_______________ is the study of what appears to consciousness
Behaviorism claims that consciousness is neither a definable nor a usable concept; that it is merely another word for the soul of more ancient times. The old psychology is thus dominated by a kind of subtle religious philosophy. He argued that implicit in empiricism -- the philosophy upon which science is based -- is that we know the world only as it appears in our consciousness of it as mediated by our sensory systems. Bishop Berkeley took this implication and used it to rule out the material world. Descartes believed inputs are passed on by the sensory organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there to the immaterial spirit. The mind is a set of cognitive faculties including consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory. It is usually defined as the faculty of an entity's reasoning and thoughts. With the rise of cognitive science, consciousness is once again gaining legitimacy within psychology. But for most of the late nineteenth and twentieth century the scientific and philosophical investigation of consciousness has occurred within the tradition that started with psychical research. The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colors and tastes. This chapter is like a painter's first charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in which no niceties appear. When I say every 'state' or 'thought' is part of a personal consciousness, 'personal consciousness' is one of the terms in question. Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it, but to give an accurate account of it is the most difficult of philosophic tasks. Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. Parapsychology is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. Parapsychology is a component of the broader study of consciousness and the mind. Parapsychologists study 5 broad areas: Telepathy – mind to mind communication through a means other than the normal senses. Clairvoyance or Remote Viewing – knowledge of objects, people, or events that are hidden via space or time. Chalmers contrasts the hard problem with a number of (relatively) easy problems that consciousness presents. He emphasizes that what the easy problems have in common is that they all represent some ability, or the performance of some function or behavior. The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. [PQ] Physical processing gives rise to experiences with a phenomenal character.
Philosophy