Consciousness

There are different meanings of the term 'consciousness.' In a philosophical sense, a living organism is said to be conscious when it is aware of itself; this feature is generally considered to be specific of human beings.

The word 'conscious' is ordinarily used to refer to a person that is awake. When the person, as result of disease or injury, is unable to respond to external stimuli, he is said to be 'unconscious.' If the unconsciousness is deep and prolonged, the state is called 'coma.'

Finally, certain mental processes are said to be unconscious when they pass unnoticed even if the person is awake. On the contrary, a person is said to do something consciously when he is fully aware of what he is doing.

While ancient philosophers did not care much about consciousness, it was of chief concern to 17th-century philosophers like Locke and Descartes. The term was commonly used at that time as the ability of the mind of observing its own operations. Both Locke and Descartes postulated that nothing interior to the mind could escape of this observation. While the person was awake the mind was completely capable of perceiving its own activity.

This concept was assumed by early psychologists like Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and Edward Titchener (1867-1927). Consequently, psychological research could be accomplished with the sole use of introspection, as is called the contemplation of one's own thoughts. The doctrine, however, was hampered by Freud's works that proved the importance of mental activities that were ignored by consciousness. Freud's theory of the unconscious was at first resisted because it professed that introspection was not always bound to success, although finally it became accepted as adjusted to reality.

The use of introspection as a research tool was also objected, in the 20th century, by the behaviorist school. Behaviorists sustained that scientific studies could only be performed on facts that are evident to everybody. Material obtained by introspection is evident only to a single person, and thus it cannot be the subject of scientific methods.

Behaviorism went even further than rejecting the use of introspection. It denied the very existence of consciousness as accepted by previous philosophers and psychologists. The philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued that mind was an illusory concept, and that in reality only existed observable behaviors. Coincidentally, two key figures of behaviorism, Watson and Skinner, asserted that there was nothing beyond the mechanism of stimuli and response, and that psychology should be the science of behavior and not of mind.

Previous | Contents | Next