The internet encyclopedia of philosophy also has a good entry on “Consciousness”. They talk about higher order representation – which is basically a person being aware of their own consciousness at any given time, or aware of anything at any given time. For instance, if I am aware of my feelings on a certain matter, then I am more conscious of that matter. That seems fairly obvious, I mean if you think about something more you are going to be more conscious of it. This relates to the two different levels of thought and feeling – the lower level is more unconscious and immediate and less under control, and the higher level of consciousness is part of conscious experience and people are more aware of because it isn’t ‘unconscious’ it is ‘conscious’. So what separates out the two different levels of consciousness is one is mostly beneath awareness and would be defined as being unconscious, and the other is largely in awareness and would be defined as being conscious. There is clearly an overlap between conscious thoughts and feelings and unconscious thoughts and feelings, however – there are degrees that someone’s awareness is ‘awake’ and ‘clear’. Have I presented here a theory of consciousness? It is obvious that there are degrees to awareness, and all I have said is that consciousness is basically a combination of feelings and thoughts - that is a rather simple explanation of consciousness. Is there more explanation that is needed in order to answer what consciousness really is?:
- As we have seen, one question that should be answered by any theory of consciousness is: What makes a mental state a conscious mental state? There is a long tradition that has attempted to understand consciousness in terms of some kind of higher-order awareness. For example, John Locke (1689/1975) once said that “consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.” This intuition has been revived by a number of philosophers (Rosenthal, 1986, 1993b, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2005; Gennaro 1996a, 2012; Armstrong, 1968, 1981; Lycan, 1996, 2001). In general, the idea is that what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of some kind of higher-order representation (HOR). A mental state M becomes conscious when there is a HOR of M. A HOR is a “meta-psychological” state, i.e., a mental state directed at another mental state. So, for example, my desire to write a good encyclopedia entry becomes conscious when I am (non-inferentially) “aware” of the desire. Intuitively, it seems that conscious states, as opposed to unconscious ones, are mental states that I am “aware of” in some sense. This is sometimes referred to as the Transitivity Principle. Any theory which attempts to explain consciousness in terms of higher-order states is known as a higher-order (HO) theory of consciousness. It is best initially to use the more neutral term “representation” because there are a number of different kinds of higher-order theory, depending upon how one characterizes the HOR in question. HO theories, thus, attempt to explain consciousness in mentalistic terms, that is, by reference to such notions as “thoughts” and “awareness.” Conscious mental states arise when two unconscious mental states are related in a certain specific way; namely, that one of them (the HOR) is directed at the other (M). Consciousness. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Entry by Rocco J. Gennaro. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/consciou/ 7/8/14