(A psychological approach to...) the nature of consciousness

[dslc1000]

What does consciousness consist of?

Sensations, thoughts, memories, ideas and emotions.

The defining characteristic of any ‘thought’, whether it be an evaluation, intention, fancy or whatever, seems to be its mode of representation. What is common to all thoughts is that they are represented either as (i) imagined sensations, or (ii) silent words. Yet silent words are actually imagined sounds. Thoughts, therefore, are imagined sensations.

Yet delcarative memory actually consists of imagined sensations as well.

The same can be said for ideas, which are represented as pictures, sounds or words in our minds. As pointed out already, these are all imagined sensations. We have an interesting prospect, i.e. that thoughts, memories and ideas are all imagined sensations.

What about emotion? Well, I propose that an emotion has two components:

(i) sensation of the physiological changes belonging to a particular emotion (James-Lange theory of emotion), and

(ii) the imagined sensation – the pictures, sounds or silent words which accompany the physiological changes.

 

If this hypothesis is correct, and if what people refer to as thoughts, memories and ideas really are imagined sensations, then consciousness itself seems to have two components, namely:

(i) sensations, and

(ii) imagined sensations

 

Note: I would categorize dreams as a sensation (as opposed to merely an imagined sensation).

 

(These are my own ideas; and I can readily verify this)

 

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Couldn't you just hit enter a few times when you were typing that?

[Sayonara]

Format > Word Wrap

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

oh! I thought notepad was way too uncomplicated for that! and how did you do that code thingy?

hi i figured it out myself

 

[dslc1000]

I've just copied it from the Notepad attachment on to the body of the post. I should have done that in the first place - sorry! (...oops...)