Perception And Perception Of The Conscious Mind - 1581 Words

The conscious mind is a widely debated, undefined phenomenon. It can and has been simplified to three manifestations, the conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious, however, it is yet to be fully agreed upon what consciousness actually is (Corsini Wedding, 2011). Block (2005) describes two very different types of consciousness; access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness, similar to Searle’s (2000) qualitativeness, refers to a subjective ‘feeling’ which conscious states provide. Whereas ‘access consciousness’ is made available in consciousness through other cognitive processes. This mysterious phenomenon has many other integrating related terms such as perception and awareness. These terms could be†¦show more content†¦There is the view that much like awareness and perception, attention is simply another term for consciousness, yet it has also been described as a completely distinct process (Allport, 1980; Crick Koch, 1990). The relationship of attention and consciousness is still a subject of strong debate today. Posner (1994) believes that attention is the study of consciousness, much like Treisman Gelade (1980) who suggest that theories related to consciousness will be theories linked to attention. As it is very difficult to examine and empirically test an undefined phenomenon such as consciousness, attention it has been suggested is the closest proof of it can be empirically examined (Taylor, 2003). However, it has been suggested through this testing that attention can occur without consciousness and vice versa (Koch Tsuchiya, 2007). This undermines the view that attention is a function of consciousness Koch Tsuchiya (2007) examined attention and consciousness as a method of proving they are distinct processes. Participants were asked to either perform either a central or peripheral task or both tasks simultaneously. The dual task paradigm was used in this experiment which refers to a procedure that requires a person to complete two tasks at the same time in order to disassociate single tasks, which in this instance was attention and consciousness. In Koch Tsuchiya’s study participants were presented with a centre attentional focus