0.3 The nature of consciousness - perceptual, representational or  (Page 6/6)

What does he mean in the final line of the passage - "perceptually conscious states have a perceptual format". That is being a little redundant - I mean, if the input from the world is perceptual then it makes sense that it is going to be perceptual in your mind. How the mind interprets, biases, thinks about, changes etc sensory inputs is an interesting question. Also does the mind convert sensory inputs into conceptual ideas? How does the vision of something outside the mind change when you think about that same vision independent of the stimulus? Does the mind use the same representations for different stimuli? - How are representations categorized, identified, utilized and felt by the mind?

Categorizing functions of the mind

The mind has many functions, and thinking takes many forms.

The mind thinks with words, visions and feelings. Any combination of those things could be used in thinking.

Some feelings the mind thinks with are strong feelings, and these probably communicate more information to the person. In fact, unconsciously there could be many strong feelings that are felt to some degree that are also informative.

So I would think that simply a simple sequence of feelings is what lies behind how the mind thinks - and each feeling could trigger thoughts, visions or other associated feelings.

So an example of this would be - 'feeling of friend' followed by 'image of friend' followed by the words 'my friend is coming to visit'.

How are stimuli expressed in the mind?

So if someone sees a white dog they can categorize it at least two ways - 'an object the color white' and 'a dog'. Each of those properties of the dog might trigger a category in the mind.

How is that different than when you just think of a white dog to yourself, however? Are the same mental nodes triggered or does it have a different mental reaction?

The difference between real world stimulation and internal thinking could be compared to hearing someone speak versus thinking or reading the same material. How the persons mind responds differently might be explained by how their brain processes external vs internal stimuli.

Recalling experience

When an experience is recalled those things might be brought up - but each experience has a different character and that could bring up or trigger a different reaction entirely (that might be separate from the individual stimuli related to the experience).

Of course the stimuli in the experience help make that experience feel like what it feels like - however there are more complicated things occurring. For instance if three visions come from the experience maybe your mind would generate another vision that would be an internal representation of those three images from the experience.

Sensory inputs and internal outputs all are going to combine to form an experience, and the physical inputs might be recalled at various times to assist internal thinking.

Mental reality and physical reality

My guess would be that each input or output has a 'experiential' quality and a cognitive quality. The cognitive quality would be how the factor is understood by your thinking and the experiential quality would be how the factor is understood by your feelings.

So experiences are understood by the mind more unconsciously and understood with feelings, while more temporary inputs from sensory stimulation are felt and understood by a persons thoughts.

Feelings are unconscious - so that is why the complicated aspects of the physical and mental world are going to be experienced and understood there (unconsciously).

Cognition and thought is more simple, so more temporary processes are going to be cognitive such as images and words - however the experience of an event and its experiential qualities are going to felt and processed unconsciously.

Bibliography

Davidson, Donald. (2002) Mental Events. In Chalmers, D. (Ed.) "philosophy of mind: classical and contemporary readings" Oxford University Press.

Fodor, J. (2007) The Revenge of the Given. In Mclaughlin, B and Cohen, J (Eds). "Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind" Blackwell Publishing.

Prinz, J. (2007) All Consciousness is Perceptual. In Mclaughlin, B and Cohen, J (Eds). "Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind" Blackwell Publishing.

Searle, J. (1990) Who is computing with the brain? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 4:623-642.