VE 209 – PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

UNIT 2. CONCEPTS ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS

Blessed day to everyone! I welcome you to the 2 nd unit of our subject. Let us develop a habit of
praying before doing anything. Here is again the prayer of St. Thomas before study.

PRAYER OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS BEFORE STUDY

Creator of all things,

true Source of light and wisdom,
lofty origin of all being, graciously let a ray of Your brilliance
penetrate into the darkness of my understanding and take from me the double darkness
in which I have been born, an obscurity of both sin and ignorance.
Give me a sharp sense of understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things
correctly and fundamentally.
Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations,
and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm.
Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in completion;
through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Let us now begin the lesson. I suggest that you should read comprehensively all the
lessons. Almost all of the activities and discussions are taken from the book of Cencini A. &
Manenti A. (2000). Psychology and Formation.

DESCRIBING CONSCIOUSNESS
- Consciousness is an individual’s state of awareness of their environment, thoughts,
feelings, or sensations; in order to experience consciousness, one must be both awake and
aware.

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MEANING OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something
within oneself, such as thoughts, feelings, memories, or sensations.
- It has also been defined in the following ways: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the
ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the
executive-control system of the mind.
- At one time, consciousness was viewed with skepticism by many scientists, but in recent
years, it has become a significant topic of research in psychology and neuroscience.

PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- Despite the difficulty in coming to a definition, many philosophers believe that there is a
broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.
- Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the
nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties.
- Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include the following:
o whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically;
o whether non-human consciousness exists, and if so, how it can be recognized;
o how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood
in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical
states or properties; and
o whether it may ever be possible for computers or robots to be conscious.

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

- The mind-body problem is essentially the problem of consciousness; roughly speaking, it
is the question of how mental experiences arise from a physical entity.
- How are our mental states, beliefs, actions, and thinking related to our physical states,
bodily functions, and external events, given that the body is physical and the mind is non-
physical?
o The first and most important philosopher to address this conundrum was René
Descartes in the 17th century, and his answer was termed Cartesian dualism.
o The explanation behind Cartesian dualism is that consciousness resides within an
immaterial domain he called res cogitans (the realm of thought), in contrast to the
domain of material things, which he called res extensa (the realm of extension).
o He suggested that the interaction between these two domains occurs inside the
brain. He further suggested the pineal gland as the point of interaction, but was
later challenged several times on this claim. These challenges sparked some key
initial research on consciousness, which we will discuss shortly.

EARLY IDEAS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

- For over 2000 years, questions surrounding human consciousness—such as how the
everyday inner workings of our brains give rise to a single cohesive reality and a sense of
an individual self—have been baffling philosophers from Plato to Descartes. Descartes,

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as previously mentioned, is noted for his dualist theory of consciousness, in which the
physical body is separate from the immaterial mind. He also gave us the most famous
summary of human consciousness: “I think, therefore I am.”

- The historical materialism of Karl Marx rejects the mind-body dichotomy, and holds that
consciousness is engendered by the material contingencies of one’s environment. John
Locke, another early philosopher, claimed that consciousness, and therefore personal
identity, are independent of all substances. He pointed out that there is no reason to
assume that consciousness is tied to any particular body or mind, or that consciousness
cannot be transferred from one body or mind to another.

- American psychologist William James compared consciousness to a stream—unbroken

and continuous despite constant shifts and changes. While the focus of much of the
research in psychology shifted to purely observable behaviors during the first half of the
twentieth century, research on human consciousness has grown tremendously since the
1950s.

HISTORICAL THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

- Theories of consciousness include developmental, cultural, neural, computational, and
moral perspectives.

1. Mayan and Incan Theories of Consciousness

- First appearing in the historical records of the ancient Mayan and Incan civilizations,
various theories of multiple levels of consciousness have pervaded spiritual,
psychological, medical, and moral speculations in both Eastern and Western cultures.
Consciousness can be defined as human awareness to both internal and external stimuli.
Because of occasional and sometimes substantial overlap between hypotheses, there have
recently been attempts to combine perspectives to form new models that integrate
components of separate viewpoints.

- The Ancient Mayans were among the first to propose an organized sense of each level of
consciousness, its purpose, and its temporal connection to humankind. Because
consciousness incorporates stimuli from the environment as well as internal stimuli, the
Mayans believed it to be the most basic form of existence, capable of evolution. The
Incas, however, considered consciousness a progression not only of awareness but of
concern for others as well.

2. John Locke on Consciousness

- John Locke, a 17th-century philosopher, was one of the first to speak and write on
consciousness. He believed that our identity was tied to our consciousness, which he
essentially defined as what passes through a man’s mind, or memories. He also asserted
that our consciousness is not tied to our physical bodies, and that it can survive even after
our physical bodies die. In fact, Locke held that consciousness could be transferred from
one soul to another.

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3. René Descartes on Consciousness

- René Descartes also addressed the idea of consciousness in the 17th century. He set out to
answer the question of how it is possible that our consciousness, a non-physical thing,
can come from our bodies, a physical thing. The explanation he came up with was called
Cartesian dualism; in short, consciousness resides within an immaterial domain he called
res cogitans (the realm of thought), in contrast to the domain of material things, which he
called res extensa (the realm of extension). He suggested that the interaction between
these two domains occurs inside the brain.

4. Sigmund Freud on Consciousness

- While Eastern perspectives on consciousness have remained relatively stable over the
centuries, fluctuations in theory have come to define the Western perspective. One of the
most popular Western theories is that of Sigmund Freud, medical doctor and father of
psychoanalytic theory. Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of
awareness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Each of these levels
corresponds and overlaps with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego. The conscious
level consists of all the things we are aware of, including things we know about ourselves
and our surroundings. The preconscious consists of things we could pay conscious
attention to if we so desired, and is where many memories are stored for easy retrieval.
Freud saw the preconscious as comprised of thoughts that are unconscious at the
particular moment in question, but that are not repressed and are therefore available for
recall and easily capable of becoming conscious (for example, the tip-of-the-tongue
effect). The unconscious consists of things that are outside of conscious awareness,
including many memories, thoughts, and urges of which we are not aware. Much of what
is stored in the unconscious is thought to be unpleasant or conflicting; for example,
sexual impulses that are deemed unacceptable. While these elements are stored out of our
awareness, they are nevertheless thought to influence our behavior.

- According to Freud the id, ego, and superego all operate across three levels of awareness
in the human mind. They are the conscious, unconscious, and preconscious.
o The conscious: The conscious consists of what someone is aware of at any
particular point in time. It includes what you are thinking about right now,
whether it is in the front of you mind or the back. If you are aware of it then it is
in the conscious mind.
 Example: Right now as you are reading about Freud you could be thinking
about what is being said in the text and that your eyes are tired from
staring at this screen. In the back of your mind, however, you might be
thinking "wow this website is really cool, if I was a psychology teacher I
would give whoever made it an A". Both of these thoughts occur in the
conscious mind.

o The Preconscious: The preconscious contains information that is just below the
surface of awareness. It can be retrieved with relative ease and usually can be
thought of as memory or recollection.

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 Example: Right now think of your middle name. That is an example of

preconscious memory. Similar example could be what is your mom's
birthday, when did it last rain, and how long does it take to drive to the
mall.

o The Unconscious: The unconscious contains thoughts, memories, and desires that
are buried deep in ourselves, well below our conscious awareness. Even though
we are not aware of their existence, they exert great influence on our behavior.
 Example: Things in your unconscious would be forgotten negative
experiences in your past, extreme dislike for a parent, or a terrible event
that you pushed out of your preconscious.

MODERN THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

- While Freud’s theory remains one of the best known, various schools in the field of
psychology have developed their own perspectives, which we will explore below. It is
important to note that these perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, just
different approaches to the same questions.

1. Developmental Psychology on Consciousness

- Developmental psychologists view consciousness not as a single entity, but as a
developmental process with potential higher stages of cognitive, moral, and spiritual
quality. They posit that consciousness changes over time, in quality and in degree: an
infant’s consciousness is qualitatively different than a toddler’s, a teenager’s, or an
adult’s. Abnormal development also affects consciousness, as do mental illnesses.

2. Social Psychology on Consciousness

- Social psychologists view consciousness as a product of cultural influence having little to
do with the individual. For instance, because different cultures speak different languages,
they also codify reality differently. That difference in codification leads to differences in
the experience of reality, and therefore of consciousness. Language is the main
mechanism for transmitting a mode of consciousness, and an analysis of language can to
some extent reveal the mentality of people who speak that language.

3. Neuropsychology on Consciousness
Neuropsychologists view consciousness as ingrained in neural systems and organic
brain structures. A major part of the modern scientific literature on consciousness
consists of studies that examine the relationship between the experiences reported by
subjects and the activity that simultaneously takes place in their brains—that is,
studies of the neural correlates of consciousness. The hope is to find activity in a
particular part of the brain, or a particular pattern of global brain activity, that will be
strongly predictive of conscious awareness. Several brain-imaging techniques, such
as EEG and fMRI, have been used for physical measures of brain activity in these
studies.

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Name: PRINCES ANNE V. BUENTIEMPO Score: _________

Program: BSED – VALUES EDUCATION Year Level: 2ND

Activities

Psycho-spiritual’s Activity # 2
Reflective Focus Action Learning

My question about the To find out about it, I will: What I learned from this topic:
topic:

How our mental thinking I will research some studies, What I learned from this topic is
related to our physical coz’ I need more knowledge that every ideas on consciousness
states, bodily functions, regarding on this mental helps us to negotiate complex
and external events, states relations to our social relationships in our
given that the body is physical states. Yes, there’s environment which measures our
physical and the mind is an explanation in our social awareness and evolves
non-physical? learning module/ learning social beliefs and attitudes.
material but it is not strong
explanation. I want deep
and more answers about
this.

I will share what I learned by:

I will finish by: Making great decisions and by
means of group meeting so that
they will become aware on what
Maybe If I get the answer consciousness really is physically
what I want. (body) and non – physical
(mind).

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