October 16, 2012

• Consciousness

  The book I read to research this post was Consciousness - A Very Short Introduction by Susan Blackmore which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Consciousness is the way we interpret the world around us. No one knows if we all have the same perception of the colour green for example. No one knows if the colour green actually exists or if it's just something we perceive. We do know that according to the density of the surface of something and how it reflects light that determines its colour. We can't comprehend what it's like to be a bat. Bats have poor eyesight and use hearing predominantly and of course use sonar to find there way around. One philosopher said that us trying to comprehend consciousness is like a dog learning to read and that it will never happen. For a long time scientists refused to study consciousness. Nowadays a lot of research is done into it for example one scientist attached electrodes to different parts of the brains of people having open brain surgery and was able to prove that different parts of the brain had different functions. We still don't know where thoughts emanate from. If somebody is told to do something at random we have no way of working they will do it. Another question is why do we have a much higher level of consciousness than animals. It has been suggested it's a matter of survival developed in prehistoric times but why can animals function quite happily without it. 

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