...Altered State of Consciousness Chuck Detwiler Grand Canyon University General Psychology PSY-102 February 06, 2014 Altered State of Consciousness There are multiple ways of obtaining an altered state consciousness, some of them are rather harmless and some of them can be extremely risky and even fatal. There are multiple reasons why a person wishes to achieve these altered states, some for relaxation and relief of stress and yet others simply to experience a euphoria. Hypnosis and Meditation Hypnosis and meditation are a less harmful form of altered consciousness and do not normally involve the use of any drugs to induce this state. In hypnosis, the practice is put in to a trance-like state where they become susceptible to suggestions. In this level of consciousness they actually appear to be asleep. This may be one reason why there is some controversy over whether or not hypnosis is a level of consciousness that is different normal waking consciousness. A more detailed analysis of the brainwave activity may prove useful in determining the true level of consciousness a person is at when they are hypnotized. Meditation is another form of trance-like consciousness that is a learned technique that allows you to relax your body and gain greater control over involuntary aspects of brain activity. As a person becomes more skilled in meditation thru practice, they will be able to achieve greater control over areas such as breathing, heartbeat and even blood pressure...
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...STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS Consciousness - level of awareness of ourselves and of our environment - awareness of what is going on Mere-exposure effect - psychological phenomena whereby people feel a preference for people or things simply because they are familiar Priming - a phenomenon, often used as an experimental technique, whereby a certain stimulus sensitizes the subject to later presentation of a similar stimulus - Research participants respond more quickly and/or accurately to questions they have seen before, even if they do not remember seeing them LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS * Conscious level -Information about your environment you are currently aware of * Nonconscious level -body processes controlled by your mind that we are not usually aware of * Preconscious level -information about yourself or your environment that you are not currently thinking about * Subconscious level -information that we are not currently aware of but we know must exist due to behavior * Unconscious level -Psychoanalytic psychologists believe some events and feelings are unacceptable to our conscious mind and are repressed into the unconscious mind STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS A. SLEEP - a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles -To psychologists, asleep as being unconscious is incorrect * SLEEP CYCLE...
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...State Of Consciousness State of consciousness, consciousness is variously defined as subjective experience, awareness, the ability to experience "feeling", wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind (Google definition). There are many consciousness people face as in enduring issues with the mind body relation, sleep patterns as in why do we need sleep, rhythms of sleep , sleep deprivation, sleep disorders, dreams and why do we dream. Sleep, as a human or animal we need to sleep because our body regenerates its self when it’s at rest. Humans spend at least one-third in an altered state of consciousness. When we are tired we crave to go to sleep just as if we are hungry we crave food. We can’t live without both. No human can stay p past twenty hours without feeling like they are about to crash. No one knows exactly why we need sleep but it plays and important part in restorative function. When humans are asleep there are rhythms of sleep. Circadian rhythm is a biological rhythm that last about 24 hours. There are 4 stages the sleeper enters when they fall asleep. Stage one is when the brain gives you the signal your muscles to relax. It also gives off that your heart is to beat slower and when that happens your temperature begins to drop. Stage 2 is a light sleep. You’re not fully asleep but you can be awakening. Stage 3 you are in a deeper sleep. Your blood pressure begins to get lower because your brain gives off that message...
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...Consciousness is usually defined as awareness of our selves and our environment. We can have different states of Consciousness meaning different levels of awareness and they occur naturally or be induced by external factors such as heroin and other drugs or internal factors such as our own mental effors and other mental skills. The stage range from alertness to sleep and everything in between. Alertness is most people think about it when they think about being Conscious. When you are alert, you are awake, aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on your environment. You can focus your attention, encode information and memory engage in conversation all stuff you normally do. Daydreaming occurs naturally. Sometimes you can find...
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...PSY 102 GRAND CANYON ENTIRE COURSE To purchase this tutorial visit here: http://wiseamerican.us/product/psy-102-grand-canyon-entire-course/ contact us at: SUPPORT@WISEAMERICAN.US GRAND CANYON PSY 102 ENTIRE COURSE WEEK 1 DQ 1: Define psychology. How did psychology come into existence? From your readings, what are some of the contributions that psychology has produced for humanity? DQ 2: What is the relationship between the brain and behavior? What are some examples that might illustrate this? Week 1 Assignment Details: In chapter 1, your text describes what psychology is. Lecture 1 discusses four goals of psychology. Write an essay of 350-500 words that addresses the following: 1. Describe how the current perspectives, as discussed in chapter 1 of the text, help accomplish each of the four goals of psychology. 2. What particular issues in psychology, as discussed in chapter 1, are of personal interest to you? 3. How will the study of psychology enhance your life and make you a better person? 4. Provide specific examples to support your position. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. This assignment uses a grading rubric. Instructors will be using the rubric to grade the assignment; therefore, students should review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the assignment criteria and expectations for successful completion of the assignment. Week 2 DQ...
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...Psychology, Unit 3 - Chapter 2: Consciousness Consciousness: being aware of external and internal stimuli at any given moment, which also gives a: * Sense of personal identity and individual way of perceiving the world. It can include your senses and * Perceptions of the world around you as well as memories, beliefs and attitudes Consciousness is also described to be: * Personal - it is subjective and your own perception of your internal world and the external world * Selective - you are able to limit and restrict your attention and channel your focus onto whatever * Continuous - there is never a break in your consciousness or a time where it is empty * Changing - your thoughts are constantly changing as they are easily influenced by external stimuli RENE DESCARTES - MIND & BODY ARE SEPARATE BUT INTERCONNECTED The mind-body problem debates whether the mind and body can interact, and how, or if there is even a ‘mind’ or ‘body’. Rene Descartes dualism theory states the two substances are distinct, as one is physical and one is non-physical. He believes they are able to interact through the pineal gland, which is the center of the brain (it was later discovered that’s actually where hormones are) and that the two substances can affect each other. He defined consciousness as ‘encompassing everything we are aware of, including our own existence’. It exists in the mind or ‘soul’, but also in our body because the soul does not occupy space. His quote...
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...CONS: 00018 a0005 Concepts and Definitions of Consciousness D M Rosenthal, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA ã 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. s0005 Introduction The term ‘consciousness’ is used in several ways: to describe a person or other creature as being awake and sentient, to describe a person or other creature as being ‘aware of ’ something, and to refer to a property of mental states, such as perceiving, feeling, and thinking, that distinguishes those states from unconscious mental states. Distinguishing these different concepts of consciousness is crucial in evaluating the major theories of what it is for a state to be conscious. Among those are first-order theories, on which a mental state is conscious if being in that state results in one’s being conscious of something; global-workspace theories, on which a state is conscious if it’s widely available for mental processing; inner-sense theories, on which a state is conscious if one senses or perceives that state by way of a special inner faculty; and higher-orderthought theories, on which a state is conscious if one is aware of that state by having a thought about it. We will consider the advantages and shortcomings of these theories and variants of them. p0005 s0010 Concepts of Consciousness (I) The ubiquity of consciousness in human life and mental functioning makes it easy to overlook that the term ‘consciousness’ is used for three distinct phenomena. Though related in...
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...he explained the term double concioussness to observe the thought process of both the Negro and an American.Du Bois has introduced this term to study the physcology of African American people living in the united states.he believes that double consciousness comes from African American viewing themselves through the eyes of the society.he states that sincle the black community have lived in a society that has devalued them and it has made it difficult for them to unify their black identity with the American identity.the concept of double concioussness enables the African Americans to view themselves from peoples point of view.in his book he has talked about the race relations in the united staes and talks in detail about it.he mentions in the book “The sense of looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”. Discussion Double consciousness Du bois has describe the term double consciousness as a process of describing an individual indentity.double consciousness describes the several facets of a human identity.Du Bois has used the concept of double consciousness as a theoretical model for understanding the physco social divisions in the American society.di bois describes double consciousness as a world which yoilds no self consciousness, but only enables the human to see themselves from the eye of society and other people surrounding him.it enables the people to see themelves from others point of view and measuring ones soul by the tape of the world.one ever feels his tow-ness...
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...snatches of pains, drives, daydreams, and consciousness itself, more or less aware of it all (Forman, 2010). Meditationists practice clearing this clutter and reaching to a stage of experiencing inner silence which has been termed as the pure consciousness event (PCE). Pure Consciousness Event lies at the core of mystical experience (Forman, 1990). The assumption that mystical realization is an experiential phenomenon is reflected throughout contemporary scholarship (Woodhull, 2013). However, perenneliasts do not claim that all mystical experiences are same....
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...Consciousness and its Place in Nature David J. Chalmers 1 Introduction1 Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature. In twentieth-century philosophy, this dilemma is posed most acutely in C. D. Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature (Broad 1925). The phenomena of mind, for Broad, are the phenomena of consciousness. The central problem is that of locating mind with respect to the physical world. Broad’s exhaustive discussion of the problem culminates in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental-physical relation.2 On Broad’s taxonomy, a view might see the mental as nonexistent (“delusive”), as reducible, as emergent, or as a basic property of a substance (a “differentiating” attribute). The physical might be seen in one of the same four ways. So a fourby-four matrix of views results. (The seventeenth entry arises from Broad’s division of the substance/substance view according to whether one substance or two is involved.) At the end, three views are left standing: those on which mentality is an emergent characteristic of either a physical substance or a neutral substance,...
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...Chapter 5 Consciousness Q? What are the greatest mysteries of consciousness? A: Phenomenology: how things seem to conscious person, in their understanding of mind and behavior Problem of others mind -Fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others. -No real way to tell if a person who is conscious from someone who might do and say all the same things as a conscious person who is not conscious -Factor Analysis 1. Capacity for experience: Ability to feel pain, pleasure, hunger, consciousness, anger, or fear. 2. Capacity for agency: Ability for self-control, planning, memory, or thought. (As shown in Figure 5.1, respondents rated some targets as having little experience or agency (the dead person), others as having experiences but little agency (the baby), and yet others as having both experience and agency (adult humans).Still others were perceived to have agency without experiences (the robot,God). The perception of minds, then, involves more than just whether something has a mind. People appreciate that minds both have experiences and act as agents that perform actions) Mind/ Body problem -Another mystery of consciousness is the issue of how the mind is related to the brain and body. -“The mind is what the brain does” -The brain’s activities precede the activities of the conscious mind. The electrical activity in the brains of volunteers was measured using sensors placed on their scalps as they repeatedly decided when to move a hand. The...
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...Self-Consciousness Students Name Student ID Professor’s name Date of Submission Introduction Self-consciousness is a concept that is used interchangeably with self-awareness. Self-consciousness in most incidences occurs after someone realizes that some individuals have been observing him or her for a moment. Self-consciousness in psychological terms can sometimes be termed as a disorder. This scenario occurs since it at times affects the development of self-identity. This situation can at times make someone to be nervous or uncomfortable. However, in extreme cases, self-consciousness is capable of triggering emotional arousal hence leading to unprecedented characteristics. Self-consciousness is also known to be responsible for triggering philosophical reflections on given topics. Many philosophers have argued out that self-consciousness can result in many risks in one’s life. It is important to understand that importance of regulating self-consciousness that we possess. This paper will explicitly affirm that women have a higher self-conscious as compared to male counterparts. Individuals with high self-conscious levels have been known to have greater risks of having different disorders that are associated with internalizing things. A person with higher levels of self-consciousness record high levels of anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Studies have revealed that self-consciousness can at an extreme point make people lose their self-worth. In fact, most of the women...
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...What is consciousness? Some philosophers have contended that "qualia," or an experiential medium from which consciousness is derived, exists as a fundamental component of reality. Whitehead, for example, described the universe as being comprised of "occasions of experience." To examine this possibility scientifically, the very nature of physical reality must be re-examined. We must come to terms with the physics of space-time--as is described by Einstein's general theory of relativity--and its relation to the fundamental theory of matter--as described by quantum theory. This leads us to employ a new physics of objective reduction: " OR" which appeals to a form of quantum gravity to provide a useful description of fundamental processes at the quantum/classical borderline (Penrose, 1994; 1996). Within the OR scheme, we consider that consciousness occurs if an appropriately organized system is able to develop and maintain quantum coherent superposition until a specific "objective" criterion (a threshold related to quantum gravity) is reached; the coherent system then self-reduces (objective reduction: OR). We contend that this type of objective self-collapse introduces non-computability, an essential feature of consciousness. OR is taken as an instantaneous event--the climax of a self-organizing process in fundamental space-time--and a candidate for a conscious Whitehead "occasion" of experience. How could an OR process occur in the brain, be coupled to neural activities, and account...
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...personal perspective of the mind-body question and what it means to her. The conclusion of the essay after research is that this question is difficult to answer because of different views and perspectives. Mind-Body Questions Paper The mind-body question has been a source of examination for many years. This examination began in the seventeenth-century with the French philosopher Descartes. Many credit Descartes with beginning the mind-body problem. The mind-body question in essence deals with how the physical world interacts and relates to the mental aspects of the mind. Descartes considered that the mind existed only in the mental state with the body existing only in the physical state. He felt that the mind could not exist with the body (Schimmel, 2001). Many others have formed various opinions, including John Searle, which emphasizes consciousness when discussing the mind. This essay is a discussion of the difficulty poised by the mind-body question on philosophical and scientific inquiry. The essay will also include the perspective of Searle concerning the mind-body question and reality. It will also include a personal view of the mind-body question and the perception of reality. What is the mind-body question that has seemed so troublesome in philosophical and scientific inquiry? The mind-body question has posed a problem for philosophers and scientists for many years. One reason the problem exists is that humans want to include all aspects of mental functions in a neat...
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...Map of Consciousness by Celes | ShareThis [pic] Email This Post A Powerful Framework For Your Personal Growth In this article, I’m very excited to share with you the map of consciousness, developed by Dr. David Hawkins in Power vs Force. [pic]This is the same map I alluded to in Are You Sleepwalking Your Life Away? Part 2 post. The reason I’m so excited is because this map is probably the single most powerful tool in your pursuit for personal growth and excellence. There are two reasons why I say that: Firstly, having the map of consciousness empowers us in knowing where we stand in our current state of growth. While all of us can try to live consciously every day, without knowing the point we are starting from, we are just randomly groping in the dark. Having the map gives us a fix on our current location. When we are able to identify our starting point, we can then make actionable plans on where we want to go next. Secondly, this map lists all the different levels of consciousness attainable, thus serving as a critical framework for conscious living. Without knowing the highest end state of consciousness we can attain, we can only be making baby steps of progress and not be optimizing our full potential. But having clarity of the different levels of consciousness provides us with the full context of growth. By knowing the other levels ahead, we are more able to comprehend how limiting our current level of consciousness is, what we should be striving towards and the...
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