scholarly journals Editorial: Perception–Cognition Interface and Cross-Modal Experiences: Insights into Unified Consciousness

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Mroczko-Wąsowicz
Keyword(s):  
Unified Consciousness

Diachronically Unified Consciousness in Augustine and Aquinas

Vivarium ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 354-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Scarpelli Cory
Keyword(s):  
Self Awareness ◽  
Time Stamps ◽  
Temporal Succession ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Unified Consciousness

Abstract Medieval accounts of diachronically unified consciousness have been overlooked by contemporary readers, because medieval thinkers have a unique and unexpected way of setting up the problem. This paper examines the approach to diachronically unified consciousness that is found in Augustine’s and Aquinas’s treatments of memory. For Augustine, although the mind is “distended” by time, it remains resilient, stretching across disparate moments to unify past, present, and future in a single personal present. Despite deceptively different phrasing, Aquinas develops a remarkably similar view when, in order to accommodate Aristotle’s view of memory to Augustine’s, he insists that an implicit self-awareness “time-stamps” all intellectual acts. According to their shared approach, diachronic unified consciousness is the result of the curious way in which the mind is both drawn into and transcends the temporal succession of its own acts.

scholarly journals Kant and Cognitive Science

1969 ◽  
Vol 2 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew BROOK
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Unified Consciousness

In this paper I argue that while the dominant model of the mind in cognitive science is deeply Kantian, some ofKant’s most arresting ideas have not been assimilated into the contemporary picture. The Kantian elements in the contemporary picture are mainly these three: Representation requires both percepts and concepts, the study of cognition is based on inference to the best explanation (Kant called it transcendental argument), and the mind is a complex system of functions – minds are (part of ) what brains do. Three other important ideas of Kant’s have played little role: That unified consciousness is essential to our kind of cognition (beginning to change), that such unity is the result of concept-using synthesizing activities of the cognitive system, and that the knowledge that such a system has of itself has some highly specific and unusual features.

scholarly journals Subjetividad y privacidad

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (76-77) ◽  
pp. 185-203
Author(s):  
Guillermo Hurtado
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Unified Consciousness ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

The traditional doctrine of the privacy of the mental describes our mental lives as corridors without doors or windows. According to this view a mental state is private if: (1) one and only one person has direct access to that mental state, and (2) that person is the authority with respect to the content and character of such a mental state (i.e., has an incorregible and infallible knowledge of it). (2) has been rejected on the basis of externalist arguments concerning the nature of mental content. However, very few have put (1) into doubt. The purpose of this essay is to claim that (1) is not a necessary feature of our mental lives. Hence the traditional doctrine of the privacy of the mental must be rejected not only for being grounded on a false conception of mental content, but also for being grounded on a false conception of the nature of subjectivity. My argument is based on a Parfitian conception of persons and on a metaphysical distinction between persons and subjects of consciousness. I claim that if a momentary fusion of the streams of consciousness of two people is possible, the mental states that occur in that unified consciousness will be mental states of those two people —even if there is only one subject of consciousness involved. Hence, we can conclude that if two people can have the same mental state, they will also have the same direct access to that mental state. Finally, I suggest that the rejection of (1) —and hence of the view of mental life as a corridor— should be welcomed as liberating.

Toward a Unified Consciousness Theory

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-256
Author(s):  
RICHARD H. JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Unified Consciousness

Composite Subjectivity in Organisms, Organs, and Organizations

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-226
Author(s):  
Luke Roelofs
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Callosum ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cerebral Hemispheres ◽  
Reductio Ad Absurdum ◽  
Collective Mentality ◽  
Unified Consciousness

This chapter looks at four potential cases of mental combination, to examine what the theory sketched in the previous chapter might say about them. It starts with the “Nation-Brain” thought experiment, originally offered as a reductio ad absurdum of functionalism, where a few billion people agree to collectively simulate a single human mind. It then considers actual human social groups, the ways that they differ from this thought experiment, and the significance of these differences for questions of collective mentality. It next considers the split-brain phenomenon, where patients with a severed corpus callosum seem at times to exhibit two distinct consciousnesses in one head, and then finally comes back to the ordinary human brain, where two cerebral hemispheres, each capable of supporting consciousness without the other, are able to establish richly unified consciousness through their intact corpus callosum.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document