People can be awake and alert {consciousness}| [Baars, 1988] [Baars, 1995] [Block, 1995] [Block et al., 1997] [Bogen, 1995] [Chalmers, 1993] [Chalmers, 1996] [Chalmers, 2000] [Chalmers, 2002] [Grossman, 1980] [Lamme, 2003] [Metzinger, 1995] [Moore, 1922] [Pinsker and Willis, 1980] [Schiff and Plum, 2000] [Searle, 1983] [Searle, 1992] [Searle, 2000] [Tulving and Craik, 2000] [Tulving, 1993]. Conscious people are not asleep, in coma, or stuporous. Alertness can be high, normal, or low. People, thoughts, beliefs, and other mental states can be conscious or unconscious in different degrees. People cannot consciously turn consciousness off and on. Perceptions and emotions can become conscious. Consciousness is qualitative, not quantitative.
properties: analog
Consciousness appears to be analog, not digital. Consciousness does not have discrete elements.
properties: complexity
Conscious systems must have sufficient parts and relations to hold sufficient information to model perception processes and store results.
properties: heterogeneity
Consciousness and subjective experience have beliefs, thoughts, hopes, expectations, propositional-attitude states, and large narrative structures.
properties: indicators
No structures, behaviors, or functions indicate that people or animals experience sensations.
properties: intentionality
Perhaps, beliefs and purposes about specific objects are necessary to consciousness. However, moods seem to be non-specific. Perhaps, moods are perception and feeling groups. Memory represents high-level object-recognition objects but is not conscious until recalled. Before consciousness, sense processing represents low-level features and relations for later processing. Representations can have no viewpoint and be non-specific, with no object, no proposition, and no coherence.
Meditation or ecstasy can attain consciousness states that seem empty or silent and have no intention, with no beliefs or knowledge [Bogdan, 1986] [Woodfield, 1982].
properties: location
Consciousness has no physical location. It is in mental space.
properties: mental and physical interaction
Brain is physical, so if mental aspects are not physical, how can brain affect them and how can they affect brain? Physiological studies and computer studies seem to show that physical processes can account for all emotions, moods, body sensations, perceptions, cognition, and behavior, which therefore do not need extra non-physical processes. Consciousness follows physical laws, because brain makes consciousness.
properties: mental state
Consciousness and unconsciousness are mental states.
properties: mind
Consciousness is necessary for experience but not for mental activity.
properties: nomic possibility
People can imagine humans that have no experiences but function normally. Such creatures are logically possible. Can such creatures be possible in this universe {nomically possible}? It is not probable that such creatures are possible in this universe, since humans are not probable.
properties: plurality
Consciousness is not a pure, single, and simple entity but is a mixture, is plural, and is complex.
properties: psychological function
Perhaps, consciousness has objective psychological functions, such as decision making or providing information.
properties: result not process
People cannot be conscious of processes. Observing disturbs quantum-mechanical and consciousness-creating events, so processes are unobservable. Observing ends and creates observable results.
properties: serial and parallel
Conscious activities, like stream of consciousness, are serial. Consciousness has many sensations in parallel.
properties: space
Observations and sensations share space.
properties: speed
Conscious activities have low speed compared to computers but enough speed to control human behaviors in useful time intervals.
behavior
Behavior can excite or inhibit consciousness, but consciousness may or may not directly affect behavior. Consciousness is between perception and action but does not require perception or action. Perhaps, consciousness requires ability to change behavior. Perhaps, consciousness requires self-movement, to gain information and have purpose.
biology: animals
People typically think that mammals have consciousness and that lower animals do not have consciousness. Perhaps, vertebrates, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, can be conscious, because they can sleep and wake.
biology: physical correlate
Perhaps, consciousness has objective physical correlates, such as chemical or electrical activity. However, consciousness is not physical.
biology: biological level
Perhaps, consciousness can operate at high, intermediate, and/or low biological levels: cell organelles, neurons, neural assemblies, brain modules, and/or whole brains [Seager, 1999].
biology: body
Perhaps, consciousness requires body, for sensation and action.
biology: thalamus
Thalamus has parvalbumin-containing cells that focally go to cortex and has calbindin-containing cells that diffusely go to cortex [Jones, 1998]. Parvalbumin cells may be about conscious contents. Calbindin cells may be about minimal consciousness.
biology: development
Consciousness develops as organism sense and motor capabilities mature.
Prematurely born infants, after seven months, have some consciousness. They explore voluntarily. They act to see what reaction is. They soon recognize mother smell and sounds. They react to womb chemicals and other environmental factors, with emotional responses. They have moods. They have body sensations. They can time actions and perceptions and use rhythms.
Newborns can imitate and share reciprocal social activities.
biology: evolution
Natural selection modifies consciousness as sense and motor capabilities evolve. Mind has many incidental properties {accident, mind} that evolve together with consciousness. Perhaps, consciousness results from brain-evolution accidents. Perhaps, consciousness is non-functional or has only neutral effect. No trait always associates with consciousness. Observing differences among animal sense organs does not show what consciousness requires. Consciousness is not something that was adaptive before but is not adaptive now.
cognition
Consciousness does not require attention.
Perhaps, consciousness requires imitation.
Perhaps, mind requires language to organize thought.
Consciousness requires immediate and/or iconic memory to integrate separate things. Long-term memory and short-term memory are not necessary for consciousness.
Consciousness is between perception and action but does not require perception or action.
Perhaps, to observe, consciousness requires self. People feel that they are thought agents.
Consciousness does not require thoughts.
symbol
Perhaps, mind requires symbol use and symbol systems.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224