary cognitive

psychology
[edit] Research

While, historically, the psychoanalytic research tradition was the first to focus on the
phenomenon of unconscious mental activity, there is an extensive body of conclusive
research and knowledge in contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to the mental
activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness.

Most of that (cognitive) research on unconscious processes has been done in the
mainstream, academic tradition of the information processing paradigm. As opposed to
the psychoanalytic tradition, driven by the relatively speculative (in the sense of being
hard to empirically verify), theoretical concepts such as the Oedipus complex or Electra
complex, the cognitive tradition of research on unconscious processes is based on
relatively few theoretical assumptions and is very empirically oriented (i.e., it is mostly
data driven). Cognitive research has revealed that automatically, and clearly outside of
conscious awareness, individuals register and acquire more information than what they
can experience through their conscious thoughts.

[edit] Unconscious processing of information about frequency

For example, an extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks[39] has
demonstrated that automatically (i.e., outside of conscious awareness and without
engaging conscious information processing resources), individuals register information
about the frequency of events. Moreover, that research demonstrates that perceivers do
so unintentionally, truly "automatically", regardless of the instructions they receive, and
regardless of the information processing goals they have. Interestingly, their ability to
unconsciously, and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have
little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality, thus it
may represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the
environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in
general.

[edit] Artificial grammars

Another line of (non-psychoanalytic) early research on unconscious processes was

initiated by Arthur Reber, using so-called "artificial grammar" methodology. That
research revealed that individuals exposed to novel words created by complex sets of
artificial, synthetic "grammatical" rules (e.g., GKHAH, KHABT...), quickly develop
some sort of a "feel" for that grammar and subsequent working knowledge of that
grammar, as demonstrated by their ability to differentiate between, new grammatically
"correct" (i.e., consistent with the rules) and "incorrect" (inconsistent) words.
Interestingly, that ability does not appear to be mediated, or even accompanied by the
declarative knowledge of the rules (i.e., individuals' ability to articulate how they
distinguish between the correct and incorrect words).
 7

[edit] Unconscious acquisition of procedural knowledge

The gist of these early findings (from the '70s) has been significantly extended in the
'80s and '90s by further research showing that outside of conscious awareness
individuals not only acquire information about frequencies (i.e., "occurrences" of
features or events) but also co-occurrences (i.e., correlations or, technically speaking,
covariations) between features or events. Extensive research on nonconscious
acquisition of information about covariations was conducted by Pawel Lewicki,
followed by research of D. L. Schachter (who is known for introducing the concept of
implicit memory), L. R. Squire, and others.

In the learning phase of a typical study, participants were exposed to a stream of stimuli
(trials or events, such as strings of letters, digits, pictures, or descriptions of stimulus
persons) containing some consistent but non-salient (hidden) covariation between
features or events. For example, every stimulus person presented as "fair" would also
have a slightly elongated face. It turned out that even if the manipulated covariations
were non-salient and inaccessible to subjects' conscious awareness, the perceivers
would still acquire a nonconscious working knowledge about those covariations. For
example, if in the testing phase of the study, participants were asked to make intuitive
judgements about the personalities of new stimulus persons presented only as pictures
(with no personality descriptions), and judge the "fairness" of the depicted individuals,
they tend to follow the rules nonconsciously acquired in the learning phase and if the
stimulus person had a slightly elongated face, they would report an intuitive feeling that
this person was "fair".[citation needed]

Nonconscious acquisition of information about covariations appears to be one of the

fundamental and ubiquitous processes involved in the acquisition of knowledge (skills,
experience) or even preferences or personality dispositions, including disorders or
symptoms of disorders.

[edit] Unconsciousness versus nonconsciousness

Unlike in the psychoanalytic research tradition that uses the terms "unconscious", in the
cognitive tradition, the processes that are not mediated by conscious awareness are
sometimes referred to as "nonconscious". This term, rarely used in psychoanalysis,
stresses the empirical and purely descriptive nature of that phenomenon (a qualification
as simply "not being conscious") in the tradition of cognitive research.

Specifically, the process is non-conscious when even highly motivated individuals fail
to report it, and few theoretical assumptions are made about the process (unlike in
psychoanalysis where, for example, it is postulated that some of these processes are
being repressed in order to achieve certain goals.)

[edit] See also

Mind and Brain portal

• Adaptive unconscious
• Carl Jung's concept of a collective unconscious
• Consciousness
 8

• Jacques Lacan's assertion that "the unconscious is structured like a language".

• Mind's eye
• Neuroscience of free will
• Preconscious
• Psychoanalysis
• Transpersonal Psychology
• Unconscious communication

Transdisciplinary topics

• Cell signaling
• Molecular Cellular Cognition
• Philosophy of mind
• Portal:thinking
• List of thought processes

[edit] References

1. ^ Bynum, Browne & Porter, The Macmillan Dictionary of the History of Science,
London, 1981, p.292
2. ^ Its more modern history is detailed in Daniel's Discovery of the Unconscious (Basic
Books 1970)
3. ^ Alexander, C. N. 1990. Growth of Higher Stages of Consciousness: Maharishi's
Vedic Psychology of Human Development. C. N. Alexander and E.J. Langer (eds.).
Higher Stages of Human Development. Perspectives on Human Growth. New York,
Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, D. 1996 Consciousness and the Actor. A Reassessment of Western
and Indian Approaches to the Actor's Emotional Involvement from the Perspective of
Vedic Psychology. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang
5. ^ Haney, W. S. II. 1991. Unity in Vedic aesthetics: the self-interacting dynamics of the
knower, the known, and the process of knowing. Analecta Husserliana 233, pp. 295-319
6. ^ Geraldine Coster 'Yoga and Western Psychology: A comparison' 1934
7. ^ WALLACE, R. K.; FAGAN, J. B.; and PASCO, D. S. Vedic physiology. Modern
Science and Vedic Science 2(1): 3-59, 1988
8. ^ Michael S. King (2003) Natural Law and the Bhagavad-Gita: The Vedic Concept of
Natural Law Ratio Juris 16 (3),399–415
9. ^ Alexander, Charles N, Robert W. Cranson, Robert W. Boyer, David W. Orme-
Johnson. "Transcendental Consciousness: A Fourth State of consciousness beyond
Sleep, Dream, and Waking." Sleep and Dream. Sourcebook. Ed. Jayne Gackenbach.
New York, London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986. 282-315
10. ^ Alexander Charles N. et al. "Growth of Higher Stages of Consciousness: Maharishi's
Vedic Psychology of Human Development." Higher Stages of Human Development.
Perspectives on Human Growth. Eds. Charles N. Alexander and Ellen J. Langer.New
York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. 286-341
11. ^ Harms, Ernest., Origins of Modern Psychiatry, Thomas 1967 ASIN: B000NR852U,
p. 20
12. ^ The Design Within: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Shakespeare: Edited by M. D.
Faber. New York: Science House. 1970 An anthology of 33 papers on Shakespearean
plays by psychoanalysts and literary critics whose work has been influenced by
psychoanalysis
 9

13. ^ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel "Hamlet's Procrastination: A Parallel to the Bhagavad-Gita,

in Hamlet East West, edited by. Marta Gibinska and Jerzy Limon. Gdansk: Theatrum
Gedanese Foundation, 1998e, pp. 187-195
14. ^ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel 'Consciousness and the Actor: A Reassessment of Western
and Indian Approaches to the Actor's Emotional Involvement from the Perspective of
Vedic Psychology.' Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996a. (Series 30: Theatre, Film
and Television, Vol. 67)
15. ^ Yarrow, Ralph 'Identity and Consciousness East and West: the case of Russell
Hoban'. Journal of Literature & Aesthetics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (July-Dec. 1997), pp. 19-26
16. ^ Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann: The Social Construction of Reality. New
York: Doubleday, 1966
17. ^ Blumer, Herbert (1962). "Society as Symbolic Interaction", in Arnold M. Rose:
Human Behavior and Social Process: An Interactionist Approach. Houghton-Mifflin
18. ^ Miller, Laurence In search of the unconscious; evidence for some cornerstones of
Freudian theory is coming from an unlikely source - basic neuroscience. Psychology
Today December 1, 1986
19. ^ Retrieved from [1] April 17, 2007
20. ^ Crews, F.C. (Ed.). (1998). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters confront a legend. New
York: Viking
21. ^ Kihlstrom, J.F. (1994). Psychodynamics and social cognition: Notes on the fusion of
psychoanalysis and psychology. Journal of Personality, 62, 681-696.
22. ^ Kihlstrom, J.F. (1999). The psychological unconscious. In L.R. Pervin & O. John
(Eds.), Handbook of personality, 2nd ed. (pp. 424-442). New York: Guilford.
23. ^ Macmillan, M.B. (1996). Freud evaluated: The completed arc. Cambridge, Ma.: MIT
Press
24. ^ Roth, M. (1998). Freud: Conflict and culture. New York: Knopf.
25. ^ Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a
psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333-
371
26. ^ Kihlstrom JF Is Freud Still Alive? No, Not Really Retrieved from [2] April 17, 2007
Extract: No empirical evidence supports any specific proposition of psychoanalytic
theory, such as the idea that development proceeds through oral, anal, phallic, and
genital stages, or that little boys lust after their mothers and hate and fear their fathers.
No empirical evidence indicates that psychoanalysis is more effective, or more efficient,
than other forms of psychotherapy, such as systematic desensitization or assertiveness
training. No empirical evidence indicates the mechanisms by which psychoanalysis
achieves its effects, such as they are, are those specifically predicated on the theory,
such as transference and catharsis
27. ^ Geraskov, Emil Asenov The internal contradiction and the unconscious sources of
activity. The Journal of Psychology November 1, 1994 Abstract: This article is an
attempt to give new meaning to well-known experimental studies, analysis of which
may allow us to discover unconscious behavior that has so far remained unnoticed by
researchers. Those studies confirm many of the statements by Freud, but they also
reveal new aspects of the unconscious psychic. The first global psychological concept
of the internal contradiction as an unconscious factor influencing human behavior was
developed by Sigmund Freud. In his opinion, this contradiction is expressed in the
struggle between the biological instincts and the self. Retrieved from [3] April 17, 2007
28. ^ For example, dreaming: Freud called dream symbols the "royal road to the
unconscious"
29. ^ List of his publications at [4] retrieved April 18, 2007
30. ^ Kihlstrom, J.F. (2002). The unconscious. In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia
of the Human Brain, Vol. 4 (pp. 635-646). San Diego, Ca.: Academic.
 10

31. ^ Kihlstrom, J.F., Beer, J.S., & Klein, S.B. (2002). Self and identity as memory. In
M.R. Leary & J. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 68-90). New York:
Guilford Press.
32. ^ Wilson T D Strangers to Ourselves Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
33. ^ Loftus, E. F., & Klinger, M. R. (1992). Is the Unconscious Smart or Dumb?
American Psychologist, 47(6), 761-765
34. ^ Anthony G. Greenwald, Sean C. Draine, Richard L. Abrams Three Cognitive Markers
of Unconscious Semantic Activation Science 20 September 1996: Vol. 273. no. 5282,
pp. 1699 - 1702
35. ^ Raphaël Gaillard, Antoine Del Cul, Lionel Naccache Fabien Vinckier, Laurent
Cohen, and Stanislas Dehaene Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words
modulates conscious access Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS
May 9, 2006 vol. 103 no. 19 7524-7529 Retrieved from [5] April 17, 2007
36. ^ Markus Kiefer and Doreen Brendel Attentional Modulation of Unconscious
"Automatic" Processes: Evidence from Event-related Potentials in a Masked Priming
Paradigm Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2006;18:184-198 retrieved from [6] April
17, 2007
37. ^ L. Naccache, R. Gaillard, C. Adam, D. Hasboun, S. Clemenceau, M. Baulac, S.
Dehaene, and L. Cohen A direct intracranial record of emotions evoked by subliminal
words Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS May 24, 2005 vol. 102
no. 21 7713-7717 Retrieved from [7] April 17, 2007
38. ^ E. R. Smith and J. DeCoster Dual-Process Models in Social and Cognitive
Psychology: Conceptual Integration and Links to Underlying Memory Systems. (2000)
Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, 108-131
39. ^ Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1984). Automatic processing of fundamental information:
The case of frequency of occurrence. American Psychologist, 39, 1372-1388.

[edit] Notes

• [8] from Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind, "Implicit Memory"

• Nonconscious Acquisition of Information (a reprint from American
Psychologist, 1992)

[edit] External links

• The Rediscovery of the Unconscious

• Nonconscious Acquisition of Information (a reprint from American
Psychologist, 1992)
 11

Consciousness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Representation of consciousness from the 17th century.

Further information: Philosophy of mind

Consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience, awareness, the ability to

experience "feeling", wakefulness, the understanding of the concept "self", or the
executive control system of the mind.[1] It is an umbrella term that may refer to a variety
of mental phenomena.[2] Although humans realize what everyday experiences are,
consciousness refuses to be defined, philosophers note (e.g. John Searle in The Oxford
Companion to Philosophy):[3]

"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness,
making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of
our lives."
—Schneider and Velmans, 2007[4]

Consciousness in medicine (e.g., anesthesiology) is assessed by observing a patient's

alertness and responsiveness, and can be seen as a continuum of states ranging from
alert, oriented to time and place, and communicative, through disorientation, then
delirium, then loss of any meaningful communication, and ending with loss of
movement in response to painful stimulation.[5]

Consciousness in psychology and philosophy typically means something beyond what it

means for anesthesiology, and may be said in many contexts to imply four
characteristics: subjectivity, change, continuity, and selectivity.[1][6] Philosopher Franz
Brentano has suggested intentionality or aboutness (that consciousness is about
 12

something). However, within the philosophy of mind there is no consensus on whether

intentionality is a requirement for consciousness.[7]

Consciousness is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology,

neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed
in severely ill or comatose people;[8] whether non-human consciousness exists and if so
how it can be measured; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and
whether computers can achieve a conscious state.[9][10][11]

Etymology

The word "conscious" is derived from Latin conscius meaning "1. having joint or
common knowledge with another, privy to, cognizant of; 2. conscious to oneself; esp.,
conscious of guilt".[12] A related word was conscientia, which primarily means moral
conscience. In the literal sense, "conscientia" means knowledge-with, that is, shared
knowledge. The word first appears in Latin juridical texts by writers such as Cicero.[13]
Here, conscientia is the knowledge that a witness has of the deed of someone else.[14]

René Descartes (1596–1650) is generally taken to be the first philosopher to use

"conscientia" in a way that does not seem to fit this traditional meaning.[citation needed]
Descartes used "conscientia" the way modern speakers would use "conscience." In
Search after Truth he says "conscience or internal testimony" (conscientia vel interno
testimonio).[15]

Shortly thereafter, in Britain, the neo-Platonist theologian Ralph Cudworth used the
modern meaning of consciousness in his "True Intellectual System of the Universe"
(1678) and associated the concept with personal identity, which is assured by the
repeated consciousness of oneself. Cudworth's use of the term also remained
intertwined with moral agency.[citation needed] While there were no elaborate theories of
consciousness in the seventeenth century, there was an awareness of the idea of
consciousness. Cudworth was the first English philosopher to make extensive use of the
noun "consciousness" with a specific philosophical meaning.[16]

Twelve years later, Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

connected consciousness with personal identity.[17] Locke argued that being the same
person from one time to another was not dependent upon having the same soul or same
body, but instead the same consciousness.[18] Locke defined consciousness as “the
perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.”[19] Locke had much influence on the
18th Century view of consciousness: in Samuel Johnson's celebrated Dictionary (1755),
Johnson uses this definition of "consciousness."[citation needed]

[edit] Philosophical approaches

There are many philosophical stances on consciousness, including behaviorism,

dualism, idealism, functionalism, reflexive monism, phenomenalism, phenomenology
and intentionality, physicalism, emergentism, mysticism, personal identity, and
externalism.
 13

[edit] Phenomenal and access consciousness

Phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) is simply experience;[20] it is moving,

colored forms, sounds, sensations, emotions and feelings with our bodies and responses
at the center. These experiences, considered independently of any impact on behavior,
are called qualia. The hard problem of consciousness, formulated by David Chalmers in
1996, deals with the issue of "how to explain a state of phenomenal consciousness in
terms of its neurological basis".[21]

Access consciousness (A-consciousness) is the phenomenon whereby information in our

minds is accessible for verbal report, reasoning, and the control of behavior. So, when
we perceive, information about what we perceive is often access conscious; when we
introspect, information about our thoughts is access conscious; when we remember,
information about the past (e.g., something that we learned) is often access conscious,
and so on. Chalmers thinks that access consciousness is less mysterious than
phenomenal consciousness, so that it is held to pose one of the easy problems of
consciousness. Daniel Dennett denies that there is a "hard problem", asserting that the
totality of consciousness can be understood in terms of impact on behavior, as studied
through heterophenomenology. There have been numerous approaches to the processes
that act on conscious experience from instant to instant. Dennett suggests that what
people think of as phenomenal consciousness, such as qualia, are judgments and
consequent behavior.[22] He extends this analysis by arguing that phenomenal
consciousness can be explained in terms of access consciousness, denying the existence
of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem."[22] Chalmers, on the other
hand, argues that Dennett's explanatory processes merely address aspects of the easy
problem. Eccles and others have pointed out the difficulty of explaining the evolution of
qualia, or of 'minds', which experience them, given that all the processes governing
evolution are physical and so have no direct access to them. There is no guarantee that
all people have minds, nor any way to verify whether one does or does not possess one.

Events that occur in the mind or brain that are not within phenomenal or access
consciousness are known as subconscious events.

[edit] The description and location of phenomenal consciousness

For centuries, philosophers have investigated phenomenal consciousness. René

Descartes, who coined the famous dictum 'cogito ergo sum', wrote Meditations on First
Philosophy in the seventeenth century.[23] According to Descartes, all thought is
conscious.[24] Conscious experience, according to Descartes, included such ideas as
imaginings and perceptions laid out in space and time that are viewed from a point, and
appearing as a result of some quality such as color, smell, and so on. (Modern readers
are often confused by this Descartes' notion of interchangeability between the terms
'idea' and 'imaginings.')[citation needed]

Descartes defines ideas as extended things, as in this excerpt from his Treatise on Man:

Now among these figures, it is not those imprinted on the external sense organs,
or on the internal surface of the brain, which should be taken to be ideas - but
only those that are traced in the spirits on the surface of gland H [where the seat
of the imagination and the 'common sense' is located]. That is to say, it is only
 14

the latter figures which should be taken to be the forms or images which the
rational soul united to this machine will consider directly when it imagines some
object or perceives it by the senses.[25]

Thus Descartes does not identify mental ideas with activity within the sense organs, or
even with brain activity, but rather with the "forms or images" that unite the body and
the "rational soul," through the mediating 'gland H'. This organ is now known as the
pineal gland. Descartes notes that, anatomically, while the human brain consists of two
symmetrical hemispheres the pineal gland, which lies close to the brain's centre, appears
to be singular. Thus he extrapolated from this that it was the mediator between body and
soul.[25]

Philosophical responses, including those of Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Reid, John

Locke, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, were varied. Malebranche, for example,
agreed with Descartes that the human being was composed of two elements, body and
mind, and that conscious experience resided in the latter. He did, however, disagree
with Descartes as to the ease with which we might become aware of our mental
constitution, stating 'I am not my own light unto myself'.[26] David Hume and Immanuel
Kant also differ from Descartes, in that they avoid mentioning a place from which
experience is viewed; certainly, few if any modern philosophers have identified the
pineal gland as the seat of dualist interaction.

When we look around a room or have a dream, things are laid out in space and time and
viewed as if from a point. However, when philosophers and scientists consider the
location of the form and contents of this phenomenal consciousness, there are fierce
disagreements. As an example, Descartes proposed that the contents are brain activity
seen by a non-physical place without extension (the Res Cogitans), which, in
Meditations on First Philosophy, he identified as the soul.[27] This idea is known as
Cartesian Dualism. Another example is found in the work of Thomas Reid who thought
the contents of consciousness are the world itself, which becomes conscious experience
in some way. This concept is a type of Direct realism. The precise physical substrate of
conscious experience in the world, such as photons, quantum fields, etc. is usually not
specified.

Other philosophers, such as George Berkeley, have proposed that the contents of
consciousness are an aspect of minds and do not necessarily involve matter at all. This
is a type of Idealism. Yet others, such as Leibniz, have considered that each point in the
universe is endowed with conscious content. This is a form of Panpsychism.
Panpsychism is the belief that all matter, including rocks for example, is sentient or
conscious. The concept of the things in conscious experience being impressions in the
brain is a type of representationalism, and representationalism is a form of indirect
realism.

It is sometimes held that consciousness emerges from the complexity of brain

processing. The general label 'emergence' applies to new phenomena that emerge from a
physical basis without the connection between the two explicitly specified.

Some theorists hold that phenomenal consciousness poses an explanatory gap. Colin
McGinn takes the New Mysterianism position that it can't be solved, and Chalmers
criticizes purely physical accounts of mental experiences based on the idea that
 15

philosophical zombies are logically possible and supports property dualism. But others
have proposed speculative scientific theories to explain the explanatory gap, such as
Quantum mind, space-time theories of consciousness,[28] reflexive monism, and
Electromagnetic theories of consciousness to explain the correspondence between brain
activity and experience.

Parapsychologists and some philosophers e.g. Stephen Braude sometimes appeal to the
concepts of psychokinesis or telepathy to support the belief that consciousness is not
confined to the brain.

[edit] Philosophical criticisms

Locke's "forensic" notion of personal identity founded on an individual conscious

subject would be criticized in the 19th century by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud following
different angles. Martin Heidegger's concept of the Dasein ("Being-there") would also
be an attempt to think beyond the conscious subject.[citation needed]

Marx considered that social relations ontologically preceded individual consciousness,

and criticized the conception of a conscious subject as an ideological conception on
which liberal political thought was founded. Marx in particular criticized the 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considering that the so-called
individual natural rights were ideological fictions camouflaging social inequality in the
attribution of those rights. Later, Louis Althusser would criticize the "bourgeois
ideology of the subject" through the concept of interpellation ("Hey, you!").[citation needed]

Nietzsche, for his part, once wrote that "they give you free will only to later blame
yourself", thus reversing the classical liberal conception of free will in a critical account
of the genealogy of consciousness as the effect of guilt and ressentiment, which he
described in On the Genealogy of Morals. Hence, Nietzsche was the first one to make
the claim that the modern notion of consciousness was indebted to the modern system
of penalty, which judged a man according to his "responsibility", that is by the
consciousness through which acts can be attributed to an individual subject: "I did this!
This is me!". Consciousness is thus related by Nietzsche to the classic philosopheme of
recognition which, according to him, defines knowledge.[29]

According to Pierre Klossowski (1969), Nietzsche considered consciousness to be a

hypostatization of the body, composed of multiple forces (the "Will to Power").
According to him, the subject was only a "grammatical fiction": we believed in the
existence of an individual subject, and therefore of a specific author of each act, insofar
as we speak. Therefore, the conscious subject is dependent on the existence of language,
a claim that would be generalized by critical discourse analysis (see for example Judith
Butler).[citation needed]

Michel Foucault's analysis of the creation of the individual subject through disciplines,
in Discipline and Punish (1975), would extend Nietzsche's genealogy of consciousness
and personal identity - i.e. individualism - to the change in the juridico-penal system:
the emergence of penology and the disciplinization of the individual subject through the
creation of a penal system that judged not the acts as it alleged to, but the personal
identity of the wrong-doer. In other words, Foucault maintained that, by judging not the
acts (the crime), but the person behind those acts (the criminal), the modern penal
 16

system was not only following the philosophical definition of consciousness, once again
demonstrating the imbrications between ideas and social institutions ("material
ideology" as Althusser would call it); it was by itself creating the individual person,
categorizing and dividing the masses into a category of poor but honest and law-abiding
citizens and another category of "professional criminals" or recidivists.[citation needed]

Gilbert Ryle has argued that traditional understandings of consciousness depend on a

Cartesian outlook that divides into mind and body, mind and world. He proposed that
we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in
the world. Thus, by saying 'consciousness,' we end up misleading ourselves by thinking
that there is any sort of thing as consciousness separated from behavioral and linguistic
understandings.[citation needed]

The failure to produce a workable definition of consciousness also raises formidable

philosophical questions. It has been argued that when Antonio Damasio[30] defines
consciousness as "an organism's awareness of its own self and its surroundings", the
definition has not escaped circularity, because awareness in that context can be
considered a synonym for consciousness.

The notion of consciousness as passive awareness can be contrasted with the notion of
the active construction of mental representations. Maturana and Varela[31] showed that
the brain is massively involved with creating worlds of experience for us with meager
input from the senses. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins[32] sums up the
interactive view of experience: "In a way, what sense organs do is assist our brains to
construct a useful model and it is this model that we move around in. It is a kind of
virtual reality simulation of the world."

[edit] Consciousness and language

Because humans express their conscious states using language, it is tempting to equate
language abilities and consciousness. There are, however, speechless humans (infants,
feral children, aphasics, severe forms of autism), to whom consciousness is attributed
despite language lost or not yet acquired. Moreover, the study of brain states of non-
linguistic primates, in particular the macaques, has been used extensively by scientists
and philosophers in their quest for the neural correlates of the contents of
consciousness.

Julian Jaynes argued to the contrary, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind, that for consciousness to arise in a person, language needs to
have reached a fairly high level of complexity. According to Jaynes, human
consciousness emerged as recently as 1300 BCE or thereabouts. He defines
consciousness in such a way as to show how he conceives of it as a type of thinking that
builds upon non human ways of perceiving, for example (p. 55)...

Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. It is

built up like a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or
analogs of behavior in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as
mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioral processes and arrive at more
adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a repository.
And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision.
 17

...and page 65...

It operates by way of analogy, by way of constructing an analog space with an

analog "I" that can observe that space, and move metaphorically in it.

...and perhaps most tellingly, page 66...

there is nothing in consciousness that is not an analog of something that was in

behavior first.

Some philosophers, including W.V. Quine, and some neuroscientists, including Christof
Koch, contest this hypothesis, arguing that it suggests that prior to this "discovery" of
consciousness, experience simply did not exist.[33] Ned Block argued that Jaynes had
confused consciousness with the concept of consciousness, the latter being what was
discovered between the Iliad and the Odyssey.[34] Daniel Dennett points out that these
approaches misconceive Jaynes's definition of consciousness as more than mere
perception or awareness of an object. He notes that consciousness is like money in that
having the thing requires having the concept of it, so it is a revolutionary proposal and
not a ridiculous error to suppose that consciousness only emerges when its concept
does.

More recently, Merlin Donald, seeing a similar connection between language and
consciousness, and a similar link to cultural, and not purely genetic, evolution, has put a
similar proposal to Jaynes' forward - though relying on less specific speculation about
the more recent pre-history of consciousness. He writes...

To understand consciousness fully, the generation of culture must be explained.

Enculturation has been neglected as a possible formative process in its own
right, but we have no alternative other than to give it pride of place in any
evolutionary theory.[35]

He argues that an earlier "symbol using culture" must have preceded both the personal
symbol using of individual consciousness, as well as language itself.

The idea that language and consciousness are not innate to humans, a characteristic of
human nature, but rather the result of cultural evolution, beginning with something
similar to the culture of chimpanzees, goes back before Darwin to Rousseau's Second
Discourse.

[edit] Vedanta

According to Vedanta, awareness is not a product of physical processes and can be

considered under four aspects. The first is waking consciousness (jagaritasthana), the
identification with “I” or “me” in relationship with phenomenal experiences with
external objects. The second aspect is dream consciousness (svapna-sthana), which
embodies the same subject/object duality as the waking state. The third aspect of
consciousness is deep sleep (susupti), which is non-dual as a result of holding in
abeyance all feelings, thoughts, and sensations. The final aspect is the consciousness
that underlies and transcends the first three aspects (turiya) also referred to as a trans-
cognitive state (anubhava) or a state of self-realization or freedom from body-mind
 18

identification (moksha).[36] Gaudiya Vedanta recognizes a fifth aspect of consciousness

in which God becomes subordinate to bhakti.[37]

[edit] Vijñāna

In Buddhism, consciousness (viññāṇa) is included in the five classically defined

experiential "aggregates". The aggregates are seen as empty of self-nature; that is, they
arise dependent on causes and conditions. The cause for consciousness arising
(viññāṇa) is the arising of another aggregate (physical or mental); and, consciousness
arising in turn gives rise to one or more of the mental (nāma) aggregates. The causation
chain identified in the aggregate (khandha) model overlaps the conditioning chain in
Dependent Origination (paticcasamuppāda) model. [38] Consciousness is the third link,
between mind body mental formations and name & form in the traditional Twelve
Causes (nidāna) of Dependent Origination.[39] The six classes of consciousness are: eye-
consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-
consciousness, intellect-consciousness. [40] The following aspects are traditionally
highlighted within Dependent Origination:

• consciousness is conditioned by mental fabrications (saṅkhāra);

• consciousness and the mind-body (nāmarūpa) are interdependent;
and,
• consciousness acts as a "life force" by which there is a continuity
across rebirths.

[edit] Scientific approaches

[edit] Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience

For a long time in scientific psychology, consciousness as a research topic or

explanatory concept was strongly discouraged by mainstream scholars, because of
concerns about the validation of primary data .[41] Research on topics associated with
consciousness were conducted under the banner of attention. Modern investigations into
consciousness are based on psychological statistical studies and case studies of
consciousness states and the deficits caused by lesions, stroke, injury, or surgery that
disrupt the normal functioning of human senses and cognition. These discoveries
suggest that the mind is a complex structure derived from various localized functions
that are bound together with a unitary awareness.[citation needed]

Several studies point to common mechanisms in different clinical conditions that lead to
loss of consciousness. Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a condition in which an
individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but maintains sleep-wake
cycles with full or partial autonomic functions. Studies comparing PVS with healthy,
awake subjects consistently demonstrate an impaired connectivity between the deeper
(brainstem and thalamic) and the upper (cortical) areas of the brain. In addition, it is
agreed that the general brain activity in the cortex is lower in the PVS state. Some
electroneurobiological interpretations of consciousness characterize this loss of
consciousness as a loss of the ability to resolve time (similar to playing an old
phonographic record at very slow or very rapid speed), along a continuum that starts
with inattention, continues on sleep, and arrives to coma and death .[42] It is likely that
different components of consciousness can be teased apart with anesthetics, sedatives
 19

and hypnotics. These drugs appear to differentially act on several brain areas to disrupt,
to varying degrees, different components of consciousness. The ability to recall
information, for example, may be disrupted by anesthetics acting on the hippocampal
cortex. Neurons in this region are particularly sensitive to anesthetics at the time loss of
recall occurs. Direct anesthetic actions on hippocampal neurons have been shown to
underlie EEG effects that occur in humans and animals during loss of recall.[43]

Brain chemistry affects human consciousness. Sleeping drugs (such as Midazolam =

Dormicum) can bring the brain from the awake condition (conscious) to the sleep
(unconscious). Wake-up drugs such as flumazenil reverse this process. Many other
drugs (such as alcohol, nicotine, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), heroin, cocaine, LSD,
MDMA, caffeine), have a consciousness-changing effect.[citation needed]

The bilateral removal of the centromedian nucleus (part of the Intra-laminar nucleus of
the Thalamus) appears to abolish consciousness, causing coma, PVS, severe mutism
and other features that mimic brain death. The centromedian nucleus is also one of the
principal sites of action of general anaesthetics and anti-psychotic drugs. This evidence
suggests that a functioning thalamus is necessary, but not sufficient, for human
consciousness.[citation needed]

Neurophysiological studies in awake, behaving monkeys point to advanced cortical

areas in prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes as carriers of neuronal correlates of
consciousness. Christof Koch and Francis Crick argue that neuronal mechanisms of
consciousness are intricately related to prefrontal cortex — cortical areas involved in
higher cognitive function, affect, behavioral control, and planning. Rodolfo Llinas
proposes that consciousness results from recurrent thalamo-cortical resonance where the
specific thalamocortical systems (content) and the non-specific (centromedial thalamus)
thalamocortical systems (context) interact in the gamma band frequency via time
coincidence. According to this view the "I" represents a global predictive function
required for intentionality.[44][45] Experimental work of Steven Wise, Mikhail Lebedev
and their colleagues supports this view. They demonstrated that activity of prefrontal
cortex neurons reflects illusory perceptions of movements of visual stimuli. Nikos
Logothetis and colleagues made similar observations on visually responsive neurons in
the temporal lobe. These neurons reflect the visual perception in the situation when
conflicting visual images are presented to different eyes (i.e., bistable percepts during
binocular rivalry). The studies of blindsight — vision without awareness after lesions to
parts of the visual system such as the primary visual cortex — performed by Lawrence
Weiskrantz and David P. Carey provided important insights on how conscious
perception arises in the brain.[citation needed]

An alternative and more global approach to analyzing neurophysiological

(electromagnetic) correlates of consciousness is referred to by Andrew and Alexander
Fingelkurts as Operational Architectonics. This still-untested theory postulates that
phenomenal patterns/objects/thoughts are matched with and generated by underlying
neurophysiological activity's spatial-temporal patterns (indexed as Operational Modules
of different complexity) that can be revealed directly from EEG.[46][47][48]

The Neuroscience of free will also seems to provide relevant insights to the
understanding of consciousness.
 20

[edit] Experimental philosophy

A new approach has attempted to combine the methodologies of cognitive psychology

and traditional philosophy to understand consciousness. This research has taken place in
the new field called experimental philosophy, which seeks to use empirical methods
(like conducting experiments to test how ordinary non-experts think) to inform the
philosophical discussion.[49] The aim of this type of philosophical research on
consciousness has been to try to get a better grasp on how exactly people ordinarily
understand consciousness. For instance, work by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz suggests
that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally,[50] and
another suggestion has been that there is actually no such phenomenon as
consciousness.[51] Further, Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery have written about the
proper methodology for studying folk intuitions about consciousness.[52]

[edit] Evolutionary psychology

Consciousness can be viewed from the standpoints of evolutionary psychology or

evolutionary biology approach as an adaptation because it is a trait that increases
fitness.[53] Consciousness also adheres to John Alcock's theory of animal behavioral
adaptations because it possesses both proximate and ultimate causes.[54]

The proximate causes for consciousness, i.e. how consciousness evolved in animals, is a
subject considered by Sir John C. Eccles in his paper "Evolution of consciousness." He
argues that special anatomical and physical properties of the mammalian cerebral cortex
gave rise to consciousness.[55] Budiansky, by contrast, limits consciousness to humans,
proposing that human consciousness may have evolved as an adaptation to anticipate
and counter social strategems of other humans, predators, and prey.[56] Alternatively, it
has been argued that the recursive circuitry underwriting consciousness is much more
primitive, having evolved initially in premammalian species because it improves the
capacity for interaction with both social and natural environments by providing an
energy-saving "neutral" gear in an otherwise energy-expensive motor output machine.
[57]
Another theory, proposed by Shaun Nichols and Todd Grantham, proposes that it is
unnecessary to trace the exact evolutionary or causal role of phenomenal consciousness
because the complexity of phenomenal consciousness alone implies that it is an
adaptation.[58] Once in place, this recursive circuitry may well have provided a basis for
the subsequent development of many of the functions that consciousness facilitates in
higher organisms, as outlined by Bernard J. Baars.[59] Konrad Lorenz sees the roots of
consciousness in the process of self-exploration of an organism that sees itself acting
and learns a lifetime. Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human
Knowledge

[edit] Functions of Consciousness

Functions of Consciousness
Function Purpose
Definition and context- Relating global input to its contexts, thereby defining input and
setting removing ambiguities
Adaptation and learning Representing and adapting to novel and significant events
Editing, flagging, and Monitoring conscious content, editing it, and trying to change
 21

debugging it if it is consciously "flagged" as an error

Recruiting and control Recruiting subgoals and motor systems to organize and carry
function out mental and physical actions
Prioritizing and access
Control over what will become conscious
control
Recruiting unconscious knowledge sources to make proper
Decision-making or decisions, and making goals conscious to allow widespread
executive function recruitment of conscious and unconscious "votes" for or
against them
Analogy-forming Searching for a partial match between contents of unconscious
function systems and a globally displayed (conscious) message
Metacognitive or self- Reflection upon and control of our own conscious and
forming function unconscious functioning
Auto-programming and
Maintenance of maximum stability in the face of changing
self-maintenance
inner and outer conditions
function

[edit] Physical

Since the dawn of Newtonian science with its vision of simple mechanical principles
governing the entire universe, some philosophers have been tempted by the idea that
even consciousness could be explained in purely physical terms. The first influential
writer to propose such an idea explicitly was Julien Offray de La Mettrie, in his book
L'homme machine (Man as machine).[60]

The most influential modern physical theories of consciousness are based on

psychology and neuroscience. Theories proposed by neuroscientists such as Gerald
Edelman[61] and António Damásio,[62] and by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett,[63]
seek to explain access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness in terms of neural
events occurring within the brain. Many other neuroscientists, such as Christof Koch,[64]
have explored the neural basis of consciousness without attempting to frame all-
encompassing global theories. At the same time, computer scientists working in the
field of Artificial Intelligence have pursued the goal of creating digital computer
programs that can simulate or embody consciousness.

Some theorists—most of whom are physicists—have argued that classical physics is

intrinsically incapable of explaining the holistic aspects of consciousness, but that
quantum theory provides the missing ingredients. The most notable theories falling into
this category include the Holonomic brain theory of Karl H. Pribram and David Bohm,
and the Orch-OR theory formulated by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Some of
these QM theories offer descriptions of phenomenal consciousness, as well as QM
interpretations of access consciousness. None of the quantum mechanical theories has
been confirmed by experiment, and many scientists and philosophers consider the
arguments for an important role of quantum phenomena to be unconvincing.[citation needed]

[edit] Functions

Many of us attribute consciousness to higher-order animals such as dolphins and

primates[citation needed]; academic research is investigating the extent to which animals are
 22

conscious. This suggests the hypothesis that consciousness has co-evolved with life,
which would require it to have some sort of added value, especially survival value.
People have therefore looked for specific functions and benefits of consciousness. Many
psychologists, such as radical behaviorists, and many philosophers, such as those that
support Ryle's approach, would maintain that behavior can be explained by non-
conscious processes akin to artificial intelligence, and consider consciousness to be
epiphenomenal or only weakly related to function.[citation needed]

Regarding the primary function of conscious processing, a recurring idea in recent

theories is that phenomenal states somehow integrate neural activities and information-
processing that would otherwise be independent (see review in Baars, 2002). This has
been called the integration consensus. However, it remained unspecified which kinds of
information are integrated in a conscious manner and which kinds can be integrated
without consciousness. Obviously not all kinds of information are capable of being
disseminated consciously (e.g., neural activity related to vegetative functions, reflexes,
unconscious motor programs, low-level perceptual analyses, etc.) and many kinds can
be disseminated and combined with other kinds without consciousness, as in
intersensory interactions such as the ventriloquism effect (cf., Morsella, 2005).

Ervin László argues that self-awareness, the ability to make observations of oneself,
evolved. Émile Durkheim formulated the concept of so called collective consciousness,
which is essential for organization of human, social relations. The accelerating drive of
human race to explorations, cognition, understanding and technological progress can be
explained by some features of collective consciousness (collective self - concepts) and
collective intelligence[citation needed]

[edit] Tests

As there is no clear definition of consciousness and no empirical measure exists to test

for its presence, it has been argued that due to the nature of the problem of
consciousness, empirical tests are intrinsically impossible. However, several tests have
been developed that attempt an operational definition of consciousness and, try to
determine whether computers and non-human animals can demonstrate through
behavior, by passing these tests, that they are conscious.

In medicine, several neurological and brain imaging techniques, like EEG and fMRI,
have proven useful for physical measures of brain activity associated with
consciousness. This is particularly true for EEG measures during anesthesia that can
provide an indication of anesthetic depth, although with still limited accuracies of ~
70 % and a high degree of patient and drug variability seen.

[edit] Turing
See also: Turing test and philosophy of artificial intelligence

Though often thought of as a test for consciousness, the Turing test (named after
computer scientist Alan Turing, who first proposed it) is actually a test to determine
whether or not a computer satisfied his operational definition of "intelligent" (which is
not synonymous with consciousness and self-awareness). This test is commonly cited in
discussion of artificial intelligence. The essence of the test is based on "the Imitation
Game", in which a human experimenter attempts to converse, via computer keyboards,
 23

with two others. One of the others is a human (who, it is assumed, is conscious) while
the other is a computer. Because all of the conversation is via keyboards (teletypes, in
Turing's original conception) no cues such as voice, prosody, or appearance will be
available to indicate which is human and which is the computer. If the human is unable
to determine which of the conversants is human, and which is a computer, the computer
is said to have "passed" the Turing test (satisfied Turing's operational definition of
"intelligent").[citation needed]

The Turing test has generated a great deal of research and philosophical debate. For
example, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter argue that anything capable of passing
the Turing test is necessarily conscious,[65] while David Chalmers, argues that a
philosophical zombie could pass the test, yet fail to be conscious.[66]

It has been argued that the question itself is excessively anthropomorphic. Edsger
Dijkstra commented that "The question of whether a computer can think is no more
interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim", expressing the view
that different words are appropriate for the workings of a machine to those of animals
even if they produce similar results, just as submarines are not normally said to swim.

Philosopher John Searle developed a thought experiment, the Chinese room argument,
which is intended to show problems with the Turing Test.[67] Searle asks the reader to
imagine a non-Chinese speaker in a room in which there are stored a very large number
of Chinese symbols and rule books. Questions are passed to the person in the form of
written Chinese symbols via a slot, and the person responds by looking up the symbols
and the correct replies in the rule books. Based on the purely input-output operations,
the "Chinese room" gives the appearance of understanding Chinese. However, the
person in the room understands no Chinese at all. This argument has been the subject of
intense philosophical debate since it was introduced in 1980, even leading to edited
volumes on this topic alone.

The application of the Turing test to human consciousness has even led to an annual
competition, the Loebner Prize with "Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the
first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human's." For a summary
of research on the Turing Test, see here.

[edit] Mirror
Main article: Mirror test

See also the concept of the Mirror stage by Jacques Lacan

With the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, one is interested in
whether animals are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. The classic example of
the test involves placing a spot of coloring on the skin or fur near the individual's
forehead and seeing if they attempt to remove it or at least touch the spot, thus
indicating that they recognize that the individual they are seeing in the mirror is
themselves. Humans (older than 18 months) and other great apes, bottlenose dolphins,
pigeons, elephants[68] and magpies[69] have all been observed to pass this test. The test is
usually carried out with an identical 'spot' being placed elsewhere on the head with a
non-visible material as a control, to assure the subject is not responding to the touch
stimuli of the spot's presence.
 24

[edit] Delay

One problem researchers face is distinguishing nonconscious reflexes and instinctual

responses from conscious responses. Neuroscientists Francis Crick and Christof Koch
have proposed that by placing a delay between stimulus and execution of action, one
may determine the extent of involvement of consciousness in an action of a biological
organism.[citation needed]

For example, when psychologists Larry Squire and Robert Clark combined a tone of a
specific pitch with a puff of air to the eye, test subjects came to blink their eyes in
anticipation of the puff of air when the appropriate tone was played. When the puff of
air followed a half of a second later, no such conditioning occurred. When subjects were
asked about the experiment, only those who were asked to pay attention could
consciously distinguish which tone preceded the puff of air.[citation needed]

Ability to delay the response to an action implies that the information must be stored in
short-term memory, which is conjectured to be a closely associated prerequisite for
consciousness. However, this test is only valid for biological organisms. While it is
simple to create a computer program that passes, such success does not suggest
anything beyond a clever programmer.[33]

[edit] Merkwelt

The merkwelt (German; English: "way of viewing the world", "peculiar individual
consciousness") is a concept in robotics, psychology and biology that describes a
creature or android's capacity to view things, manipulate information and synthesize to
make meaning out of the universe.[citation needed]

In biology, a shark's merkwelt for instance is dominated by smell due to its enlarged
olfactory lobes whilst a bat's is dominated by its hearing, especially at ultrasonic
frequencies. In literature, a character's merkwelt can be defined by their particular
consciousness. For the collective, the plural is merkwelten. It is related to the original
German meaning of zeitgeist and indeed a merkwelt can be thought of as a more
general, individual zeitgeist.[70][71][72]

To have a merkwelt, the individual must be self-aware. This "self-awareness" may

involve thoughts, sensations, perceptions, moods, emotions, and dreams. This term was
particularly developed by the German biologist Jakob von Uexküll who framed it as
part of his theory of umwelt. This basically stated that any living 'observer' of the
broader environment or umwelt through their particular werkwelt or 'mechanical
viewing' (that is to say, the organs through which they view the world- their eyes, ears,
mouth etc. in humans and electrical sensors in sharks for instance) could have a
merkwelt or 'perceptual universe'. In essence, his theory posits that the way each human
or certain type of aware animal perceives of their environment both through their
experiences, the particular way their organs perceive their environment and the way in
which their consciousness processes this information (how their brain works).[73]
 25

[edit] See also


[edit] Cognitive science
• Attention
• Binocular rivalry
• Blindsight
• Change blindness
• Cognitive science
• Iconic memory
• Level of consciousness
• Multistable perception
• Neural correlates of consciousness
• Neural Darwinism
• Primary consciousness
• Psyche (psychology)
• Reticular activating system
• Short term memory
• Society of Mind
• Split brain
• Stream of consciousness
(psychology)
• Unconscious mind
• Visual short term memory
[edit] Spirituality
• Vijñāna (viññāṇa) — consciousness
as a concept in Buddhism
• Higher consciousness
• Mindstream
• Krishna consciousness or bhakti
• Quantum mysticism - supposes
consciousness has a mystical
component at the quantum scale
[edit] Physical hypotheses about
[edit] Sociology and Socio-
consciousness
linguistics
• Orch-OR theory
• Electromagnetic theories of
consciousness
• Holonomic brain theory
• Quantum mind
• Simulated Reality
• Externalism
26
Mind and Brain portal
Philosophy portal
Thinking portal
[edit] Philosophy
• 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness
• Bodymind
• Donald Davidson's swamp man
thought experiment ("Knowing One
Own's Mind", 1987)
• Dream argument
• False Consciousness (Marxism)
• Freedom of thought
• Homunculus
• Mental body
• Mind
• Mind at Large
• Mind-body problem
• Multiple Drafts theory (Daniel
Dennett) cf. also Marvin Minsky
• New Mysterianism
• Personhood Theory
• Philosophy of mind
• Philosophy of perception
• Political consciousness, pertaining
to marxist and post-marxist
conceptions of consciousness.
• Qualia
• Stream of consciousness
• Supervenience
• Theory of mind
• Aboutness
• Sociology of human consciousness
[edit] Groups
• Association for Consciousness
Exploration
• Association for the Scientific Study
of Consciousness
• Mind and Life Institute
• Mind Science Foundation
 27

[edit] Notes

1. ^ a b Farthing, 1992
2. ^ van Gulick, 2004
3. ^ Searle, 2005, In Honderich, 2005
4. ^ Schneider and Velmans, 2007, pp.1-6 In Velmans & Schneider, 2007; For a similar
comment see also Güzeldere, 1995 In Block, Flanagan & Güzeldere, 1997, pp.1-67
5. ^ Güzeldere, 1995 In Block, Flanagan & Güzeldere, 1997, pp.1-67
6. ^ James, W. 1910 In Block, Flanagan & Güzeldere
7. ^ cf. Searle, 2005 In Honderich, 2005, s.v. consciousness
8. ^ Late recovery from the minimally conscious state: ethical and policy implications.
Fins JJ, Schiff ND, Foley KM. Neurology. 2007 January 23;68(4):304-7. Abstract at
Pubmed, retrieved 27 February 2007
9. ^ Samuel Butler first raised the possibility of mechanical consciousness in an article
signed with the nom de plume Cellarius and headed "Darwin among the Machines",
which appeared in the Christchurch, New Zealand, newspaper The Press on June 13,
1863: retrieved from PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION, Project Gutenberg
eBook Erewhon, by Samuel Butler. Release Date: March 20, 2005.
10. ^ Stuart Shieber (ed): The Turing test : verbal behavior as the hallmark of intelligence,
Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-262-69293-9
11. ^ Steven Marcus: Neuroethics: mapping the field. Dana Press, New York 2002. ISBN
978-0-9723830-0-4.
12. ^ The Classic Latin Dictionary, Follett Publishing Company, 1957
13. ^ Hastings, James; Selbie (2003). Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Part 7.
Kessinger Publishing. p. 41. ISBN 0766136779. note: "In the sense of 'consciousness,'
consientia is rare, but it is exceedingly common in most writers after Cicero with the
meaning 'conscience'."
14. ^ Melenaar, G.. Mnemosyne, Fourth Series. 22. Brill. pp. 170–180. note: reference only
that Cicero had been using the word.[1]
15. ^ Heinämaa, Sara (2007). Consciousness: from perception to reflection in the history of
philosophy. Springer. pp. 205–206. ISBN 978-1-4020-6081-6.
16. ^ Gaukroger, Stephen (1991). The Uses of antiquity: the scientific revolution and the
classical tradition. D. Reidel Publishing Company. p. 79. ISBN 0-7923-1130-2.
17. ^ Locke, John. "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Chapter XXVII)".
Australia: University of Adelaide.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/locke/john/l81u/B2.27.html. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
18. ^ "John Locke (1632-1704)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
19. ^ "Science & Technology: consciousness". Encyclopedia Britannica.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/133274/consciousness. Retrieved August
20, 2010.
20. ^ "consciousness, phenomenal". University of Waterloo.
http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/p-consciousness.html. Retrieved August 20,
2010.
21. ^ Block, N. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
22. ^ a b Dennett, D. (2004). Consciousness Explained, p. 375. Harmondsworth: The
Penguin Press, Middlesex, England. ISBN 0971399037-6.
23. ^ "Descartes' Epistemology". Stanford University. July 20, 2010.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4. Retrieved August 21, 2010.
24. ^ Tiles, Mary (1994). Bachelard, science and objectivity. Cambridge University Press.
p. 36. ISBN 0-521-24803-5.
 28

25. ^ a b "Descartes and the Pineal Gland". Stanford University. November 5, 2008.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/. Retrieved Aug.22, 2010.
26. ^ Cottingham, John (1996). Western Philosophy: an anthology. Blackwell Publishing.
p. 155. ISBN 0-631-18627-1.
27. ^ Dy, Jr., Manuel B. (2001isbn=971-12-0245-X). Philosophy of Man: selected
readings. Goodwill Trading Co.Inc.. p. 97.
28. ^ Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA, Neves CF. Natural world physical, brain
operational, and mind phenomenal space-time. Phys Life Rev, 2010,
doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2010.04.001
29. ^ See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §355.
30. ^ Damasio. A. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making
of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 4.
31. ^ Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela. 1980. Autopoesis and Cognition: The Realization of
the Living. Boston: D. Reidel.
32. ^ Dawkins, R. 2003. A Devil's Chaplain; Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 46.
33. ^ a b Christof Koch, The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach.
Englewood, Colorado: Roberts and Company Publishers.
34. ^ Ned Block, "What is Dennett's Theory a Theory of?" Philosophical Topics 22, 1994.
35. ^ A Mind So Rare p.202
36. ^ Yegan Pillay, Katherine K. Ziff and Christine Suniti Bhat, Vedānta Personality
Development: A Model to Enhance the Cultural Competence of Psychotherapists,
International Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 12, Number 1 / April, 2008, OUP
37. ^ Tripurari, Swami, Entering the Fifth Dimension, Sanga, 1999.
38. ^ This overlap is particularly pronounced in the Mahanidana Sutta (DN 15) where
consciousness (viññāṇa) is a condition of name-and-body (nāmarūpa) and vice-versa
(see, e.g., Thanissaro, 1997a).
39. ^ Not all canonical texts identify twelve causes in Dependent Origination's causal
chain. For instance, the Mahanidana Sutta (DN 15) (Thanissaro, 1997a) identifies only
nine causes (omitting the six sense bases, formations and ignorance) and the initial text
of the Nalakalapiyo Sutta (SN 12.67) (Thanissaro, 2000) twice identifies ten causes
(omitting formations and ignorance) although its final enumeration includes the twelve
traditional factors.
40. ^ For instance, similar to the sensory-specific description of consciousness found in
discussing "the All" (above), the "Analysis of Dependent Origination Discourse"
(Paticcasamuppada-vibhanga Sutta, SN 12.2) describes viññāṇa ("consciousness") in
the following manner:

"And what is consciousness? These six are classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness,

ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness,
intellect-consciousness. This is called consciousness." (Thanissaro, 1997b)

41. ^ Hendriks-Jansen, Horst (1996). Catching ourselves in the act: situated activity,
interactive emergence, evolution, and human thought. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. p. 114. ISBN 0-262-08246-2.
42. ^ Mariela Szirko: "Effects of relativistic motions in the brain and their physiological
relevance", Chapter 10 (pp. 313-358) in: Helmut Wautischer, editor, Ontology of
Consciousness: Percipient Action, A Bradford Book: The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1st edition, 2007.
43. ^ McIver, M.B.; Mandema, J.W.; Stanski, D.R.; Bland, B.H. (1996). "Thiopental
uncouples hippocampal and cortical synchronized electroencephalographic activity".
Anesthesiology 84 (6): 1411–1424. doi:10.1097/00000542-199606000-00018.
PMID 8669683.
 29

44. ^ Llinas R.. (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
45. ^ Llinas R.,Ribary, U. Contreras, D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal basis for
consciousness" Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
46. ^ Fingelkurts An.A. and Fingelkurts Al.A. Operational architectonics of the human
brain biopotential field: Towards solving the mind-brain problem. Brain and Mind, vol.
2, pp. 261-296, 2001.
47. ^ Fingelkurts An.A. and Fingelkurts Al.A. Timing in cognition and EEG brain
dynamics: discreteness versus continuity. Cognitive Proces., vol. 7, pp. 135-162, 2006.
48. ^ Fingelkurts AA, Fingelkurts AA, Neves CF. Phenomenological architecture of a mind
and operational architectonics of the brain: The unified metastable continuum. New
Mathematics and Natural Computation, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 221–244, 2009.
49. ^ Knobe, J. (forthcoming). Experimental Philosophy of Consciousness. Scientific
American: Mind.
50. ^ Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz. (2008). Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental
Studies. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science.
51. ^ Sytsma, Justin (2009) Phenomenological Obviousness and the New Science of
Consciousness. In [2008] Philosophy of Science Assoc. 21st Biennial Mtg (Pittsburgh,
PA): PSA 2008 Contributed Papers.
52. ^ Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery. (2009). How to Study Folk Intuitions about
Consciousness. Philosophical Psychology.
53. ^ Freeman and Herron. Evolutionary Analysis. 2007. Pearson Education, NJ.
54. ^ Alcock, J. Animal Behavior 5th Ed. 1993. Sinauer Assoc. Cunderland, MA
55. ^ Eccles, John C. "Evolution of consciousness." 1992. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol.
89 pp. 7320-7324
56. ^ Budiansky, Stephen. If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of
Consciousness. 1998. The Free Press, NY.
57. ^ Peters, Frederic "Consciousness as Recursive, Spatiotemporal Self-Location"
58. ^ Nichols, Shaun, and Grantham, Todd."Adaptive Complexity and Phenomenal
Consciousness." 2000. Philosophy of Science Vol. 67 pp. 648-670.
59. ^ Baars, Bernard J. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. 1993. Cambridge University
Press.
60. ^ Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1996). Ann Thomson. ed. Machine man and other
writings. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521478496.
61. ^ Edelman GM (1993). Bright air, brilliant fire: on the matter of the mind. Basic
Books. ISBN 9780465007646.
62. ^ Damasio A (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making
of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Press. ISBN 978-0-15-601075-7.
63. ^ Dennett D (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little & Company. ISBN 978-
0-316-18066-5.
64. ^ Koch C (2004). The Quest for Consciousness. Englewood, CO: Roberts & Company.
ISBN 978-0-9747077-0-9.
65. ^ Dennett, D.C. and Hofstadter, D. (1985). The Mind's I: Fantasies and reflections on
self and soul (ISBN 978-0-553-34584-1)
66. ^ Chalmers, D. (1997) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789 Please check ISBN|0195117891
67. ^ Searle, J. (1980). "Minds, Brains and Programs". Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3:
417–424.
68. ^ Elephants see themselves in the mirror - life - 30 October 2006 - New Scientist
69. ^ "Was Elstern wahrnehmen" german article
70. ^ White Shark Physiology and Neurology
71. ^ Senses and Merkwelt
72. ^ Psychology Text
 30

73. ^ Jakob von Uexküll, Mondes animaux et monde humain

[edit] References

• Block, N., Flanagan, O., & Güzeldere, G. (1997). The Nature of Consciousness:
Philosophical debates Cambridge, MA: MIT.
• Carruthers, P. (2007). In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (version Sep 11,
2007) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/
• Farthing, G. W. (1992). The Psychology of Consciousness. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
• van Gulick, R. (2004). Consciousness. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(version Aug 16, 2004) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
• Nagel, T. (1974). What it is like to be a bat. Philosophical Review 83. October,
435-450.
• Searle (2005). Consciousness. In Honderich, T. (Ed.) (2005). The Oxford
Companion to Philosophy (2nd ed.). Oxford.
• Velmans, M., & Schneider, S. (Eds.) (2007). The Blackwell Companion to
Consciousness. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• McKenna, T., McKenna, D. (1975). "The Invisible Landscape - Mind,
Hallucinogens, and I Ching". Seabury Press.

[edit] Further reading

• Baars, B. (1997) In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind.

New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2001 reprint: ISBN 978-0-19-514703-
2
• Baars, Bernard J and Stan Franklin. (2003) How conscious experience and
working memory interact. Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 166–172.
• Yaneer Bar-Yam (2003). Dynamics of Complex Systems, Chapter 3.
• Blackmore, S. (2003) Consciousness: an Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515343-9
• Blackmore, S. (2005) "Conversations on Consciousness". Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280623-9
• Block, N. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.
• Carter, Rita. (2002) Exploring Consciousness. UC Berkeley Press. ISBN 0-520-
23737-4
• Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.
New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-511789-9
• Chalmers, D. (2002) The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American,
January 2002. [2]
• Cleermans, A. (Ed.) (2003) The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration,
and Dissociation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850857-1
• Rodney M. J. Cotterill (1998). Enchanted Looms : Conscious networks in brains
and computer. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521794626.
• Crick, F.H.C. (1994) "The Astonishing Hypothesis". London Simon & Schuster
Ltd. ISBN 0-671-71295-0
• Eccles, J.C. (1994) How the Self Controls its Brain, (Springer-Verlag).
• Franklin, S., B.J. Baars, U. Ramamurthy, and Matthew Ventura. (2005) The role
of consciousness in memory. Brains, Minds and Media 1: 1–38, pdf.
• Halliday, Eugene, Reflexive Self-Consciousness, ISBN 0-872240-01-1
 31

• Harnad, S. (2005) What is Consciousness? New York Review of Books 52(11).

• Harnad, S. (2008) What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian
Jaynes
• James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience
• Immanuel Kant (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith
with preface by Howard Caygill. Pub: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Kelly, Edward F., Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael
Grosso, and Bruce Greyson (2007). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for
the 21st Century, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, xxxi + 800 pp. ISBN
978-0-7425-4792-6
• John Locke (1689). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• Libet, B., Freeman, A. & Sutherland, K. ed. (1999) The Volitional Brain:
Towards a neuroscience of free will. Exeter, UK: Short Run Press, Ltd.
• Llinas R.,Ribary, U. Contreras, D. and Pedroarena, C. (1998) "The neuronal
basis for consciousness" Phil. Tranns. R. Soc. London, B. 353:1841-1849
• Llinas R. (2001) "I of the Vortex. From Neurons to Self" MIT Press, Cambridge
• Metzinger, T. (2003) Being No One: the Self-model Theory of Subjectivity.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (2000) The Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-13370-8
• Morgan, John H. (2007) In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious
Consciousness. Cloverdale Books, South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0
• Morsella, E. (2005) The Function of Phenomenal States: Supramodular
Interaction Theory. Psychological Review, 112, 1000-1021.
• Neumann, Erich. The origins and history of consciousness, with a foreword by
C.G. Jung. Translated from the German by R.F.C. Hull. New York : Pantheon
Books, 1954.
• Penrose, R., Hameroff, S. R. (1996) 'Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-
Time Selections', Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (1), pp. 36–53.
• Peters, Frederic (2008) "Consciousness as Recursive, Spatiotemporal Self-
Location" http://precedings.nature.com/documents/2444/version/1
• Pharoah, M.C. (online) Looking to systems theory for a reductive explanation of
phenomenal experience and evolutionary foundations for higher order thought
Retrieved December 14, 2007.
• Sanz, R., López, I., Rodríguez, M. and Hernández, C. (2007) 'Principles for
Consciousness in Integrated Cognitive Control'. Neural Networks, 20, pp. 938–
946.
• Scaruffi, P. (2006) The Nature Of Consciousness. Omniware.
• Searle, J. (2004) Mind: A Brief Introduction. New York: Oxford University
Press.
• Sternberg, E. (2007) Are You a Machine? The Brain, the Mind and What it
Means to be Human. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Tolle, Eckhart (1999) The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.
New World Library. pp 36–37. ISBN 978-1-57731-152-2
• Velmans, M. (2000) Understanding Consciousness. London:
Routledge/Psychology Press.
• Velmans, M. and Schneider, S. (Eds.)(2006) The Blackwell Companion to
Consciousness. New York: Blackwell..
 32

[edit] External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of
Consciousness studies

Look up consciousness in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or
guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive and inappropriate
external links. (February 2010)

[edit] Academic journals & newsletters

• Anthropology of Consciousness
• Journal of Consciousness Studies
• Consciousness and Cognition
• Psyche
• Science & Consciousness Review
• ASSC e-print archive containing articles, book chapters, theses, conference
presentations by members of the ASSC.

[edit] Philosophy resources

• Publications of the Tufts Center for Cognitive Studies, including Daniel Dennett
• David Chalmers' directory of online papers on consciousness
• Intuitions about Consciousness: Experimental Studies an article describing the
folk intuitions about what is a conscious agent
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
o Consciousness (General)
o Animal Consciousness
o Higher Order Theories of Consciousness
o Consciousness and Intentionality
o Representational Theory of Consciousness
o Unity of Consciousness
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
o Consciousness
o Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness

[edit] Miscellaneous sites

• You won't find consciousness in the brain (on why consciousness cannot be
measured or grasped by the same scientific methods and techniques as the brain)
• What Consciousness is: A Definition and Framing of the Problem
• History of Consciousness Graduate Program, ("consciousness as forms of
human expression and social action manifested in historical, cultural, and
political contexts") at the University of California, Santa Cruz, headed by Dr.
Angela Davis* Online lecture videos, from an undergraduate course taught by
Christof Koch at Caltech on the neurobiological basis of consciousness in 2004.
• Piero Scaruffi's annotated bibliography on the mind
• Anesthesia and Drug effects on consciousness
 33

• Brain Atlas, Brain Maps, Neuroinformatics

• Online course in consciousness at University of Virginia
• A survey course at University of Florida
• Edinburgh thesis (.ps) on consciousness including up-to-date reviews
• The Mystery of Consciousness TIME.com
• Helen Keller Language and Consciousness
• Quantum-Mind

[edit] Video

• Jill Bolte Taylor - My Stroke of Insight

• Christof Koch, Noam Chomsky, Pat Churchland, David Glanzman, David
Chalmers- The Mystery of Consciousness

[show]
v•d•e
Philosophy of mind

[show]
v•d•e
Psychophysiology

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness"

Categories: Neuropsychology | Neuropsychological assessment | Phenomenology |
Philosophy of mind | Self | Consciousness
 34

Mind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation).

Mind (pronounced /ˈmaɪnd/) is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced

as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination,
including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by
implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself subjectively as a
stream of consciousness.

Theories of mind and its function are numerous. Earliest recorded speculations are from
the likes of Zoroaster, the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, Adi Shankara and other ancient
Greek, Indian and, later, Islamic philosophers. Pre-scientific theories grounded in
theology concentrated on the supposed relationship between the mind and the soul, a
human's supernatural, divine or god-given essence.

Which attributes make up the mind is much debated. Some psychologists argue that
only the higher intellectual functions constitute mind, particularly reason and memory.
In this view the emotions—love, hate, fear, joy—are more primitive or subjective in
nature and should be seen as different from the mind as such. Others argue that various
rational and emotional states cannot be so separated, that they are of the same nature
and origin, and should therefore be considered all part of what we call the mind.

In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought: the private conversation
with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads." Thus we "make up our minds,"
"change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something. One of the key attributes of
the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has
access. No one else can "know our mind." They can only interpret what we consciously
or unconsciously communicate.

Etymology
Further information: Geist

The original meaning of Old English gemynd was the faculty of memory, not of thought
in general. Hence call to mind, come to mind, keep in mind, to have mind of, etc. Old
English had other words to express "mind", such as hyge "mind, spirit".

The generalization of mind to include all mental faculties, thought, volition, feeling and
memory, gradually develops over the 14th and 15th centuries.[1]

The meaning of "memory" is shared with Old Norse, which has munr. The word is
originally from a PIE verbal root *men-, meaning "to think, remember", whence also
Latin mens "mind", Sanskrit manas "mind" and Greek μένος "mind, courage, anger".
 35

[edit] Aspects of mind

[edit] Mental faculties
See also: Reason, Faculty psychology, and Modularity of mind

Thought is a mental process which allows individuals to model the world, and so to deal
with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to
similar concepts and processes include cognition, idea, and imagination. Thinking
involves the cerebral manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in
problem solving, reasoning and making decisions. Thinking is a higher cognitive
function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.

Memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently recall information.

Although traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive
psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a new
branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, a marriage between cognitive
psychology and neuroscience.

Imagination is accepted as the innate ability and process to invent partial or complete
personal realms the mind derives from sense perceptions of the shared world. The term
is technically used in psychology for the process of reviving in the mind percepts of
objects formerly given in sense perception. Since this use of the term conflicts with that
of ordinary language, some psychologists have preferred to describe this process as
"imaging" or "imagery" or to speak of it as "reproductive" as opposed to "productive" or
"constructive" imagination. Imagined images are seen with the "mind's eye". One
hypothesis for the evolution of human imagination is that it allowed conscious beings to
solve problems (and hence increase an individual's fitness) by use of mental simulation.

Consciousness in mammals (this includes humans) is an aspect of the mind generally

thought to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, sentience, and the ability to perceive
the relationship between oneself and one's environment. It is a subject of much research
in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Some
philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness, which is subjective
experience itself, and access consciousness, which refers to the global availability of
information to processing systems in the brain.[2] Phenomenal consciousness has many
different experienced qualities, often referred to as qualia. Phenomenal consciousness is
usually consciousness of something or about something, a property known as
intentionality in philosophy of mind.

[edit] Philosophy of mind

See also: Philosophy of mind and Irreducible Mind

Philosophy of mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind,
mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship
to the physical body. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the
body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are
other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the
physical body.[3]
"Aristotelian thought has permeated most Occidental philosophical system until modern
 36

times, and the classification of man's function as vegetative, sensitive, and rational is
still useful. In present popular usage, soul and mind are not clearly differentiated and
some people, more or less consciously, still feel that the soul, and perhaps the mind are
not clearly differentiated and some people, more or less consciously, still feel that the
soul, and perhaps the mind, may enter or leave the body as independent entities. "- Jose
M.R. Delgado [4]

Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the
mind-body problem. Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some way
separate from each other. It can be traced back to Plato,[5] Aristotle[6][7][8] and the
Samkhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy,[9] but it was most precisely formulated
by René Descartes in the 17th century.[10] Substance dualists argue that the mind is an
independently existing substance, whereas Property dualists maintain that the mind is a
group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain,
but that it is not a distinct substance.[11]

Monism is the position that mind and body are not physiologically and ontologically
distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western Philosophy by
Parmenides in the 5th Century BC and was later espoused by the 17th Century
rationalist Baruch Spinoza.[12] According to Spinoza's dual-aspect theory, mind and
body are two aspects of an underlying reality which he variously described as "Nature"
or "God". Physicalists argue that only the entities postulated by physical theory exist,
and that the mind will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical
theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the
external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. Neutral monists
adhere to the position that perceived things in the world can be regarded as either
physical or mental depending on whether one is interested in their relationship to other
things in the world or their relationship to the perceiver. For example, a red spot on a
wall is physical in its dependence on the wall and the pigment of which it is made, but it
is mental in so far as its perceived redness depends on the workings of the visual
system. Unlike dual-aspect theory, neutral monism does not posit a more fundamental
substance of which mind and body are aspects. The most common monisms in the 20th
and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism; these positions include
behaviorism, the type identity theory, anomalous monism and functionalism.[13]

Many modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive

physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something
separate from the body.[13] These approaches have been particularly influential in the
sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary
psychology and the various neurosciences.[14][15][16][17] Other philosophers, however,
adopt a non-physicalist position which challenges the notion that the mind is a purely
physical construct. Reductive physicalists assert that all mental states and properties will
eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states.[18]
[19][20]
Non-reductive physicalists argue that although the brain is all there is to the mind,
the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are
indispensable, and cannot be reduced to the language and lower-level explanations of
physical science.[21][22] Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to clarify some of
these issues. However, they are far from having been resolved, and modern
philosophers of mind continue to ask how the subjective qualities and the intentionality
(aboutness) of mental states and properties can be explained in naturalistic terms.[23][24]
 37

[edit] Science of mind

See also: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Unconscious mind

Psychology is the scientific study of human behaviour, mental functioning, and

experience; noology, the study of thought. As both an academic and applied discipline,
Psychology involves the scientific study of mental processes such as perception,
cognition, emotion, personality, as well as environmental influences, such as social and
cultural influences, and interpersonal relationships, in order to devise theories of human
behaviour. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various
spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the
treatment of mental health problems.

Psychology differs from the other social sciences (e.g., anthropology, economics,
political science, and sociology) due to its focus on experimentation at the scale of the
individual, or individuals in small groups as opposed to large groups, institutions or
societies. Historically, psychology differed from biology and neuroscience in that it was
primarily concerned with mind rather than brain. Modern psychological science
incorporates physiological and neurological processes into its conceptions of
perception, cognition, behaviour, and mental disorders.

[edit] Brain
See also: Cognitive science, Meme, and Memetics

In animals the brain, or encephalon (Greek for "in the head"), is the control center of the
central nervous system, responsible for thought. In most animals, the brain is located in
the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision,
hearing, equilibrioception, taste and olfaction. While all vertebrates have a brain, most
invertebrates have either a centralized brain or collections of individual ganglia.
Primitive animals such as sponges do not have a brain at all. Brains can be extremely
complex. For example, the human brain contains more than 100 billion neurons, each
linked to as many as 10,000 others[citation needed].

[edit] Mental health

Main article: Mental health

By analogy with the health of the body, one can speak metaphorically of a state of
health of the mind, or mental health. Merriam-Webster defines mental health as "A state
of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or
her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary
demands of everyday life." According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there
is no one "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective
assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is
defined. In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental illness" are not
opposites. In other words, the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not necessarily
an indicator of mental health.
 38

One way to think about mental health is by looking at how effectively and successfully
a person functions. Feeling capable and competent; being able to handle normal levels
of stress, maintaining satisfying relationships, and leading an independent life; and
being able to "bounce back," or recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental
health.

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained

psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. This usually includes increasing
individual sense of well-being and reducing subjective discomforting experience.
Psychotherapists employ a range of techniques based on experiential relationship
building, dialogue, communication and behavior change and that are designed to
improve the mental health of a client or patient, or to improve group relationships (such
as in a family). Most forms of psychotherapy use only spoken conversation, though
some also use various other forms of communication such as the written word, art,
drama, narrative story, or therapeutic touch. Psychotherapy occurs within a structured
encounter between a trained therapist and client(s). Purposeful, theoretically based
psychotherapy began in the 19th century with psychoanalysis; since then, scores of
other approaches have been developed and continue to be created.

[edit] Evolutionary history of the human mind

This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this
section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (May 2010)
This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material
may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

The nature and origins of hominid intelligence is of natural interest to humans as the
most successful and intelligent hominid species. As nearly a century of archaeological
research has shown, the hominids evolved from earlier primates in eastern Africa.[citation
needed]
Like some non-primate tree-dwelling mammals, such as opossums, they evolved
an opposable thumb, which enabled them to grasp and manipulate objects, such as fruit.
They also possessed front-facing binocular vision.

Around 10 million years ago, the Earth's climate entered a cooler and drier phase, which
led eventually to the ice ages. This forced tree-dwelling animals to adapt to their new
environment or die out.[citation needed] Some primates adapted to this challenge by adopting
bipedalism: walking on their hind legs.[citation needed] The advantages of this development
are widely disputed. It was once thought[by whom?] that this gave their eyes greater
elevation and the ability to see approaching danger further off but as we[who?] now know
that hominids developed in a forest environment this theory has little real basis.[citation
needed]
At some point the bipedal primates developed the ability to pick up sticks, bones
and stones and use them as weapons, or as tools for tasks such as killing smaller animals
or cutting up carcases.[citation needed] In other words, these primates developed the use of
technology, an adaptation other animals have not attained to the same capacity as these
hominids. Bipedal tool-using primates evolved in the class of hominids, of which the
earliest species, such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, are dated to about 7 million years
ago although hominid-made tools were not developed until about 2 million years ago.
[citation needed]
Thus bipedal hominids existed for 5 million years before they started making
tools, rather than simply using preexisting objects in a tool like manner.[citation needed] The
 39

advantage of bipedalism[according to whom?] would have been simply to be able to carry

anything with survival value from an unfavorable environment to a more favorable one.
Anything too big or heavy would have to be broken or cut. This would be an insight that
led early minds to develop tools for the purpose.[citation needed]

From about 5 million years ago, the hominid brain began to develop rapidly. Some[who?]
say this was because an evolutionary loop had been established between the hominid
hand and brain.[citation needed] This theory says that the use of tools conferred a crucial
evolutionary advantage on those hominids which had this skill. The use of tools
required a larger and more sophisticated brain to co-ordinate the fine hand movements
required for this task. However this theory has not been confirmed and many other
theories[specify] have been developed based on scientific evidence.[citation needed] It is likely
that a tool-using hominid would have made a formidable enemy and that surviving this
new threat would have been the loop that increased brain size and mind power.[citation
needed]
By 2 million years ago Homo habilis had appeared in east Africa: the first hominid
to make tools rather than merely use them.[citation needed] Several more species in the genus
'homo' appeared before fully modern humans developed, known as homo sapiens. These
homo sapiens, which are the archaic version of the modern human, showed the first
evidence of language, and the range of activities we[who?] call culture, including art and
religion.[citation needed]

About 200,000 years ago in Europe and the Near East hominids known to us as
Neanderthal man or Homo neanderthalensis appeared.[citation needed] They too had art, such
as decorated tools for aesthetic pleasure, and culture, such as burying their dead in ways
which suggest spiritual beliefs.[citation needed] Hotly debated in the scientific community is
whether or not Homo sapiens developed from neanderthals or a combination of
hominids.[citation needed] Some scientists[who?] say that the Neanderthals were wiped out by
homo sapiens when they entered the region about 40,000 years ago. What is known is
that by 25,000 years ago the Neanderthal was extinct. Between 120,000 to 165,000
years ago Homo sapiens reached their fully modern form.[citation needed] The first evidence
of this was found in Africa, although once again the origins are widely debated[by whom?]
between three theories, the Single-origin theory, the Multiregional model and the
Assimilation model.[citation needed]

See also: Evolutionary psychology and Evolutionary neuroscience

[edit] Animal intelligence

Animal cognition, or cognitive ethology, is the title given to a modern approach to the
mental capacities of animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has
also been strongly influenced by the approach of ethology, behavioral ecology, and
evolutionary psychology. Much of what used to be considered under the title of animal
intelligence is now thought of under this heading. Animal language acquisition,
attempting to discern or understand the degree to which animal cognition can be
revealed by linguistics-related study, has been controversial among cognitive linguists.

[edit] Artificial intelligence

This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (September 2007)
 40

Main article: Philosophy of artificial intelligence

In 1950 Alan M. Turing published "Computing machinery and intelligence" in Mind, in

which he proposed that machines could be tested for intelligence using questions and
answers. This process is now named the Turing Test. The term Artificial Intelligence
(AI) was first used by John McCarthy who considers it to mean "the science and
engineering of making intelligent machines".[25] It can also refer to intelligence as
exhibited by an artificial (man-made, non-natural, manufactured) entity. AI is studied
in overlapping fields of computer science, psychology, neuroscience and engineering,
dealing with intelligent behavior, learning and adaptation and usually developed using
customized machines or computers.

Research in AI is concerned with producing machines to automate tasks requiring

intelligent behavior. Examples include control, planning and scheduling, the ability to
answer diagnostic and consumer questions, handwriting, natural language, speech and
facial recognition. As such, the study of AI has also become an engineering discipline,
focused on providing solutions to real life problems, knowledge mining, software
applications, strategy games like computer chess and other video games. One of the
biggest difficulties with AI is that of comprehension. Many devices have been created
that can do amazing things, but critics of AI claim that no actual comprehension by the
AI machine has taken place.

The debate about the nature of the mind is relevant to the development of artificial
intelligence. If the mind is indeed a thing separate from or higher than the functioning
of the brain, then hypothetically it would be much more difficult to recreate within a
machine, if it were possible at all. If, on the other hand, the mind is no more than the
aggregated functions of the brain, then it will be possible to create a machine with a
recognisable mind (though possibly only with computers much different from today's),
by simple virtue of the fact that such a machine already exists in the form of the human
brain.

[edit] Religious perspectives

Various religious traditions have contributed unique perspectives on the nature of mind.
In many traditions, especially mystical traditions, overcoming the ego is considered a
worthy spiritual goal.

Judaism teaches that "moach shalit al halev", the mind rules the heart. Humans can
approach the Divine intellectually, through learning and behaving according to the
Divine Will as enclothed in the Torah, and use that deep logical understanding to elicit
and guide emotional arousal during prayer. Christianity has tended to see the mind as
distinct from the soul (Greek nous) and sometimes further distinguished from the spirit.
Western esoteric traditions sometimes refer to a mental body that exists on a plane other
than the physical.

Hinduism's various philosophical schools have debated whether the human soul
(Sanskrit atman) is distinct from, or identical to, Brahman, the divine reality.

Buddhism posits that there is actually no distinct thing as a human being, who merely
consists of five aggregates, or skandhas. According to Buddhist philosopher
 41

Dharmakirti, mind is defined as "that which is clarity and cognizes"—where 'clarity'

refers to the formless nature of the mind and 'cognizes' to the function of mind, namely
that every mind must cognize an object.[26] The Indian philosopher-sage Sri Aurobindo
attempted to unite the Eastern and Western psychological traditions with his integral
psychology, as have many philosophers and New religious movements.

Taoism sees the human being as contiguous with natural forces, and the mind as not
separate from the body. Confucianism sees the mind, like the body, as inherently
perfectible.

See also: Buddhism and psychology

[edit] Non-mainstream and alternative perspectives

Parapsychology is the scientific study of certain types of paranormal phenomena, or of

phenomena which appear to be paranormal.,[27] for instance precognition, telekinesis and
telepathy. The term is based on the Greek para (beside/beyond), psyche (soul/mind),
and logos (account/explanation) and was coined by psychologist Max Dessoir in or
before 1889.[28] J. B. Rhine later popularized "parapsychology" as a replacement for the
earlier term "psychical research", during a shift in methodologies which brought
experimental methods to the study of psychic phenomena.[28] Parapsychology is
controversial, with many scientists believing that psychic abilities have not been
demonstrated to exist.[29][30][31][32][33] The status of parapsychology as a science has also
been disputed,[34] with many scientists regarding the discipline as pseudoscience.[35][36][37]

Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution,

which was originated by Richard Dawkins and Douglas Hofstadter in the 1980s. It
purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A
meme, analogous to a gene, is an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour (etc.) which is
"hosted" in one or more individual minds, and which can reproduce itself from mind to
mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to
adopt a belief is seen memetically as a meme reproducing itself. As with genetics,
particularly under Dawkins's interpretation, a meme's success may be due its
contribution to the effectiveness of its host (i.e., a the meme is a useful, beneficial idea),
or may be "selfish", in which case it could be considered a "virus of the mind".
Memetics is notable for sidestepping the traditional concern with the truth of ideas and
beliefs. Interest in memetics has declined since about 2005.[citation needed]

[edit] See also

Philosophy portal

Mind and Brain portal

• Cognitive sciences
• Conscience
• Mental state
• Mental energy
• Mind at Large
• Neural Darwinism
• Philosophy of mind
 42

• Subjective character of experience

• Theory of mind
• Skandha

[edit] References

1. ^ OED; etymonline.com
2. ^ Ned Block: On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness" in: The Behavioral
and Brain Sciences, 1995.
3. ^ Kim, J. (1995). Honderich, Ted. ed. Problems in the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford
Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. ^ James M.R. Delgado (1969). Physical control of the mind; towards a psycho civilized
society. Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto citebook. p. 25.
5. ^ Plato (1995). E.A. Duke, W.F. Hicken, W.S.M. Nicoll, D.B. Robinson, J.C.G.
Strachan. ed. Phaedo. Clarendon Press.
6. ^ Robinson, H. (1983): ‘Aristotelian dualism’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1,
123–44.
7. ^ Nussbaum, M. C. (1984): ‘Aristotelian dualism’, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy, 2, 197–207.
8. ^ Nussbaum, M. C. and Rorty, A. O. (1992): Essays on Aristotle's De Anima,
Clarendon Press, Oxford.
9. ^ Sri Swami Sivananda. "Sankhya:Hindu philosophy: The Sankhya".
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Sankhya/id/23117.
10. ^ Descartes, René (1998). Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.
Hacket Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87220-421-9.
11. ^ Hart, W.D. (1996) "Dualism", in Samuel Guttenplan (org) A Companion to the
Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell, Oxford, 265–7.
12. ^ Spinoza, Baruch (1670) Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theologico-Political
Treatise).
13. ^ a b Kim, J., "Mind-Body Problem", Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Ted Honderich
(ed.). Oxford:Oxford University Press. 1995.
14. ^ Pinel, J. Psychobiology, (1990) Prentice Hall, Inc. ISBN 8815071741
15. ^ LeDoux, J. (2002) The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, New
York: Viking Penguin. ISBN 8870787958
16. ^ Russell, Stuart J.; Norvig, Peter (2003), Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
(2nd ed.), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-790395-2,
http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/
17. ^ Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene (1976) Oxford:Oxford University Press. ISBN
18. ^ Churchland, Patricia (1986). Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the
Mind-Brain.. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03116-7.
19. ^ Churchland, Paul (1981). "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes".
Journal of Philosophy (Journal of Philosophy, Inc.) 78 (2): 67–90.
doi:10.2307/2025900. http://jstor.org/stable/2025900.
20. ^ Smart, J.J.C. (1956). "Sensations and Brain Processes". Philosophical Review.
21. ^ Donald Davidson (1980). Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-924627-0.
22. ^ Putnam, Hilary (1967). "Psychological Predicates", in W. H. Capitan and D. D.
Merrill, eds., Art, Mind and Religion Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
23. ^ Dennett, Daniel (1998). The intentional stance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
ISBN 0-262-54053-3.
24. ^ Searle, John (2001). Intentionality. A Paper on the Philosophy of Mind. Frankfurt a.
M.: Nachdr. Suhrkamp. ISBN 3-518-28556-4.
 43

25. ^ What is Artificial Intelligence? by John McCarthy Stanford University

26. ^ Gyatso, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Understanding the Mind: The Nature and Power of
the Mind, Tharpa Publications (2nd. ed., 1997) ISBN 978-0-948006-78-4
27. ^ Parapsychological Association website, Glossary of Key Words Frequently Used in
Parapsychology, Retrieved February 10, 2007
28. ^ a b Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology edited by J. Gordon Melton Gale
Research, ISBN 0-8103-5487-X
29. ^ Science Framework for California Public Schools. California State Board of
Education. 1990.
30. ^ Wheeler, J. A. (1979). "Point of View: Drive the Pseudos Out...". Skeptical Inquirer
3: 12–13.
31. ^ Kurtz, P. (1978). "Is Parapsychology a Science?". Skeptical Inquirer 3: 14–32.
32. ^ Druckman, D. and Swets, J. A. eds. (1988). Enhancing Human Performance: Issues,
Theories and Techniques. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.. p. 22. ISBN 0-
309-07465-7.
33. ^ Reuters (5 September 2003). "Telepathy gets academic in Sweden". CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/05/offbeat.telepathy.reut/index.html.
Retrieved 9 March 2009. "Despite decades of experimental research ... there is still no
proof that gifts such as telepathy and the ability to see the future exist, mainstream
scientists say."
34. ^ Flew, Antony (1982). "Parapsychology: Science or Pseudoscience?". In Grim,
Patrick. Philosophy of Science and the Occult.
35. ^ Cordón, Luis A. (2005). Popular psychology: an encyclopedia. Westport, Conn:
Greenwood Press. pp. 182. ISBN 0-313-32457-3. "The essential problem is that a large
portion of the scientific community, including most research psychologists, regards
parapsychology as a pseudoscience, due largely to its failure to move beyond null
results in the way science usually does. Ordinarily, when experimental evidence fails
repeatedly to support a hypothesis, that hypothesis is abandoned. Within
parapsychology, however, more than a century of experimentation has failed even to
conclusively demonstrate the mere existence of paranormal phenomenon, yet
parapsychologists continue to pursue that elusive goal."
36. ^ Bunge, Mario (1991). "A skeptic's beliefs and disbeliefs". New Ideas in Psychology 9
(2): 131–149. doi:10.1016/0732-118X(91)90017-G.
37. ^ Blitz, David (1991). "The line of demarcation between science and nonscience: The
case of psychoanalysis and parapsychology". New Ideas in Psychology 9: 163–170.
doi:10.1016/0732-118X(91)90020-M.

[edit] External links

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Consciousness studies
 44

• C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, 1925.

• Abhidhamma: Buddhist Perspective of the Mind and the Mental Functions
• Buddhist View of the Mind
• Current Scientific Research on the Mind and Brain From ScienceDaily
• R. Shayna Rosenbaum, Donald T. Stuss, Brian Levine, Endel Tulving, "Theory
of Mind Is Independent of Episodic Memory", Science, 23 November 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5854, p. 1257
• The Extended Mind by Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers
• The Mind and the Brain A site exploring J. Krishnamurti's view of the Mind.
• ThinkQuest: Think.com, Oracle Education Foundation, Projects | Competition |
Library, History of Artificial Intelligence.
• Loebner.net, Description by Turing of testing machines for intelligence.
• Discourse on the mind by Swami Parmanand Ji Maharaj of Bhagwat Bhakti
Ashram. (PDF document)

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Subliminal stimuli
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Subliminal message)
Jump to: navigation, search

Subliminal stimuli (pronounced /sʌbˈlɪmɨnəl/, literally "below threshold"), contrary

to supraliminal stimuli or "above threshold", are any sensory stimuli below an
individual's absolute threshold for conscious perception. Visual stimuli may be quickly
flashed before an individual may process them, or flashed and then masked, thereby
interrupting the processing. Audio stimuli may be played below audible volumes,
similarly masked by other stimuli, or recorded backwards in a process called
backmasking. Introduced in 1897, the concept became controversial as "subliminal
messages" in 1957 when marketing practitioners claimed its potential use in persuasion.
Subsequent scientific research, however, has been unable to replicate most of these
marketing claims beyond a mere placebo effect.

Types

Used in advertising to create familiarity with new products, subliminal messages make
familiarity into a preference for the new products. Johan Karremans suggests that
subliminal messages have an effect when the messages are goal-relevant.[1] Karremans
did a study assessing whether subliminal priming of a brand name of a drink would
affect a person's choice of drink, and whether this effect is caused by the individual's
feelings of being thirsty.

His study sought to ascertain whether or not subliminally priming or preparing the
participant with text or an image without being aware of it would make the partaker
more familiar with the product. Half of his participants were subliminally primed with
Lipton Ice ("Lipton Ice" was repeatedly flashed on a computer screen for 24
milliseconds), while the other half was primed with a control that did not consist of a
brand. In his study he found that subliminally priming a brand name of a drink (Lipton
Ice) made those who were thirsty want the Lipton Ice. Those who were not thirsty,
however, were not influenced by the subliminal message since their goal was not to
quench their thirst.[1]

Subconscious stimuli by single words is well known to be modestly effective in

changing human behavior or emotions. This is evident by a pictorial advertisement that
portrays four different types of rum. The phrase "U Buy" was embedded somewhere,
backwards in the picture. A study was done to test the effectiveness of the alcohol ad.
Before the study, participants were able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad,
none found any. In the end, the study showed 80% of the subjects subconsciously
perceived the backward message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular
rum.[2]

Though many things can be perceived from subliminal messages, only a few words or a
single image of unconscious signals can be internalized. As only a word or image can
be effectively perceived, the simpler features of that image or word will cause a change
 47

in behavior (i.e., beef is related to hunger). This was demonstrated by Byrne in 1959.
The word "beef" was flashed for several, five-millisecond intervals during a sixteen-
minute movie to experimental subjects, while nothing was flashed to control subjects.
Neither the experimental nor control subjects reported for a higher preference for beef
sandwiches when given a list of five different foods, but the experimental subjects did
rate themselves as hungrier than the control subjects when given a survey. If the
subjects were flashed a whole sentence, the words would not be perceived and no effect
would be expected.[3]

In 1983, five studies with 52 undergraduate and graduate students, found that although
subliminally flashing and masking the words affects the availability of conscious
processing, it however has little effect on visual processing itself. This suggests that
perceptual processing is an unconscious activity that proceeds to all levels of available
and redescription analysis. For example if flashed the word "butter" the individual
would be quicker to identify the practically and conceptually related word "bread" than
to identify a practically/conceptually unrelated word, even a phonetically and
typographically more similar one such as "bottle".[4]

[edit] Images

In 1991, Baldwin and others in two studies questioned whether priming individuals with
images flashed for an instant may affect experiences of self. In the first study, images
were flashed of the scowling face of their faculty adviser or an approving face of
another before graduate students evaluated their own research ideas. In the second
study, participants who were Catholic were asked to evaluate themselves after being
flashed a disapproving face of the Pope or another unfamiliar face. In both studies the
self-ratings were lower after the presentation of a disapproving face with personal
significance, however in the second study there was no effect if the disapproving face
were unfamiliar.[5]

In 1992, Krosnick and others, in two studies with 162 undergraduates, demonstrated
that attitudes can develop without being aware of its antecedents. Individuals viewed
nine slides of people performing familiar daily activities after being exposed to either an
emotionally positive scene, such as a romantic couple or kittens, or an emotionally
negative scene, such as a werewolf or a dead body between each slide. After exposure
from which the individuals consciously perceived as a flash of light, the participants
gave more positive personality traits to those people whose slides were associated with
a emotionally positive scene and vice-versa. Despite the statistical difference, the
subliminal messages had less of an impact on judgment than the slide's inherent level of
physical attractiveness.[6] In order to determine whether these images affect an
individual's evaluation of novel stimuli, a study was conducted in 1993 which produced
in similar results.[7]

In 1998, Bar and Biederman questioned whether an image flashed briefly would prime
an individual's response. An image was flashed for 47 milliseconds and then a mask
would interrupt the processing. Following the first presentation only one in seven
individuals could identify the image, while after the second presentation, 15 to 20
minutes later, one in three could identify the image.[8]
 48

In 2004, in two studies 13 white individuals were exposed to either white or black faces,
flashed either subliminally for 30 milliseconds or supraliminally for over half a second.
Individuals showed greater fusiform gyrus and amygdala response to black faces than
white, suggesting that the great amount of facial processing may be associated with a
greater emotional response.[9]

In a 2005 study, individuals were exposed to a subliminal image flashed for 16.7
milliseconds that could signal a potential threat and again with a supraliminal image
flashed for half a second. Individuals showed greater amygdala activity, although the
right amygdala showed greater response to subliminal fear and the left amygdala
showed greater response to supraliminal fear. Furthermore supraliminal fear showed
more sustained cortical activity, suggesting that subliminal fear may not entail
conscious surveillance while supraliminal fear entails higher-order processing.[10]

In 2007, it was shown that subliminal exposure to the Israeli flag had a moderating
effect on the political opinions and voting behaviors of Israeli volunteers. This effect
was not present when a jumbled picture of the flag was subliminally shown.[11]

[edit] Audio

The manpage for the popular sound program SoX. The description of the "reverse"
option humorously says "Included for finding satanic subliminals".

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded

backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. During the 1970s, media
reports raised a series of concerns of its impact on listeners,[12] stating that satanic
messages were calling its listeners to commit suicide, murder, abuse drugs, or engage in
sex—which were all rising at the time.[13][14]

In a series of scientific studies, individuals listening to messages played backwards with

no accompanying music could discern: the gender of the speaker; whether the message
was in English, French, or German; whether the sentence was declarative or a question;
and occasionally a word or meaning of a sentence. However when comparing sentence
pairs, individuals were more likely to be incorrect than if their response were by pure
chance: if the message were spoken by different speakers; whether two sentences were
semantically related; and label beyond pure chance whether a message was positive or
negative in nature—suggesting that individual expectations influenced their response.
Across a variety of tasks, the studies were unable to find evidence that such messages
affected an individual's behavior, and reasoned that if the individual could not discern
the meaning of the message, then the presence of these messages would be more likely
due to the listener's expectations than the existence of these messages in themselves.[12]
 49

Some businesses claim improving an individual's memory or self-esteem while offering

subliminal self-help tapes. These tapes did not produce an effect beyond a placebo, or
an individual's expectation of their effectiveness.[15]

[edit] Effectiveness

The effectiveness of subliminal messaging has been demonstrated to prime individual

responses and stimulate mild emotional activity.[6][8] Applications, however, often base
themselves on the persuasiveness of the message. The near-consensus among research
psychologists is that subliminal messages do not produce a powerful, enduring effect on
behavior;[16] and that laboratory research reveals little effect beyond a subtle, fleeting
effect on thinking. For example, priming thirsty people with a subliminal word may, for
a brief period of time, make a thirst-quenching beverage advertisement more persuasive.
[17]
Research upon those claims of lasting effects—such as weight loss, smoking
cessation, how music in popular culture may corrupt their listeners, how it may facilitate
unconscious wishes in psychotherapy, and how market practitioners may exploit their
customers—conclude that there is no effect beyond a placebo.[18] In a 1994 study
comparing television commercials with the message either supraliminal or subliminal,
individuals produced higher ratings with those that were supraliminal. Unexpectedly,
individuals somehow were less likely to remember the subliminal message than if there
were no message.[19]

[edit] History
See also: Instances of subliminal message and Subliminal messages in popular culture

[edit] Origins

The director of Yale Psychology laboratory E.W. Scripture, PhD, published The New
Psychology in 1897 (The Walter Scott Ltd, London), which described the basic
principles of subliminal messages.[20]

In 1900, Knight Dunlap, an American professor of psychology, flashed an

"imperceptible shadow" to subjects while showing them a Müller-Lyer illusion
containing two lines with pointed arrows at both ends which create an illusion of
different lengths. Dunlap claimed that the shadow influenced his subjects subliminally
in their judgment of the lengths of the lines.

Although these results were not verified in a scientific study, American psychologist
Harry Levi Hollingworth reported in an advertising textbook that such subliminal
messages could be used by advertisers.[21]

During World War II, the tachistoscope, an instrument which projects pictures for an
extremely brief period, was used to train soldiers to recognize enemy airplanes.[20]
Today the tachistoscope is used to increase reading speed or to test sight.[22]

[edit] 1950–1970

In 1957, market researcher James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a
movie screen, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food
and drinks. Vicary coined the term subliminal advertising and formed the Subliminal
 50

Projection Company based on a six-week test. Vicary claimed that during the
presentation of the movie Picnic he used a tachistoscope to project the words "Drink
Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals.
Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey
theater increased 57.8% and 18.1% respectively.[20][23]

However, in 1962 Vicary admitted to lying about the experiment and falsifying the
results, the story itself being a marketing ploy.[24][25] An identical experiment conducted
by Dr. Henry Link showed no increase in cola or popcorn sales.[23] A trip to Fort Lee,
where the first experiment was alleged to have taken place, would have shown straight
away that the small cinema there couldn't possibly have had 45,699 visitors through its
doors in the space of six weeks. This has led people to believe that Vicary actually did
not conduct his experiment at all.[23]

However, before Vicary's confession, his claims were promoted in Vance Packard's
book The Hidden Persuaders,[26] and led to a public outcry, and to many conspiracy
theories of governments and cults using the technique to their advantage.[27] The practice
of subliminal advertising was subsequently banned in the United Kingdom and
Australia,[21] and by American networks and the National Association of Broadcasters in
1958.[23]

But in 1958, Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the message
"telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
program, and found no noticeable increase in telephone calls.[20]

[edit] 1970–2000

In 1973, commercials in the United States and Canada for the game Hūsker Dū? flashed
the message "Get it".[26] During the same year, Wilson Bryan Key's book Subliminal
Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising.[23] Public
concern was sufficient to cause the FCC to hold hearings in 1974. The hearings resulted
in an FCC policy statement stating that subliminal advertising was "contrary to the
public interest" and "intended to be deceptive".[23] Subliminal advertising was also
banned in Canada following the broadcasting of Hūsker Dū? ads there.[20]

The December 16, 1973 episode of Columbo titled "Double Exposure", is based on
subliminal messaging: it is used by the murderer, Dr. Bart Keppler, a motivational
research specialist, played by Robert Culp, to lure his victim out of his seat during the
viewing of a promotional film and by Lt. Columbo to bring Keppler back to the crime
scene and incriminate him. Lt. Columbo is shown how subliminal cuts work in a scene
mirroring James Vicary's experiment.[28][29]

In 1978, Wichita, Kansas TV station KAKE-TV received special permission from the
police to place a subliminal message in a report on the BTK Killer (Bind, Torture, Kill)
in an effort to get him to turn himself in. The subliminal message included the text
"Now call the chief", as well as a pair of glasses. The glasses were included because
when BTK murdered Nancy Fox, there was a pair of glasses lying upside down on her
dresser; police felt that seeing the glasses might stir up remorse in the killer. The
attempt was unsuccessful, and police reported no increased volume of calls afterward.[30]
 51

A study conducted by the United Nations concluded that "the cultural implications of
subliminal indoctrination is a major threat to human rights throughout the world".[31]

Campaigners have suggested subliminal messages appear in music. In 1985, two young
men, James Vance and Raymond Belknap, attempted suicide. At the time of the
shootings, Belknap died instantly. Vance was severely injured and survived. Their
families were convinced it was because of a British rock band, Judas Priest. The
families claimed subliminal messages told listeners to "do it" in the song "Better by
You, Better Than Me". The case was taken to court and the families sought more than
US$6 million in damages. The judge, Jerry Carr Whitehead said that freedom of speech
protections would not apply to subliminal messages. He said he was not convinced the
hidden messages actually existed on the album, but left the argument to attorneys.[32]
The suit was eventually dismissed. In turn, he ruled it probably would not have been
perceived without the "power of suggestion" or the young men would not have done it
unless they really intended to.[33]

In 1985, Dr. Joe Stuessy testified to the United States Senate at the Parents Music
Resource Center hearings that:

The message of a piece of heavy metal music may also be covert or

“ subliminal. Sometimes subaudible tracks are mixed in underneath other,
louder tracks. These are heard by the subconscious but not the conscious
mind. Sometimes the messages are audible but are backwards, called
backmasking. There is disagreement among experts regarding the
effectiveness of subliminals. We need more research on that.[34] ”
Stuessy's written testimony stated that:

Some messages are presented to the listener backwards. While listening to a

“ normal forward message (usually nonsensical), one is simultaneously being
treated to a back-wards message. Some experts believe that while the
conscious mind is trying to absorb the forward lyric, the subconscious is
working overtime to decipher the backwards message.[35] ”
A few months after Judas Priest's acquittal, Michael Waller, the son of a Georgia
minister, shot himself in the head while supposedly listening to Ozzy Osbourne's song
"Suicide Solution" (despite the fact that the song "Suicide Solution" was not on the
record [Ozzy Osbourne's Speak Of The Devil] found playing in his room when his
suicide was discovered). His parents claimed that subliminal messages may have
influenced his actions. The judge in that trial granted the summary judgment because
the plaintiffs could not show that there was any subliminal material on the record. He
noted, however, that if the plaintiffs had shown that subliminal content was present, the
messages would not have received protection under the First Amendment because
subliminal messages are, in principle, false, misleading or extremely limited in their
social value (Waller v. Osbourne 1991). Justice Whitehead's ruling in the Judas Priest
trial was cited to support his position.[36]
 52

[edit] 2000–present

During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for

Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from
the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS
flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS.[37][38] The FCC looked
into the matter,[39] but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.[citation needed]

A McDonald's logo appeared for one frame during the Food Network's Iron Chef
America series on January 27, 2007, leading to claims that this was an instance of
subliminal advertising. The Food Network replied that it was simply a glitch.[40]

On November 7, 2007, Network Ten Australia's broadcast of the ARIA Awards was
called out for using subliminal advertising in an exposé by the Media Watch program on
the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).[41][42]

In February 2007, it was discovered that 87 Konami slot machines in Ontario (OLG)
casinos displayed a brief winning hand image before the game would begin.
Government officials worried that the image subliminally persuaded gamblers to
continue gambling; the company claimed that the image was a coding error. The
machines were removed pending a fix by Konami.[43]

In 2007, to mark the 50th anniversary of James Vicary's original experiment, it was
recreated at the International Brand Marketing Conference MARKA 2007. As part of
the "Hypnosis, subconscious triggers and branding" presentation 1,400 delegates
watched part of the opening credits of the film Picnic that was used in the original
experiment. They were exposed to 30 subliminal cuts over a 90-second period. When
asked to choose one of two fictional brands, Delta and Theta, 81% of the delegates
picked the brand suggested by the subliminal cuts, Delta.[44] Although, Delta is also a
real brand.

Historically, Ferrari's Formula One cars sported a barcode design that was criticized for
subliminally evoking the logo of sponsor company Marlboro, flouting a ban on tobacco
advertising.[45] The design was removed in response in 2010.[46]

Penske Racing sports a livery design on a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race car that
subliminally evokes the logo of sponsor company Verizon, which is prohibited under
that series' prohibition of wireless advertising.

[edit] References

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impact of subliminal priming and brand choice☆". Journal of Experimental Social
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commercials: Two experiments". Journal of Applied Psychology 79: 866.
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20. ^ a b c d e The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?, The Straight Dope,
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_187.html, retrieved 2006-08-11
21. ^ a b Pratkanis, Anthony R. (Spring 1992), "The Cargo-Cult Science of Subliminal
Persuasion", Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of
the Paranormal): pp. 260–272, archived from the original on 2006-08-10,
http://web.archive.org/web/20060810055233/http://www.csicop.org/si/9204/subliminal-
persuasion.html, retrieved 2006-08-11
22. ^ tachistoscope – Definitions from Dictionary.com
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Urban Legends Reference Pages, http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp,
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Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle
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29. ^ Re: [AMIA-L] Reply: "Sherlock Jr."
30. ^ BTK Back
31. ^ Hammarskjol, Dag (1974), 31st Session, 7 October 1974, E/Cn.4/1142/Add 2., United
Nations Human Rights Commission
32. ^ http://www.totse.com/en/ego/can_you_dance_to_it/jud-prst.html
33. ^ Vance, J., et al. v. Judas Priest et al., No. 86-5844, 2nd Dist. Ct. Nev. (August 24,
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34. ^ U.S. Senate, page 118.
35. ^ U.S. Senate, page 125.
36. ^ http://www.csicop.org/si/9611/judas_priest.html
37. ^ Crowley, Candy. "Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message" CNN.com,
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41. ^ Subliminal advertising. - ninemsn Video[dead link]
42. ^ "'Flash Dance'". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2007-11-05.
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43. ^ Agency asks slot-machine maker to halt subliminal messages
44. ^ bizcovering.com: Hypnosis in Advertising
45. ^ Gillis, Richard (2010-03-26). "Ferrari Finds Smoke Without Fire". The Wall Street
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.
 55

46. ^ Gillis, Richard; Clegg, Jonathan (2010-05-09). "Ferrari Scraps Barcode Logo". The
Wall Street Journal.
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089692088.html.

[edit] Further reading

Find more about Subliminal on Wikipedia's sister projects:
Definitions from Wiktionary
Images and media from Commons
Learning resources from Wikiversity
News stories from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Boese, Alex (2006), Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other
B.S., Orlando: Harcourt, pp. 193–195, ISBN 0156030837
• Dixon, Norman F. (1971), Subliminal Perception: The nature of a controversy,
New York: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0070941475
• Greenwald, A. G. (1992). "New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed".
American Psychologist 47 (6): 766–779. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.6.766.
PMID 1616174. edit
• Holender, D. (1986), "Semantic activation without conscious identification in
dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and
appraisal", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (1): 1–23
• Merikle, P. M.; Daneman, M. (1998), "Psychological Investigations of
Unconscious Perception", Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (1): 5–18
• Watanabe, T.; N, J.; Sasaki, Y. (2001). "Perceptual learning without perception".
Nature 413 (6858): 844. doi:10.1038/35101601. PMID 11677607. edit
• Seitz, A. R.; Watanabe, T. (2003). "Psychophysics: is subliminal learning really
passive?". Nature 422 (6927): 36. doi:10.1038/422036a. PMID 12621425. edit
• United States Senate, Ninety-ninth Congress, First Session on Contents of Music
and the Lyrics of Records (September 19, 1985), Record Labeling: Hearing
before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-
529/

[hide]
v•d•e
Hidden messages

Main Hidden messages · Subliminal message

Audio Backmasking · Reverse speech

Numeri
Numerology · Theomatics · Bible code · Cryptology
c
 56

Fnord · Paranoiac-critical method · Pareidolia · Sacred geometry ·

Visual
Steganography · Visual cryptography

Anagram · Apophenia · Asemic writing · Easter egg · Clustering illusion ·

Other Observer-expectancy effect · Pattern recognition · Paradox · Palindrome ·
Unconscious mind
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli"
Categories: Consciousness studies | Perception | Popular psychology | Advertising
techniques | Propaganda techniques | Human communication | Urban legends | Mind
control