| Abstract: |
Discusses theOxford English Dictionarydefinition of consciousness as "the
totality of the impressions, thoughts, and feelings which make up a person's
conscious being." The questions of how individuals integrate present
awareness of mental episodes with past episodes, how individuals identify
episodes as occurring to themselves, and how one may account for problems
of misidentification (e.g., depersonalization or the silent voices of some
schizophrenics) are analyzed. Some answers to these questions are presented
from the work of J. Locke, L. Wittgenstein, S. Shoemaker (1968), and D. M.
Armstrong (1968). It is concluded that there are inadequacies in the theories of
appeal to substance, the causal relation to one body, and the postulation of a
thinking substance. It is suggested that (a) the unity of consciousness should
be considered as a matter of degree and, sometimes, of achievement, and (b)
unity occurs insofar as individuals acknowledge all the mental episodes that
have occurred in their physical organism, claim them as part of themselves, and
are able to communicate them. (53 ref) ((c) 1999 APA/PsycINFO, all rights
reserved) |