We can turn knowledge of Wilber’s spectrum from an abstraction into lived experience, and orient our lives — the awareness, thoughts, behaviors, and habits of which they’re made — towards states of consciousness we value. We can follow Descartes’ example and cast aside everything of which we cannot be sure, tumbling down the Socratic mineshaft to the realization that we don’t know a damn thing. A successful philosophy research paper topics is the first step towards good grade. Like cutting away dead leaves from plants to beckon growth, pruning consciousness of inhibitory mental habits renders that ‘I’ unfixed, spacious, and porous. In one belief, a person is conscious when awake, but unconscious when sleeping or comatose. Being born is rather disorienting. ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF SILVER NANOPARTICLES BASED ON THEIR SHAPES, A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) and The Butcher Boy (McCabe), Impact of racial stereotypes/racism on, self-esteem amongst African-American students regarding standardized testing. We can handle lab reports, academic … Property Dualism 1389 Words | 6 Pages. Sperry was working with subjects who suffered from epileptic seizures and after the procedure, patients lived a relatively easy life. for students : all the ingredients of a good essay. This essay assesses property dualism, a theory of mind. I’ve bashed my own head against his books a few times —  little gets through. Realizing Self is very difficult in the Kena Upanishad. The Kantian thesis is an intellectual study of someone else’s mind, while meditation is an experiential study of one’s own. Overview. Philosophy is not stagnant. Now offering the Eastern therapeutic intention: “…the central aim of most Eastern approaches is not to strengthen the ego but to completely and totally transcend it…to tap a level of consciousness that offers total freedom and complete release from the root cause of all suffering, that puts to rest our must puzzling questions about the nature of Reality, and that ends our restless and anxious searchings for an abode of peace.”. But if we don’t, we cannot live beyond their leash. Philosophy’s essence is nebulous and wavy, like a quantum field. Proofreading sets any writing apart from Consciousness Philosophy Argumentative Essay “acceptable” and makes it exceptional. Consciousness Essay; Consciousness Essay. This page of the essay has 1047 words. Join me in a light-hearted deconstruction of our ways of living, with a curious eye towards methods of reconstruction, roughly two years old, when the self-model develops, a term Thomas Metzinger describes as the purpose of meditation, rather than the mythology we tell of our lives, providing widespread existential value by moving towards universal basic income. Download the full version above. These behaviours were related to unifying sensory input which are later on explained by attributing them to one hemispere or the other. We can experience, for ourselves, the many unknown rooms in the labyrinth of consciousness. He writes: “Thus having fully weighed every consideration, I must finally conclude that the statement ‘I am, I exist’ must be true whenever I state it or mentally consider it.”. The Human Nature Of Consciousness Essay. Do the human anxieties that plague our minds dissipate when awareness rests in the present? Conversations on Consciousness, by Susan Blackmore. This remains a great starting point. Meditation is an experiential process of lessening the distraction of awareness amidst the many gusts of wind, mental or otherwise. Each therapy, from its own fixed locale upon the shared line of development, contributes towards the final creation. What endures through its many instantiations? Each life, at its core, is a timeless moment. Consciousness has been referred to as ‘the hard problem’, and... Consciousness … Nothing that remains subconscious can be processed, and unprocessed trauma impedes any attempt at living well. But this isn’t possible without placing the exploration of consciousness back in the individual, cultural, and philosophic center. Exploring, expressing, and reconfiguring consciousness is the stuff of hippies, artists, and shamans. EssaySauce.com is a completely free resource for students. That being said, what I want to do in the paper is to figure out whether the unity thesis is true or not. 1639 Words | 7 Pages. Later on, they clarify that because of the relation of subsumption is reflexive, regress is not an issue here (2003, p. 21). That’s how I envision it, anyway. Examples are abundant of diligent meditators who’re also, undeniably, total assholes. This essay was submitted to us by a student in order to help you with your studies. These famous words of David Hume, on his inability to perceive the self, set the stage for JeeLoo Liu and John Perry's collection of essays on self-awareness and self-knowledge. Numerous publications, devoted to the problems of consciousness are an indicator of that. Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Consciousness — Literary Analysis of Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett This essay has been submitted by a student. But it’s become popular among meditation practitioners to flip Descartes’ insight: I am, therefore I think. Hence, he says that the unity thesis itself is enough to prove that dualism is true. Our experiences of different types are distinct yet, they don’t seem to be disunified. Meditation alone may not be able to dislodge them. These human wounds often remain unknown or repressed, calcifying in the unconscious. In 1960s, It was thought that by severing the connection between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain, at least certain types of epilepsy could be inhibited. "Of all the objects in the universe, the human brain is the most complex. Consciousness is characterized most evocatively, I think, by Thomas Nagel in his What is it Like to be a Bat? Philosophy, then, may be an inquiry into presence. Despite millenia of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being "at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives". But at some point, after a nebulous early childhood in which everything is wonder-full and experience is ridden as a wave, we come into this kind of coagulated awareness — ‘I’. From this milieu emerged a useful model for bringing under one roof the many practices of existential therapy: philosopher Ken Wilber’s spectrum of consciousness. If you're looking for an overview of just how … Whether or not we’re onboard with ego transcendence, what’s significant is the partnership between Eastern and Western practices. But what is it that oneknows if one knows oneself? I’m not suggesting any philosopher who doesn’t sit with crossed legs and closed eyes is a fraud (though doing so while following the breath should be a staple in any ‘Intro to Philosophy’ course); meditative methods are vast and idiosyncratic. Through various meditative practices, psychedelics, flow-states, virtual reality applications, even electrical stimulations like the God Helmet, it’s possible to confront ourselves with the long corridors, the vast potentialities of consciousness of which we’re only dimly aware. It’s writing, meditating, howling poetry in the streets, going to therapy, dancing; philosophy isn’t a thing, but a process. However, they also reported they were experiencing some odd behaviours. What, then, is the pulsating heart of philosophy? The abstract noun “consciousness” is not frequently used by itself in the contemporary literature, but is originally derived from the Latin con (with) and scire (to know). essay, written in 1974: [A]n organism has conscious mental states if there is something that it is like to be that organism – something it is like for the organism. What’s left? When not beckoned by thoughts into those vacant rooms of memory, or forecasting futures? The Spectrum of Consciousness. Philosophy is full of people barging in, accusing the entire discipline of missing its mark, and then presenting their own view of how philosophy ought to be. Page 50 of 50 - About 500 essays. All consciousness is the consciousness of something, following from Husserl. Consciousness Essay example Consciousness. So, consider the following for brief explanations of these notions of unity. Hence, two or more states are subsumtively phenomenally unified if there is something it is like to have all of the states together and similarly, two or more states are subsumtively access unified the conjunction of the states in question is accessible. Neolithic burial practicesappear to express spiritual beliefs and provide early evidence for atleast minimally reflective thought about the nature of humanconsciousness (Pearson 1999, Clark and Riel-Salvatore 2001).Preliterate cultures have similarly been found invariably to embracesome form of spiritual or at least animist view that indicates a degreeof reflection about the nature of conscious awar… Consciousness is one of the unsolved mysteries that great thinkers across many disciplines have attempted to elucidate. The Black Consciousness Movement evolved in to an anti-apartheid activist movement. The exploration of consciousness should not remain a luxury for the affluent. But more broadly, meditation scarcely features in Western philosophical discourse, and the reason why eludes me as much as the meaning of Kant’s writing. This is not an example of the work written by professional essay writers. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines consciousness … To work on one end of the spectrum while neglecting another yields imbalance. How might this foundation in the primacy of consciousness inform philosophy, and our lives, at large? My faith is that progress lies, dormant under nihilism’s shroud, in exposure to the varieties of conscious experience. Access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness are subsumptive as well. Human consciousness is a unique field blending philosophy, psychology, and neurology in order to define what exactly it is that gives man thought and makes him aware of it. Four years in academic philosophy made it clear that often, it studies almost everything other than oneself. They discuss how objectual unity needs a solution of binding problem but as I have said, it is not my concern here, at least at this point so, I will leave that discussion out even though it is of value. Paul Zweig calls it “…that bundle of vacated rooms and amazing basements known as memory.” And the future will never exist as such. Yet, with the split-brain syndrome some philosophers suggested that consciousness can be broken down. Each newly-minted self faces the voyage, in Camus’ words, “…to examine, to enlarge, and to enrich the ephemeral island on which they have just landed.”. It is important to say that this total state is not a mere conjuction of the states because it is a state itself. We've got thousands of real essay examples for you to use as inspiration for your own work, all free to access and download. Consciousness and other kinds of academic papers in our essays database at Many Essays. Identify and critically discuss the main principles of the Black Consciousness philosophy. What traumas lurk beneath our conscious minds, tucked away in dark and dusty corners that still hold influence upon our mentalities? Now if we go back to the unity thesis, one will inclined to say that it is a truism that if one is a subject then, necessarily, one’s mental states are phenomenally unified. I would like to point out that according to them, subject unity is trivial but they might have a false assumption there since forming or identifying the set of all phenomental states had by subject S at time t might be problematic after all. Suffering is frustratingly ubiquitous. Philosophy may occur as I write it, maybe even while you read it, but not in-between. “Western psychotherapies aim at ‘patching up’ the individual self while Eastern approaches aim at transcending the self.”, “The avowed aim of most Western approaches is variously stated as strengthening the ego, integrating the self, correcting one’s self-image, building self-confidence…they offer…a lessening of the ‘normal neuroses’ that are part and parcel of being an ego.”. Or, if ego transcendence is a big hoax, we will have cultivated healthy egos all for nothing. If you use part of this page in your own work, you need to provide a citation, as follows: Essay Sauce, Consciousness. And yet, meditation is not a panacea. EssaySauce.com is a free resource for students, providing thousands of example essays to help them complete their college and university coursework. Yes! There are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. To what extent is the narration in Lolita more concerned with the aesthetics of writing rather than plot? As Bayne and Chalmers pointed out there are at least three possible claims to be made: the unity of consciousness is necessary, the unity of consciousness can be broken down and the unity of consciousness is usually disunified. All of our essays are donated in exchange for a free plagiarism scan on one of our partner sites. Meditative practices that poke, prod, and loosen the ego’s boundaries are enriched by that ego being healthy. Yet, to account for the unity of consciousness, there seems to be at least two questions to be answered first: What form of mental unity is essential for consciousness to be unified and how unified conscious … To answer them was Descartes’ aim in his, aptly titled, Meditations, often considered the spark that ignited modern philosophy. The ludicrous classification of psychedelics with drugs like heroin can be lifted to reanimate the professional research begun in the 40’s, while also liberating personal explorations with these tools from the paranoia of illegality (not to mention their astounding therapeutic potential), with thoughtful guidance, information, and regulations. Maps never disclose the full geography they represent. The hard problem is, to use the words of Annaka Harris, the question of "how experience arise[s] out of non-sentient matter". Spatial unity is a matter of states representing objects as being part of the same space. People have always complained, philosophers especially, about the various climates of their time; political, social, cultural. But although he knew this about himself,it is only later in the play that he comes to know that it is hehimself of whom it is true. According to materialism, consciousness is the direct result of brain activity. One of the most impressive feats in philosophy today is to understand Immanuel Kant. But underlying every age’s complaint, every philosophy, is that disoriented ‘I’, a subjectivity inexplicably crystallized into the sensation of being separate from the world it faces. The thorns stuck together in our congealed selves often require multiple surgical tools to remove. I will only explain subsumptive unity, phenomenal unity and access unity in depth because ultimately, the consciousness they are concerned here is phenomenal consciousness and accordingly, the unity that is relevant here is phenomenal unity and since they will use access unity in order to account for the split-brain syndrome, access unity is also relevant here. The website is funded by adverts which cover the cost of our hosting and domain renewal. Subject unity is a matter of states being had by the same subject at the same time. For example, this essay is not a ‘piece’ of philosophy. A reductive explanation of consciousness will explain this wholly on the basis of physical principles that do not themselves make any appeal to consciousness. Consciousness Physical….Or Not???? EssaySauce.com has thousands of great essay examples for students to use as inspiration when writing their own essays. Text preview of this essay: This page of the essay has 1047 words. We must allow ourselves, individually and politically, to set sail for the unknown waters of consciousness with diligence and gusto. If the contemplative wager isn’t to your taste, you can provide an alternative response to Thomas Metzinger’s question: What’s a ‘good’ state of consciousness? It’s becoming trite but remains true: we live only here, in the present, nowhere else. To be the Self is to go beyond death.” (2.4). Of course, this is what I’m doing, being that guy. Sperry conducted split-brain experiments in which two stimuli were presented to the subject in a way that one of the stimuli was processed by the left hemisphere and the other stimulus was processed by the right hemisphere. Essay on Consciousness As Determined Th 1030 Words | 5 Pages. Our experts proofread and edit your project with a detailed eye and with complete knowledge of all writing and style conventions. Perhaps I’m bitter, but frankly, I’m more philosophically impressed by someone who meditates everyday than someone who’s written a thesis on Kant. The brightest students know that the best way to learn is by example! Questions about the nature of conscious awareness have likely beenasked for as long as there have been humans. The past is made up of ghost towns no longer inhabited by awareness. As just stated, the brain’s size and physical … Consciousness Philosophy Argumentative Essay spelling, formatting, and composition. Our lives may depend on it. Even though I am not sure whether they actually make the claim but it looks like they are making a negative claim that subsumtive phenomenal unity is about mereology whereas subsumtive access unity is about conjuction. As counter-intuitive as it may seem this claim has its own appeal. Once psychology was established as a discipline separate from philosophy and biology, the study of the conscious experience became one of the first topics studied by early psych… Essay Sauce is the free student essay website for college and university students. Students can use our free essays as examples to write their own. They argue that necessarily, ‘any set of conscious states of a subject at a time is unified’ (2003, p. 2). The ambiguity of the question itself impels further research into the many rooms of conscious experience. Not philosophy departments. Wilber’s model establishes a useful directionality for the development of consciousness, and thus the progress of philosophy. However, despite displaying clear terms on our sites, sometimes users scan work that is not their own and this can result in content being uploaded that should not have been. Prima facie, consciousness is unified. True, reading Kant can in itself be made a meditation, as can almost anything if meditation be defined as a sustained inversion of awareness (upon the present). It grows diluted with talk devoid of action. So, if conscious state A has the content p, A is access conscious if S can access the information that p for report and control. Please note that the above text is only a preview of this essay. Perhaps we should all be so bold. For (all too) many of us, to live is to accumulate insecurities and traumas. Hence, the word ‘key’ was processed by the right hemisphere and the word ‘case’ was processed by the left hemisphere (Sperry 1968, p. 723-725). Explaining the nature of consciousness is one of the most important and perplexing areas of philosophy, but the concept is notoriously ambiguous. Despite the orgy of practices for surfacing buried traumas that was the 60’s, today’s dominant method remains the traditional doctor/patient interaction. Internalized traumas are like unseen puppeteers, and we may go our whole lives without ever following the strings back to their source. He argues that anything physical must have parts but mind, or ‘I’ as a think thing, do(es) not have parts because mind is clearly one and entire thing. You can view our terms of use here. The omnipresence of consciousness becomes the heartbeat to any further philosophy I construct; the scaffolding upon which I begin my ascent from the cavern of unknowing. ... Identify and critically discuss the main principles of the Black Consciousness philosophy. Our experiences of different types are distinct yet, they don’t seem to be disunified. It was established by Steve Biko whose aim was to change the black man’s mindset and thus liberate the black people of South Africa during the Apartheid oppression. Philosophy essay topics list can be a real treasure for a student. 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