More (Kinds of) Consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-125
Author(s):  
Mattia Riccardi
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Reflective Consciousness ◽  
Perceptual Sense

This chapter argues that Nietzsche allows for other forms of consciousness besides reflective consciousness. In order to demonstrate this thesis, it introduces and discusses Nietzsche’s claim that reflective consciousness involves ‘falsification’. It identifies perceptual consciousness as a second kind of consciousness which is language-independent and characterized by pictorial content, and qualitative consciousness as a third kind of consciousness which Nietzsche only ascribes to pure sensations and raw feelings. It is argued that qualitative consciousness is the only kind of consciousness that does not involve ‘falsification’. It is further argued that affects are always conscious at least in the qualitative and, arguably, also in the perceptual sense, while drives—qua dispositions—are typically strictly unconscious.

scholarly journals The Transactional Horizons of Greta Thunberg

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Daniel Stoecklin
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Reflective Consciousness ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
The Social

The paper aims at developing new understandings of agency, or capacity to make a difference, which is a central issue in childhood studies. Sixteen speeches delivered by climate activist Greta Thunberg between 2018 and 2019 are analyzed. The findings reveal 5 core reflexive operations (objectification, personification, sanctification, unification and diversification) underpinning the speeches. This is conducive to the hypothesis that Greta’s audience and the replications of demonstrations for climate justice are bound to 5 transactional horizons (activities, relations, values, images of self and motivations) identified as the symbolic landscapes channeling the social interactions in climate activism. Transactional horizons form a structure of intelligible categories linked to sensatory experience. These vectors of agency twist perceptual consciousness into a hierarchized reflective consciousness. The dominant perspective of agency within structure is challenged by this emerging paradigm of agency through structure, whereby the two terms are seen as fluid and sedimented states. Future directions are identified for interdisciplinary research, contributing to heightened awareness of recursive processes that may impact climate policies.

scholarly journals Evidence accumulation relates to perceptual consciousness and monitoring

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Pereira ◽  
Pierre Megevand ◽  
Mi Xue Tan ◽  
Wenwen Chang ◽  
Shuo Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Detection Threshold ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Neuron Activity ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Neuronal Responses ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Posterior Parietal

AbstractA fundamental scientific question concerns the neural basis of perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring resulting from the processing of sensory events. Although recent studies identified neurons reflecting stimulus visibility, their functional role remains unknown. Here, we show that perceptual consciousness and monitoring involve evidence accumulation. We recorded single-neuron activity in a participant with a microelectrode in the posterior parietal cortex, while they detected vibrotactile stimuli around detection threshold and provided confidence estimates. We find that detected stimuli elicited neuronal responses resembling evidence accumulation during decision-making, irrespective of motor confounds or task demands. We generalize these findings in healthy volunteers using electroencephalography. Behavioral and neural responses are reproduced with a computational model considering a stimulus as detected if accumulated evidence reaches a bound, and confidence as the distance between maximal evidence and that bound. We conclude that gradual changes in neuronal dynamics during evidence accumulation relates to perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring in humans.

scholarly journals Challenges for theories of consciousness: seeing or knowing, the missing ingredient and how to deal with panpsychism

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor A. F. Lamme
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Visual Consciousness ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Made In

Significant progress has been made in the study of consciousness. Promising theories have been developed and a wealth of experimental data has been generated, both guiding us towards a better understanding of this complex phenomenon. However, new challenges have surfaced. Is visual consciousness about the seeing or the knowing that you see? Controversy about whether the conscious experience is better explained by theories that focus on phenomenal (P-consciousness) or cognitive aspects (A-consciousness) remains, and the debate seems to reach a stalemate. Can we ever resolve this? A further challenge is that many theories of consciousness seem to endorse high degrees of panpsychism—the notion that all beings or even lifeless objects have conscious experience. Should we accept this, or does it imply that these theories require further ingredients that would put a lower bound on beings or devices that have conscious experience? If so, what could these ‘missing ingredients’ be? These challenges are discussed, and potential solutions are offered. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

Notes on Free-Associative Listening: “I Am Also a Stranger Here”

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-275
Author(s):  
Barnaby B. Barratt
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Consciousness

The unique conditions and characteristics of listening in psychoanalysis are introduced in relation to an effort to define how psychoanalysis proceeds “beyond psychotherapy.” Using an example from Freud's self-analysis, the author explores the tenet that every psychoanalytic session is to be treated like a dream. Freud's prescriptions for the method of listening psychoanalytically are critically discussed and the idea of “listening-to-listen” is introduced, as contrasted with listening in order to hear, listening-to-understand or in order to interpret. It is argued that free-associative listening is distinctive as a processive momentum that deconstructively interrogates the practitioner's own mechanisms of suppression and repression. This process fosters an awareness of that which is otherwise than representation, that which cannot be captured within the purview of reflective consciousness. In this sense, healing is not only transformative, but also transmutative, and the psychoanalyst is one for whom nothing is alien and everything is strange.

Merleau-Ponty and the Fold of the Flesh

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gilliam
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Actual Field ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Conceptual Language ◽  
Pure Immanence ◽  
The Way

The second chapter turns to Merleau-Ponty to see how, working through a number of issues with Sartre, phenomenology, and modern thought more generally, he deepens Sartre’s engagement with immanence and elaboration of the subject-body and perceptual consciousness as the condition of meaning, negativity, and action. Through tracing this development, the chapter elucidates the way in which it sets basis for Merleau-Ponty’s later work. In moving away from the subject-body or an exploration of the phenomenal body to a more direct ontological enquiry into the appearing of the visible-tactile (the actual) field itself, the later works develop an anti-humanist ontology that locates perceiving bodies within a meaning-generating flesh, where the reversibility of Being as ‘flesh’ establishes a generativity which is always immanent to it and as such beyond any notion of a metaphysical transcendent Outside or transcendent Other. It is here that the Outside/Other is first construed as a disjunctive fold of immanence itself. Critically, through this, Merleau-Ponty provides a conceptual language that avoids the theoretical snares of the traditional dualist language evoked by Sartre, and lays much of the groundwork for the ‘pure’ immanence of Foucault and Deleuze.

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