Description

Consciousness has a neurological basis and yet it results in subjective feelings of self. Minding Consciousness brings these aspects of mind together. It explains that life urges, reactive neural dispositions beginning in the body and expanded by lower brain processes, are extensively distributed throughout vertebrate attention networks. As a result, features associated with stronger life urges are more likely to gain attention. And as associated life urges gain attention, they connect perceptions with supporting feelings. In this way life urges both guide attention and are enhanced as subjective feelings as they gain attention. Minding Consciousness maintains that feelings are essential for consciousness. Descartes missed this point when he proclaimed “I think; therefore, I am.” We are not simply detached thinkers. Our very sense of self is determined by how we feel as we perceive and think. But how does this sense of self develop? Minding Consciousness argues that the self emerges as life urges link attention with embodied feelings and actions. Learning and memory provide a collection of personal experiences that can be re-activated by features of attention. These processes continually drive attention toward a central focus as agents engage their world. Conscious agents are literally growing storms of feeling-bound attention. Conscious experiences are the subjective effects that perceptions and feelings have on the flow of attention within each storm.

Author: Lucas, Gary A

Topic: Psychology
Media: Book
ISBN: 1548246409
Language: English
Pages: 254