Theory of Consciousness (Research Paper Sample)

Theory of consciousness
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Introduction
Consciousness is the state of being aware. Being conscious is being awake and sentient or processing human-like knowledge and intelligence. It is a mental state to be conscious whereby if one mental state is conscious then the creature can be said to be conscious. Only conscious creatures can be in conscious state although mental states of conscious creatures must not all be in conscious state. In other words, state consciousness presupposes the consciousness of the creature.
This paper seeks to discuss David M. Rosenthal’s Consciousness theory and analyze how consciousness is achieved in day to day life. The paper also seeks to try and analyze where exactly consciousness originates from in the brain.
David M. Rosenthal – A Consciousness Theory
According to David M. Rosenthal, consciousness fall into two categories whereby one is perpetual, where one is conscious of things when they perceive them in some way. The other category is when one is conscious of things when they think of them. Perpetual model is often straight forward because consciousness can easily achieved through what one sees, touches, tastes, smells or hears. This however does not demean consciousness through thinking about something, it only broadens perpetual consciousness (Rosenthal, 1990).
The perpetual model however fails clearly explain consciousness since perception requires occurrence of sensory quality which signals the presence of that which is being perceived. In that way there must be an occurrence of mental quality which in that case would be consciousness of a sensory state which portrays consciousness as inherent to such states but perpetual model in the first place was adopted in order to avoid such conclusion. At this point, perpetual model fails to categorically expound on the idea of consciousness (Rosenthal, 1990).
On the other hand, transitive consciousness which relies on thinking does not experience such difficulties because thinking is not specific to a certain range of objects. The relation between thinking and the object is not mediated like the relation between perception and what is being perceived. Having thoughts about objects does not have characteristic qualities hence such model gives hope in explaining what it is for a mental state to be conscious in terms of our consciousness to those states. One is conscious of something if they have thought about it. The occurrence of such high order thought makes one conscious of a mental state and that mental state is a conscious state but when that high order thought does not occur then one is unaware of being in the mental state in question and the state is then not a conscious state. Following that line of argument, a mental state is a conscious state when and only when it is accompanied by a high order thought.
Thoughts may sometimes have generic sense in which it applies to any propositional mental state not considering its mental attitude. Various states as, desiring, hoping, expecting, believing, suspecting and wondering are all thoughts. Such thought regardless of their nature, if they have the right content, they can make one conscious of a certain mental state. For example when one expects a certain object to exist, that person is already conscious of that object. However one’s mental state will not be conscious if accompanied by a high order dispositional thought which does not itself make one conscious of what they are thinking about. A high order thought which makes one conscious of a mental state must be in assertoric, occurrent propositional state.
High order thought is not conscious unless one has a third order thought about a second order thought. If in any case the second order thought is not conscious, then one is unaware of it. It is only if one assumed that all mental states are conscious that one would argue that being unaware of a state means it is not there. One has a multitude of high order thought which are not conscious in their day to day life. This brings complications in this model because high order is supposed to make one conscious of a mental state and if they are themselves unconscious it becomes hard for them to achieve their core purpose. However there can be transitive consciousness and intransitive consciousness. Intransitive consciousness helps in explaining how high order thoughts which are not conscious make one conscious of a mental state. An example can be that of a driver who has to be conscious of many obstacles on the way. The driver may not now he is conscious of such obstacles especially if he is deep in conversation maybe with the co-driver. In any case, the driver has intransitive consciousness of the obstacles on the way. All intransitive states of consciousness are transitive states of consciousness but the reverse does not hold (Rosenthal, 1990).
Therefore high order thoughts are typically not conscious thoughts and one is unaware of what consciousness of their mental state consists in. The sense that a state is inseparable from ones consciousness of it is further strengthened by the reference that high order thoughts make to it. However this inseparability does not help in showing that being conscious is intrinsic to mental states. This therefore leads to argument from introspection.
Introspection involves more than a mental state being a conscious state where one deliberately and attentively focuses on the state. Nonintrspective consciousness on the other hand requires no such attention. Every introspected state is a conscious state but the converse is not true. Introspection occurs when there is a third order thought which makes a second order thought conscious. When a mental state is introspected, the h...