PSYA01H3 Lecture : Consciousness Notes.docx
25 Nov 2012
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Document Summary
Consciousness: is a person"s subjective experience of the world and the mind. Psychologists hope to understand phenomenology: how things seem to the unconscious person, in their understanding of the mind and behaviour. The problem of the minds: the fundamental difficulty we have to perceiving the consciousness of others. We lack the ability to directly perceive the consciousness of others. There is no way you can tell if another person"s experience of anything is at all like yours. People judge minds according to the capacity of experience and the capacity for agency (self-control) Mind/body problem: this issue of how the mind is related to the body. Rene descartes: suggested that the mind has its effects on the brain and the body through the pineal gland. Many psychologists think that the mental events are tied to the brain events, such as thoughts and perception. The brains activities precede the activities of the conscious mind.
