Browsing by Subject "consciousness"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Black here, black there, black everywhere: using theatre to understand what being-black-in-the-world entailed during apartheid South Africa
    (2022) Seti, Kitso; Reddy, Thiven;
    When a Black person sees a display on stage of a fellow Black person getting killed by a White person, why do they not intervene to stop that killing from happening? One would answer, ‘Because it is just a performance. That Black person is not literally getting killed. It is all an act'. Fair enough. Then why does that spectating Black person get a heavy heart when he sees that killing being portrayed on stage? Is it because it is an experience he is familiar to? He has seen his fellow Blacks getting killed in front of his eyes. What does he do about what he sees on stage? What does the play do to his psyche? Richard Schechner, using Goffman's words, argues that the events on stage must be experienced as, what he deems, ‘actual realization': meaning that “the reality of performance is in the performing” (Bennet, 1997:11). Because the violence taking place on stage is only a performance, the spectator does not intervene as he might in an actual violence he would see taking place outside the theatre hall. However, that does not, as Schechner puts it, make the violence ‘less real' but ‘different real' (Bennet, 1997:11). The imaginary world of theatre is not an entirely ‘unreal' world, it is a world based on real occurrences. These real occurrences are taken to the imaginary world with hopes that when they are returned to the real world they will impact it in different ways, in ways set to transform it.
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    A Neuropsychoanalytical approach to the hard problem of consciousness
    (World Scientific Publishing, 2014-06-02) Solms, Mark
    A neuropsychoanalytical approach to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness revolves around the distinction between the subject and objects of consciousness. In contrast to the mainstream of cognitive science, neuropsychoanalysis prioritises the subject. The subject of consciousness is the indispensable page upon which its objects are inscribed. This has implications for our conception of the mental. The subjective being of consciousness is not registered in the classical exteroceptive modalities; it is not a cognitive representation, not a memory trace. Cognitive representations are ‘mental solids,’ embedded within subjective consciousness, and their tangible and visible (etc.) properties are projected onto reality. It is important to recognise that mental solids (e.g. the body-as-object) are no more real than the subjective being they are represented in (the body-as-subject). Moreover, pure subjectivity is not without content or quality. This aspect of consciousness is conventionally described quantitatively as the level of consciousness, ‘wakefulness’. But it feels like something to be awake. The primary modality of this aspect of consciousness is affect. Some implications of this frame of reference are discussed here, in broad brush strokes. This is an electronic version of an article published as Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2014, pp. 173-185. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0219635214400032, © World Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/jin.
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    What is a Mind Week 1 - Four defining properties of the mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms outlines four properties of the mind: subjectivity, consciousness, intentionality, and agency. He briefly explores issues and questions related to these properties and states that he will unpack these properties in more detail in subsequent videos. This is video 3 in Week 1 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 1 - Introduction
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms introduces himself and the course. He gives a personal account of how he came to be interested in the topic of the mind. This is video 1 in Week 1 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 3 - The anatomy of consciousness
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms introduces the second of the four defining properties of a mind: consciousness. He outlines one possible objective-criterion for determining consciousness, namely correlating mental states to bodily states to understand the functions of different brain mechanisms. This is video 1 in Week 3 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 3 - The unconscious mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms explores the notion of the unconscious - the part of the mind that operates below the threshold of conscious experience but nonetheless influences how we behave. He discusses what makes these unconscious mental states mental. This is video 3 in Week 3 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 3 - What consciousness is for
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms explores the part of the brain that might be essential for conscious experience: the reticular activating system. He describes the various experimental techniques used to examine the functions of this part of the brain. This is video 2 in Week 3 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    What is a Mind Week 4 - About "aboutness" - intentionality
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms introduces the third of the four defining properties of a mind: intentionality. He explains how feelings intend towards objects in the outside world in order to meet certain needs. He goes on to explain how intentional states are not themselves necessarily conscious. This is video 1 in Week 4 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
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    Why Depression Feels Bad
    (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010-01-01) Solms, Mark; Panksepp, Jaak; Dr Elaine K Perry
    We believe that conscious mental phenomena (such as feelings) are not epiphenomenal to the workings of the brain. Feelings evolved for good biological reasons; they make specific, concrete contributions to brain functioning. Notwithstanding all the philosophical complexities, therefore, the non-conscious/conscious interactions that are the focus of this book are, in our view, causal interactions. To marginalize consciousness in relation to what is ultimately a dualistic scientific understanding of how the brain works is likely to lead us badly astray. We illustrate this view by trying to address the question: why does depression feel bad? This is the postscript of a book chapter. The final version has been published in: "New Horizons in the Neuroscience of Consciousness" by Prof. Dr. Elaine K. Perry et al. (2010). Published by John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia.