138 CHAPTER 4
What Is Consciousness?
What exactly is meant by the term consciousness? I’ve heard it a
lot, but I’m not sure that I know everything it means.Consciousness is one of those terms that most people think they understand until some-
one asks them to define it. Various sorts of scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, phi-
losophers, and even computer scientists (who have been trying to develop an artificial
intelligence for some time now) have tried to define consciousness, and so there are sev-
eral definitions—one for nearly every field in which consciousness is studied.Definition of Consciousness
4.1 Define what it means to be conscious.
Philosopher Daniel Dennett, in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, asserts that (con-
trary to the opinion of William James in his 1894 text) there is no single stream of con-
sciousness but rather multiple “channels,” each of which is handling its own tasks
(Dennett, 1991). All of these channels operate in parallel, a kind of chaos of conscious-
ness. People must somehow organize all this conscious experience, and that organization
is influenced by their particular social groups and culture.
Do animals experience consciousness in the same way as people? That is a question
too complex to answer fully here, but many researchers of animal behavior, language,
and cognition have some reason to propose that there is a kind of consciousness in at
least some animals, although its organization would naturally not be the same as human
consciousness (Block, 2005; Browne, 2004; Hurley & Nudds, 2006; Koch & Mormann,
2010). Chapter Seven in this text includes a discussion of animal language that touches
on some of these issues. to Learning Objective 7.14.So where does that leave us in the search for a working definition
of consciousness?For our purposes, a more useful definition of consciousness might be the follow-
ing: Consciousness is your awareness of everything that is going on around you and
inside your own head at any given moment, which you use to organize your behavior
( Farthing, 1992), including your thoughts, sensations, and feelings. In a cognitive neu-
roscience view, consciousness is generated by a set of action potentials in the commu-
nication among neurons just sufficient to produce a specific perception, memory, or
experience in our awareness (Crick & Koch, 1990, 2003; Koch & Mormann, 2010). In
other words, your eyes see a dog, the neurons along the optic pathway to the occip-
ital lobe’s visual cortex are activated, and the visual association cortex is activated to
identify the external stimulus as a “dog.” Bam!—consciousness! to Learning
Objective 2.12.Altered States of Consciousness
4.2 Differentiate between the different levels of consciousness.
Much of people’s time awake is spent in a state called waking consciousness in which
their thoughts, feelings, and sensations are clear and organized, and they feel alert. But
there are many times in daily activities and in life when people experience states of
consciousness that differ from this organized waking state. These variations are called
“altered states of consciousness.”waking consciousness
state in which thoughts, feelings, and
sensations are clear, organized, and
the person feels alert.
consciousness
a person’s awareness of everything
that is going on around him or her at
any given time.