0.20 An outline of consciousness  (Page 5/5)

So a mental state can be unconscious or conscious. If someone is sleeping and dreaming, then their mental state would be considered to unconscious. I would say that there is a lot to say about how ‘aware’ someone is at any time. If someone is drugged or drunk, are they less aware of their interactions with other people? I said previously that they might not be responding as intelligently to other people. I wouldn’t guess as to how exactly their cognitions or emotional response is dulled – there could be a wide range of emotional, personality and intellectual dispositions that someone could have that could be affected. That shows how awareness in general, not necessarily when someone has lower general awareness like when they are sleeping or drunk, is influenced to different degrees.

What is the difference between our unconscious awareness and our conscious awareness then? Here again is the internet encyclopedia of philosophy – they address the question of differences between HO (high order) and LO (lower-order) mental states, which I have said is basically the difference between conscious states and unconscious ones:

• A fourth important objection to HO approaches is the question of how such theories can explain cases where the HO state might misrepresent the lower-order (LO) mental state (Byrne 1997, Neander 1998, Levine 2001, Block 2011). After all, if we have a representational relation between two states, it seems possible for misrepresentation or malfunction to occur. If it does, then what explanation can be offered by the HO theorist? If my LO state registers a red percept and my HO state registers a thought about something green due, say, to some neural misfiring, then what happens? It seems that problems loom for any answer given by a HO theorist and the cause of the problem has to do with the very nature of the HO theorist’s belief that there is a representational relation between the LO and HO states. For example, if the HO theorist takes the option that the resulting conscious experience is reddish, then it seems that the HO state plays no role in determining the qualitative character of the experience. On the other hand, if the resulting experience is greenish, then the LO state seems irrelevant. Rosenthal and Weisberg hold that the HO state determines the qualitative properties even in cases when there is no LO state at all (Rosenthal 2005, 2011, Weisberg 2008, 2011a, 2011b). Gennaro (2012) argues that no conscious experience results in such cases and wonders, for example, how a sole (unconscious) HOT can result in a conscious state at all. He argues that there must be a match, complete or partial, between the LO and HO state in order for a conscious state to exist in the first place.

The mind must have an unconscious understanding of the world and a conscious understanding of the world, and that is what accounts for differences in higher-order (conscious) and lower-order (unconscious) mental states. Or I could say that there is simply a difference between how a human responds unconsciously, and how a human responds consciously to experiences and stimuli.

What is the difference between an unconscious response and a conscious response then, however? Unconscious responses are affective - they are faster and more immediate than conscious responses. Unconscious responses are also what your brain has programmed in from previous development. Conscious responses, however, are more so under your control and thoughts can help to change a conscious response.

What if someone’s conscious response differs from their unconscious response? What would be an example of that happening? All responses are unconscious unless someone tries to change their response. For example, people often try to change their feelings by inhibiting them or encouraging them.

Saying all responses are higher-order or conscious doesn’t make sense, because people are constantly influenced by natural emotional processes. First comes natural unconscious responses, and if you want to change or think about your situation, you ‘think’ and make the response more conscious.

So basically humans have emotional and intellectual responses to experience and stimuli. It is hard to influence your emotIONS WITH THOUGHT; HOWEVER PEOPLE ATTEMPT TO DO THIS ALL THE TIME (CONSCIOUSLY AND UNCONSCIOUSLY).