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 Ayrios
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 Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? 
#3164194 - 09/22/04 10:25 AM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Psychology isn't my field so I'm a bit of a layman but, I fail to see how the 'hard problem' really explains the concept of consciousness. Basically, why I control me, and you control you. This has to be left entirely to philosophy, right? I consider this the one true supernatural thing that most of us, to some extent, know exists but science can't touch. I don't know though. I'm still trying to form a hard stance on this.
Sorry if this is discussed ALL the time :/ Indulge me.
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Ayrios
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3164379 - 09/22/04 11:18 AM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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I guess I chose to be interested in a boring subject :P 4 views, two by myself, sort of sad with other newer threads taking off 
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 Panoramix
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3164595 - 09/22/04 12:05 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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The only thread I ever launched got a couple views then plummeted down to page 3 within minutes. 
But I don't think psychology has given a really solid explanation of consciousness. They identified the concious and sub-concious and all that at the birth of psychology, but seem somewhat content to leave things more or less at that. Which is a shame, seeing as it's not like Freud got everything spot on or anything. The model in favour right now seems to be the chemical model with various receptor-y thingies playing key roles in "forming" concious behavior, seritonin and all, I'm sure someone else knows the details of pharmapsychology better than me, so I'm not to going to try to speak to it.
But yeah, it's more of a philosophy topic, really.
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Gomp
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3164634 - 09/22/04 12:13 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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?Why I control me, and you control you.?
? Because ?I? has no ideals, no idea of something that is perfect or hopes to attain. ?I? got no model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal.
No reason not to think it is something formed in the mind; a thought or notion. ?It? (you, me, everyone) find a way to handle a stream of information, mental apprehension of whatever may be known or imagined, the consciousness, so,
when the DNA has created a new body inside a ?mother? and you were
born, and exposed to not only sounds and stuff, but visuals and other senses in a new way, you got an idea of a general or universal conception. It was different from all the other body?s way of perceiving/ experiencing it. That is why you control you
you think you do it. But since I know nothing, or don?t know if I know
ill rather ask ? Who control what?  I may be
crazy though, just my thoughts on it :P I feel I just typed up nothing hehe
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jux
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3164676 - 09/22/04 12:20 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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to understand consciousness is to understand existance. to understand existance is to comprehend something that is incomprehencable while tied to this mortal coil. hence, philosophy is the religion of science. A semi-scientifical analysis of the workings of consciousness from an outside perspective.
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MAGnum
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Gomp]
#3164950 - 09/22/04 01:26 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Philosophy is the root of natural science and still to this day science trying to crystalize theories (built on logic) into something clear and solid.
Without questions, we have nowhere to go scientifically.
The differance between science and philosophy to me is the scientific method which is one way of answerring questions and forming a fact.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3166536 - 09/22/04 07:36 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Psychology is the prevailing 'philosophy' of modernist thought. One can earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.) in psychology or a Doctor of Psychology degree (Psy.D.), and yet the various fields of psychology: clinical, counseling, industrial-organizational, physiological - the main programs that people apply to are very practical fields for managing mental disorders, or for determining who to hire for your company or to find the physiological correlates to consciousness. None of these fields explore the ultimate nature of consciousness, they are only interested in practical applications. That means that despite the availability of Ph.D. degrees, most holders of that degree are anything but philosophers. What's worse, is that these disciplines all buy into the medical model which is a very materialistic model in which consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon of physiological processes. There is no Cosmic Consciousness involved in ordinary psychology as a study or a career.
I am university-trained in developmental-educational and clinical psychology, but my understanding of consciousness derives from the disciplines of philosophy and religion. Only the school of Analytical Psychology (Jungian) to a certain extent (I underwent years of this analysis), and moreso the schools of Transpersonal Psychology (Maslow, Washburn and the always popular Ken Wilber, who was not actually trained in psychology, but has a much more profound understanding of consciousness because of it) really speak to the question of consciousness as the infrastructure of Reality.
There is a discipline of Philosophical Psychology, but this would be for impractical, egg-head types in obscure universities (at this juncture in time). When I took a course in Neuropsychological Assessment (this specialty can earn $1200 an hour, which is why everybody else was there), and the prof asked all of us why we were there, I said that I was into William James, but his physiological understanding was outdated and I wanted modern knowledge - the prof seemed surprised/impressed while all the grad students all thought I was nuts!
Well, I never made big money in the mental health profession, but I have grown quite a bit spiritually since my quest for Enlightenment began - which has always been my real interest.
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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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SkorpivoMusterion
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3166656 - 09/22/04 07:59 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Materialistically bound traditional science attempts to understand and analyze via dissecting and breaking down the subject/object[s] and study the internal mechanisms of such studies.
The problem with this methodology is that it's merely a reductionistic technique of gaining an understanding, hence limited in it's own right.
So my point is, psychology is a reductionistic, and physical discipline of consciousness, whereas spirituality is the expansive, metaphysical end of the spectrum. Both are faces of the same coin. I believe in the unification of this illusionary dichotomy.
Abraham Maslow is my favorite psychologist of all time, and recommend his book 'The Farther Reaches of Human Nature'. Truly one of the best books I've read in my life.
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tomk
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3166864 - 09/22/04 08:41 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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Does psychology attempt to explain consciousness?
No.
Does psychology attempt to explain the relationships between different parts of conscious experience?
Yes.
It's that simple. The same way a field like neurology doesn't attempt to explain the nevous system, just the interactions between different parts of the nervous system. In that case, the right science to explain the existence of the system is evolutionary biology.
In the analogous case of consciousness, psychology explains the relationship between the parts, while philosophy of mind is what will need to explain the whole. The point of the hard problem/easy problem distinction of Chalmers (I assume this is what you mean when you say "hard problem") is too distinguish this philosophical task with claims that are very easy to confuse with this task but are appropiate to be seperate. Examples of the easy problems of consciousness include: How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately? How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behavior? How is it that subjects can verbalize their internal states?.
The problem you ask "Why do I control me and you control you?" is different. That problem (and related questions like "Do I control myself?") is the problem of agency, or the problem of free will, not the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness is "how do the physical processes of the brain yeild subjective expierence?" For example, when you see a word, some light hits your brain, in a certain way, but you also have an experience of a certain sort, the way it feels when you read the words. That is the topic of the hard problem. Psycology does not attempt to deal with this question. Rather, it deals with "How does one sort of set of experiences influence other sets?" for example, how does your earlier experience of nearly drowning create your current fear of water.
I think that should answer your question. I'd start here http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/puzzle.html for more reading, and then google david chalmers hard problem.
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BleaK
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: tomk]
#3167410 - 09/22/04 10:02 PM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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science doesnt explain anything.[PERIOD]
its all observations.
i see this happen.
i see that happen.
there is no how, or why.
thats up to religion.
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tomk
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: BleaK]
#3168380 - 09/23/04 01:00 AM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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BleaK
Um. No. Science explains a lot. It does explain how and why. It's a lot more complicated then "I see this happen, I see that happen." It's I see this happen, so I predict that will happen with some conceptual framework, and if it regularly does, then I have some support for my framework, and if not, I need to adjust the framework. What are you suggesting with "I see this happen, I see that happen" is that there is no necessary relationship between cause and effect. But it's obvious you believe there is. For example, if all you had to go on with eating was "I sense these food things being manipulated in a certain way, and then I sense a satisfaction as usual." If you didn't believe that, why eat? I'm going to assume that you eat, because you get the result you want from it. But if you accept that sort of inference in your every day decisions, you should accept science. Science does the same thing (with measurements that require specialized instruments), within a specified conceptual framework. It's ridiculous to suggest that that sort of thing has no explainiatory value.
Look, I realize that we can never know things with absolute certainty. But science can approach absolute certainty, and as we refine the conceptual framework, we will approach certainty. In fact, with enough refinement, we will be asymtopic to certainty (the same way a line defined by y=1/x will appoach but never reach 1).
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DigitalDuality
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Re: Does psychology attempt to explain the consciousness? [Re: Ayrios]
#3168385 - 09/23/04 01:02 AM (18 years, 8 months ago) |
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I would say many psychologists.. and furthermore scientists attempt to explain it.. here's a good read
http://www.discover.com/issues/jun-02/features/featuniverse
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