Awareness
Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns.
In this level of consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without necessarily implying
understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of
something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event.
Awareness is a relative concept. An animal may be partially aware, may be subconsciously aware, or may be acutely aware of an event. Awareness
may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw
material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience.
Also used to distinguish sensory perception is the word "awarement." "Awarement" is the established form of awareness. Once one has accomplished
their sense of awareness they have come to terms with awarement.
Popular ideas about consciousness suggest the phenomenon describes a condition of being aware of one's awareness or, self-awareness.
Efforts to describe consciousness in neurological terms have focused on describing networks in the brain that develop awareness of the
qualia developed by other networks.
Basic awareness of one's internal and external world depends on the brain stem. Bjorn Merker, an independent neuroscientist in Segeltorp,
Sweden, argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in infants with hydranencephaly. "Higher" forms of
awareness including self-awareness require cortical contributions, but "primary consciousness" or "basic awareness" as an ability to integrate
sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem which human
beings share with most of the vertebrates. Psychologist Carroll Izard emphasizes that this form of primary consciousness consists of capacity
to generate emotions and an awareness of one's surroundings, but not an ability to talk about what one has experienced. In the same way,
people can become conscious of a feeling that they can't label or describe, a phenomenon that's especially common in pre-verbal infants.
Neural systems that regulate attention serve to attenuate awareness among complex animals whose central and
peripheral nervous system
provides more information than cognitive areas of the brain can assimilate. Within an attenuated system of awareness, a mind might be
aware of much more than is being contemplated in a focused extended consciousness.
Changes in awareness:
The ability to consciously detect an image when presented at near-threshold stimulus varies across presentations. One factor are
“baseline shifts” due to top down attention that modulates ongoing brain activity in sensory cortex areas that effects the neural
processing of subsequent perceptual judgments. Such top down biasing can occur through two distinct processes: an attention
driven baseline shift in the alpha waves, and a decision bias reflected in gamma waves.
A philosophical view of Self-Awareness:
I think I am
"...And as I observed that this truth 'I think, therefore I am' (Cogito ergo sum) was so certain and of such evidence ...I concluded that I might,
without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the Philosophy I was in search."
"...In the statement 'I think, therefore I am' ...I see very clearly that to think it is necessary to be, I concluded that I might take, as a general
rule, the principle, that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true..."
While reading Descartes, Locke began to relish the great ideas of philosophy and the scientific method. On one occasion, while in a meeting with friends,
the question of the "limits of human understanding" arose. He spent almost twenty years of his life on the subject until the publication of An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, a great chapter in the History of Philosophy.
John Locke's chapter XXVII "On Identity and Diversity" in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) has been said to be one of the first modern
conceptualizations of consciousness as the repeated self-identification of oneself, through which moral responsibility could be attributed to the
subject - and therefore punishment and guiltiness justified, as critics such as Nietzsche would point out, affirming "...the psychology of conscience
is not 'the voice of God in man'; it is the instinct of cruelty...expresed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements
in the foundation of culture."John Locke does not use the terms self-awareness or self-consciousness though. Nietzsche himself,
in his work On the Genealogy of Morals, based on Philology, breaks away from the traditional views of Judaeo Christian Ethics but his alienation
could be taken as contributing to his eventual insanity though some scholars believe he may have been suffering from syphilis.
According to Locke, personal identity (the self) "depends on consciousness, not on substance" nor on the soul. We are the same person to the
extent that we are conscious of our past and future thoughts and actions in the same way as we are conscious of our present thoughts and actions.
If consciousness is this "thought" which doubles all thoughts, then personal identity is only founded on the repeated act of consciousness:
"This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but... in the identity of consciousness". For example,
one may claim to be a reincarnation of Plato, therefore having the same soul. However, one would be the same person as Plato only if one had the
same consciousness of Plato's thoughts and actions that he himself did. Therefore, self-identity is not based on the soul. One soul may have
various personalities. Self-identity is not founded either on the body or the substance, argues Locke, as the substance may change while the
person remains the same: "animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance", as the body of the animal grows and changes
during its life. Take for example a prince's soul which enters the body of a cobbler: to all exterior eyes, the cobbler would remain a cobbler.
But to the prince himself, the cobbler would be himself, as he would be conscious of the prince's thoughts and acts, and not of the cobbler's
life. A prince's consciousness in a cobbler body: thus the cobbler is, in fact, a prince. But this interesting border-case leads to this
problematic thought that since personal identity is based on consciousness, and that only oneself can be aware of his consciousness, exterior
human judges may never know if they really are judging - and punishing - the same person, or simply the same body. In other words, Locke argues
that you may be judged only for the acts of your body, as this is what is apparent to all but God; however, you are in truth only responsible
for the acts for which you are conscious. This forms the basis of the insanity defense: one can't be held accountable for acts in which one was
unconsciously irrational, mentally ill - and therefore leads to interesting philosophical questions:
"personal identity consists in the identity of consciousness, wherein if Socrates and the present
mayor of Queenborough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness,
Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates
was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their
outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen."
Or again:
"PERSON, as I take it, is the name for this self. Wherever a man finds what he calls himself, there, I think, another may say is the same
person. It is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belong only to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and happiness,
and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past, only by consciousness, --whereby it becomes concerned
and accountable; owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for the same reason as it does the present. All which
is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain, desiring
that that self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or APPROPRIATE to that present self
by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in it than if they had never been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i.e. reward or punishment,
on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being, without any demerit at all. For, supposing
a MAN punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there
between that punishment and being CREATED miserable? And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that, at the great day, when
every one shall 'receive according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open.' The sentence shall be justified by the
consciousness all person shall have, that THEY THEMSELVES, in what bodies soever they appear, or what substances soever that consciousness
adheres to, are the SAME that committed those actions, and deserve that punishment for them."
Henceforth, Locke's conception of personal identity founds it not on the substance or the body, but in the "same continued consciousness",
which is also distinct from the soul since the soul may have no consciousness of itself (as in reincarnation). He creates a third term between
the soul and the body - and Locke's thought may certainly be meditated by those who, following a scientist ideology, would identify too quickly
the brain to consciousness. For the brain, as the body and as any substance, may change, while consciousness remains the same. Therefore personal
identity is not in the brain, but in consciousness. However, Locke's theory also reveals his debt to theology and to Apocalyptic "great day",
which by advance excuse any failings of human justice and therefore humanity's miserable state.
A modern scientific view of Self-Awareness:
Self-Awareness Theory:
Self-Awareness Theory states that when we focus our attention on ourselves, we evaluate and compare our current behavior to our internal standards
and values. We become self-conscious as objective evaluators of ourselves. Various emotional states are intensified by self-awareness, and people
sometimes try to reduce or escape it through things like television, video games, alcohol, drugs, etc. However, some people may seek to increase
their self awareness through these outlets. People are more likely to align their behavior with their standards when made self-aware. People will
be negatively affected if they don’t live up to their personal standards. Various environmental cues and situations induce awareness of the self,
such as mirrors, an audience, or being videotaped or recorded. These cues also increase accuracy of personal memory.
Self-awareness in theater:
Theater also concerns itself with other awareness besides self-awareness. There is a possible correlation between the experience of the theater
audience and individual self-awareness. As actors and audiences must not 'break' the fourth wall in order to maintain context, so individuals
must not be aware of the artificial, or the constructed perception of his or her reality. This suggests that self-awareness is an artificial
continuum just as theater is. Theatrical efforts such as Six Characters in Search of an Author or say, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, construct yet
another layer of the fourth wall, but they do not destroy the primary illusion. Refer to Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis: An Essay on the
Organization of Experience.
References
- ed (1998), Self-awareness : its nature and development, 12-13, New York, NY: Guilford Press, ISBN 1572303174
- Consciousness in the Raw, Science News Online, September 2007
- Sylvester CM, Shulman GL, Jack AI, Corbetta M. (2007). Asymmetry of anticipatory activity in visual cortex predicts the locus of attention and perception. J Neurosci. 26;27(52):14424-33. PMID
- Anthony P. Cohen Self-Consciousness, p. 136, Routledge, 1994 ISBN 978-0415083249
- Rene Descartes Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, pp. 75-6, Sutherland & Knox, 1850
- Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason...
- Great Books of the Western World, v. 35, p. ix, William Benton, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1952 ASIN B000KRJIDS
- Ecce Homo by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche p. 117
- Richard Schacht Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality, p. 244, University of California Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0520083189
- What Nietzsche Taught pp. 209-10
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
- On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Friedrich Nietzsche On the Genealogy of Morals, p. 120, Oxford University Press, 1999 ISBN 978-0192836175
- Abraham S. Goldstein The Insanity Defense, p. 9, Yale University Press, 1967 ISBN 978-0300000993
- Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia
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