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Record 1 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The case for intrinsic theory: IX. further discussion of an
equivocal remembrance account
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 25(1), Win 2004, pp. 7-32
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
I go on here with my endeavor to ascertain intrinsic-theoretical
elements that are explicitly or implicitly present in
O'Shaughnessy's (2000) remembrance account of inner awareness, or
the immediate cognitive awareness that we have of some of our own
mental-occurrence instances. According to an intrinsic theory of
such awareness, a directly apprehended state of consciousness (to
use James's concept) includes in its own structure inner awareness
of itself. I seek to understand those distinct mental occurrence
instances which O'Shaughnessy holds are the cognitive inner
awarenesses of our experiences. They are memory experiences, he
claims, owed to latent knowledge of one's experiences that is
acquired automatically as a direct effect of their occurrence.
These remembrances are more akin to thought experiences than to
perceptual experiences that apprehend their objects directly;
indeed, they seem to be, strictly, actualizations of conceptual
capacities. So, queries regarding their contents revert to queries
regarding the latent knowledge that informs them. How does our
author propose one directly gains this latent knowledge of
experiences? This question leads us back to what the cognitive
effects may be of the purely extensional, non-intentional
awareness... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 2 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The Case for Intrinsic Theory: X. A Phenomenologist's Account of
Inner Awareness
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 25(2), Spr 2004, pp. 97-121
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
This article is in large part an exposition and interpretation of
the Woodruff Smith intrinsic-theoretical account of inner
awareness. And, it is propaedeutic to considering, subsequently in
the present series, the first of six theses regarding inner
awareness that Kriegel defended in a recently published issue of
this journal. Included here, as well, is some of the relevant
background about intrinsic theory and other theories of inner
awareness. Kriegel defended his first thesis with special critical
reference to phenomenologist Woodruff Smith's theory, and
maintained that, on the contrary, a conscious mental-occurrence
instance presents itself, too: albeit secondarily, in the sense of
its receiving less attention than does its primary object (e.g.,
the sun). Woodruff Smith conceived of inner awareness -- the
apprehension that one immediately has, as they take place, of many
of one's mental-occurrence instances -- to be part of the modality
of presentation of a mental-occurrence instance's primary object.
That is, the inner awareness intrinsic to a conscious
mental-occurrence instance "modifies" (or "qualifies") the (sole)
presentation in that mental-occurrence instance. 1 would like to
put it for Woodruff Smith that inner awareness is the reflexive
way in which a conscious mental-occurrence instance is an
awareness of its primary object -- as the latter's being, inter
alia, an object of this conscious mental-occurrence instance.
However, his conception includes that every conscious
mental-occurrence instance possesses a "phenomenal quality" --
which amounts to the instance's appearing in the mind -- and inner
awareness is awareness of this appearance. This seems to mean a
conscious mental-occurrence instance, too, is presented therein,
contrary to both (a) that the presentation in any
mental-occurrence instance is just of its primary object and (b)
that the inner-awareness feature "modifies" the only presentation
there is within a conscious mental-occurrence instance. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal
abstract )
Record 3 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The case for intrinsic theory: VII. An equivocal remembrance
theory
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 24(1), Win 2003, pp. 1-28
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
B. O'Shaughnessy advocates an account of inner awareness (in the
sense of the present series of articles) that I would categorize
as a remembrance theory. It is these remembrances that are
proposed to be one's inner awareness of one's experiences:
occurrent non-inferential conceptual awarenesses of the latter.
Although O'Shaughnessy argues contra one's having intrinsic
occurrent conceptual inner awareness of one's experiences, he
maintains that every experience is its own "extensional object"
(which is distinct from its being its own intentional object, as
an intrinsic theory of inner awareness would imply). This
non-conceptual reflexive relation of an experience to
itself--"one's experiential awareness of one's experiences"--is
claimed by O'Shaughnessy to be a case of awareness in exactly the
same sense that any basic perceptual experience is awareness of
its extensional object. The present article and the next one in
the present series comprise an attempt to explicate
O'Shaughnessy's conception of inner awareness, in particular,
aspects of the conception that may contribute to the positive case
for intrinsic theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all
rights reserved)
Record 4 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXVL. Awareness as commentary (second
part)
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 22(1), 2003, pp. 55-74
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
This article, published in two parts, is propaedeutic to a
consideration next of Weiskrantz's conception of consciousness
from a perspective bequeathed to us by James more than a century
ago. Weiskrantz has argued in support of a general account of
awareness that resembles the "Intellectualist" notion of mind
against which James strongly objected. Weiskrantz mainly addressed
the question of where in the brain the stream of consciousness
"flows," but he also maintained at some length that all
awarenesses, even those experiences that are involved in having
pain, are matters of commentary. Contrary to how it may seem,
every state of consciousness is in fact a certain kind of
behavioral response-covert, overt, or incipient-that brings
something or other under a heading. Although Weiskrantz explicitly
rejected all eliminative strategies vis-a-vis awareness, he
formulated his own concept of awareness in terms of the operations
that allow him to judge whether a subject is aware of something in
particular, and he claimed that awareness always consists either
of the delivery of a report or an occurrent brain-state of
readiness to issue a report. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004
APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 5 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXVIL. Defending conscious experience
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 22(1), 2003, pp. 75-93
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
Weiskrantz's recent account of awareness is considered from a
perspective that James bequeathed us. In opposition to the
Intellectualists, James asks why a pure ego wielding purely
conceptualizing acts is needed to give us awareness of relations
and universals, inter alia. In opposition to Weiskrantz's
Intellectualism, I ask how a commentary system, which has at its
disposal only conceptual materials, can swoop down from on high to
do the job of creating the experiences we undergo. Weiskrantz
prefers the stronger of two positions concerning the relation of
awareness to commentary that are consistent with his general view.
On the minimal position, he would grant that experiences do takes
place without commentary. However, no less so, he would conceive
of consciousness as a matter of engaging in higher-order thought.
He insists that one's firsthand apprehension of one's stream of
experience or its components is carried out by, as it were, a
higher agency: namely, a commentary system. Thus, none of our
experiences is conscious unless appropriate judgment is passed
upon it from outside and on high. (PsycINFO Database Record (c)
2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 6 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
What is this autonoetic consciousness?
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 24(2), Spr 2003, pp. 229-254
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
As Tulving argues, concepts shape psychologists' thinking and
determine how the end products of research are recorded. Currently
in prominent use is not only Tulving's concept of episodic memory
but also his allied concept of autonoetic consciousness. And
because, too, of the growing attention by psychologists to aspects
of their subjects' consciousness streams, I explore Tulving's
concept of autonoetic consciousness: to help improve the exercise
of consciousness concepts in psychology generally. Two special
topics among others are discussed: (a) the "flavor" Tulving claims
characterizes recollective experience and corresponds to the
warmth and intimacy James proposes consciousness states possess,
and (b) whether the autonoetic-consciousness concept applies to a
brain-damaged man said to lack, probably, any capability for
autonoetic awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all
rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 7 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
"Viewing the World in Perspective, Noticing the Perspectives of
Things": James J. Gibson's Concept
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 24(3-4), Sum-Fal 2003, pp. 265-288
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Gibson distinguishes among activities of the visual system,
including viewing a room (say) as opposed to seeing it, and, in
effect, between a visual-system activity and the stream of
experience ("awareness-of") that is a product and part of it.
During viewing, one perceives the surfaces ("here-and-now
surfaces") projecting light to one's point of observation, and
one's location in relation to them. Thus, one does not view some
of the surfaces that one sees when, instead, one engages in
straightforward seeing at the same observation point. The latter
activity produces direct awareness of both occluded and
here-and-now surfaces, although the latter surfaces are not
distinguished as such (which occurs in viewing). Inter alia, it is
argued that, given Gibson's account of visually controlled
locomotion, viewing should be considered the visual perceptual
activity involved therein since, in his view, one cannot see light
and determine one's behavior on that basis. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 8 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The Case for Intrinsic Theory: VIII. The Experiential in Acquiring
Knowledge Firsthand of One's Experiences
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 24(3-4), Sum-Fal 2003, pp. 289-316
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discussion continues here of a theory (O'Shaughnessy, 2000) I have
previously described as being an equivocal remembrance theory of
inner awareness, the direct apprehension of one's own
mental-occurrence instances (Natsoulas, 2001c). O'Shaughnessy
claims that we acquire knowledge of each of our experiences as it
occurs, yet any occurrent cognitive awareness of it that we may
have comes later and is mediated by memory. Thus, acquiring
knowledge of an experience firsthand is automatic and silent, not
a matter of experientially apprehending the experience. Although
O'Shaughnessy does hold that every experience has itself as an
("extensional") object, this is not a matter of a cognitive
self-apprehension (as an intrinsic theory of inner awareness would
maintain, e.g., Brentano, 1911/1973). O'Shaughnessy's grounds for
his proposal of a nonexperiential acquisition of knowledge of
one's experiences amounts to the claim that to hold otherwise
would imply an infinite regress of experiences, for the experience
by which we would know of an experience would be itself the object
of experience, etc. I argue that neither an appendage theory
(e.g., James, 1890/1950) nor an intrinsic theory of inner
awareness, both of which are experiential, sets an experiential
regress going. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 9 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Freud and consciousness: XI. A different interpretation considered
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Thought. Vol 25(1), Win 2002, pp.
29-66
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.iup.com/order.cfm?bookno=PC&action=info&J=J]
AB: Abstract
One major purpose of this series of articles is to convince
readers that Freud does indeed qualify as "a sophisticated and
relevant theorist of consciousness," as Dr. Paul Redding calls him
in his essay "Freud's Theory of Consciousness" (2000). My effort
continues here to provide as accurate a picture as I am able of
Freud's conception of consciousness, with special reference to an
interpretation of this conception other than the one I have been
developing in the present series. I relate to in my analyses a
distinction that Redding puts to central use between two kinds of
consciousness, Reddingsuggests that Freud relied to good effect on
this distinction in his account of the unconscious psychical
processes. The distinction lies between two properties that belong
to individual psychical processes: A psychical process is
"phenomenally conscious" if there is something it is like to
undergo it and "access conscious" if it is poised for use as a
premise in reasoning and the rational control for action and
speech. Freud's dynamically unconscious psychical processes are
not "poised" repression prevents them from being accessed. But,
according to Redding's understanding of Freud's theory, they
nevertheless instantiate phenomenal consciousness. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 10 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Freud and consciousness: XII. Agreements and disagreements
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Thought. Vol 25(3), Sum 2002, pp.
281-328
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.iup.com/order.cfm?bookno=PC&action=info&J=J]
AB: Abstract
Considers Professor David Livingstone Smith's explication of
Freud's theory of consciousness. The author proceeds by seeking to
provide as accurate a picture as he can of Freud's conception.
Wherever it seems necessary, he attempts to improve on what he has
written previously, and takes the opportunity to reinforce the
case for constructing Freud as he has. Much agreement is to be
expected between Smith's and the author's understanding of Freud's
account, because Smith has studied six articles of the present
series and expressed his indebtedness to them. In contrast to the
author discussed in article XI of this series, Smith and the
author are speaking of many of the same textual materials. But,
this does not mean that they are in total agreement. For example,
Smith does not consider to be real a problem with Freud's theory
that the author raised in the second article of this series: Freud
considered conscious thoughts meaningful, his theory requires
their meaning be transferred to them from unconscious thoughts,
which transpire outside the perception-consciousness system, but
the theory does not make this transfer possible. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 11 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The experiential presence of objects to perceptual consciousness:
Wilfrid Sellars, sense impressions, and perceptual takings
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 23(3), Sum 2002, pp. 293-316
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discussion of W. Sellars's rediscovery of experiential presence
continues with special reference to J. McDowell's and J.E
Rosenberg's recent articles on Sellars's understanding of
perception, and a later effort by Sellars to cast light on the
intimate relation between sensing and perceptual taking. Five main
sections respectively summarize my earlier discussion of Sellars's
account of experiential presence, draw on Rosenberg's explication
of two Sellarsian modes of responding to sense impressions,
consider McDowell's claim that Sellars's perceptual takings are
shapings of sensory consciousness, introduce Sellars's Kantian
late account of experiential presence, and return critically to
McDowell's thesis: Sellars's perceptual takings, notwithstanding
their being purely conceptual actualizations, give us awareness of
the very pinkness of a pink ice cube. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 12 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
On the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness: O'Shaughnessy
and the mythology of the attention
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Consciousness & Emotion. Vol 3(1), 2002, pp. 35-64
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=C%26
E]
AB: Abstract
What are the states of consciousness in themselves, those pulses
of mentality that follow one upon another in tight succession and
constitute the stream of consciousness? William James conceives of
each of them as being, typically, a complex unitary awareness that
instantiates many features and takes a multiplicity of objects. In
contrast, Brian O'Shaughnessy claims that the basic durational
component of the stream of consciousness is the attention, which
he understands to be something like a psychic space that is
simultaneously occupied by several experiences. Whereas, according
to the first conception, emotion is a feature of a temporal
segment of the stream of consciousness and colors through and
through each consciousness state that instantiates it, the second
conception considers an emotion to be a distinct one of a system
of simultaneous experiences that interact with each other, for
example, limiting each other's number and intensity. Among other
matters discussed is the two theorists' mutually contrasting
conception of how the non-inferential awareness which we have of
our states of consciousness is accomplished. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 13 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Missing the experiential presence of environmental objects: A
construal of immediate sensible representations as conceptual
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 23(4), Fal 2002, pp. 325-350
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
By means of a comparative study of W. Sellar's Kantian approach to
the problem of experiential presence, J. McDowell (1998) gives a
reading of I. Kant on intentionality understood to be "the
directedness of subjective states and episodes toward objects."
The current author addresses only one of the products of
McDowell's indirect approach, namely, what he understands to be
McDowell's own conception of immediate sensible representation.
Selecting from the complex fabric of McDowell's discussion, the
author states that only the thread that expresses directly
McDowell's own account seems to be not consistent with McDowell's
own purposes. For McDowell claims to be moving us toward how we
should be thinking about internationality, since more than anybody
else, McDowell's major influence, who is Kant, is on the right
track. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 14 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The case for intrinsic theory: V. Some arguments from James's
Varieties
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 22(1), Win 2001, pp. 41-68
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discusses consciousness and intrinsic theory using the viewpoint
of William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. The
present author brings out further arguments in favor of the kind
of understanding of consciousness or inner awareness that James
explicitly opposed in The Principles of Psychology. The
alternative, appendage kind of account that James advanced there
for consciousness stands in marked contrast to intrinsic theory:
by requiring that having inner awareness of any mental-occurrence
instance must take the form of a separate mental-occurrence
instance directed on the first. Intrinsic theory holds instead
that every conscious mental-occurrence instance possesses a
phenomenological structure that includes reference to that very
instance itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all
rights reserved)
Record 15 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The case for intrinsic theory: VI. incompatibilities within the
stream of consciousness
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 22(2), Spr 2001, pp. 119-146
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
In The Varieties of Religious Experience (W. James, 1902/1982),
James explores a kind of dividedness that can exist within the
stream of consciousness -- "the divided self." This condition of
the stream consists in crucial part of a phenomenological
heterogeneity, inconsistency, discordance, or division of which
disapproving notice is taken subjectively. The pertinent
discordance exists among states of consciousness that comprise the
same stream, is evident directly to inner awareness, and is not
necessarily a matter of positing or inferring the existence of a
second stream of consciousness or an unconscious mental life.
Typically, intrinsic theorists of inner awareness -- or the
immediate awareness we all have of at least some of our own
mental-occurrence instances--disagree with appendage theorists
concerning, inter alia, what the first-hand evidence reveals about
inner awareness. The authors proffers a hypothesis that should
help to explain why the first-person reports of appendage
theorists contradict intrinsic theory with regard to inner
awareness. The author's hypothesis derives from James's discussion
in Varieties of the not uncommon divided-self phenomenon.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 16 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
On the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness: Attempted
inroads from the first-person perspective
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 22(3), Sum 2001, pp. 219-248
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discusses the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness. Streams
of consciousness, as discussed by W. James (1899), are each made
up of states of consciousness 1 at a time in tight temporal
succession, except when a stream stops flowing for a period of
time. Although unitary, a state of consciousness often has many
objects, which have some kind of existence, past, present, or
future, or which are nonexistent, merely apparent. The problem
concerning the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness is what
they are themselves, not what they are about or what they may seem
to be about. The author argues that attempts to determine the
intrinsic properties of states of consciousness are well advised
to attend to the individual's inner awareness of them. Any true
statement about a state of consciousness that one may succeed in
formulating from the 1st-person perspective should be considered a
fact concerning a brain state. Also, various ingredients belonging
to a state of consciousness are integrated together in a unitary
state. The claim that finding states of consciousness firsthand is
illusory has several problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004
APA, all rights reserved)
Record 17 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The concrete state: The basic components of James's stream of
consciousness
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 22(4), Fal 2001, pp. 427-450
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discusses the basic components of W. James's views (1890)
concerning stream of consciousness. A sympathetic reading of
James's reports of his personal firsthand evidence shows that many
of his claims are acceptable and consistent with a thesis
fundamental to his perspective: that is, that a stream of
consciousness consists of a succession, 1 at a time, of unitary
states and all of the other mental occurrences that are conscious
are features of such states. Part II of this article is
2002-12690-006. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 18 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The concrete state continued
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 22(4), Fal 2001, pp. 451-474
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discusses the basic components of W. James's views (1890)
concerning stream of consciousness. Examination of James's account
of the sense of personal identity leads to the specific states of
consciousness that he called individually "the present, judging
Thought." These states, which are the inner awarenesses,
remembrances, and appropriations of other states of consciousness
in the same stream, are supposed to provide individuals with a
sense of their own diachronic continuity. According to James, they
are the only "I" that there is. James in effect assigned this job
to the total brain process. Embodying all the information
required, it is this physical process that is proposed to produce
each Thought full-blown. Part I of this article is 2002-12690-005.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 19 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The Freudian conscious
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Consciousness & Emotion. Special Affective qualia and the
subjective dimension. Vol 2(1), 2001, pp. 1-28
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=C%26
E]
AB: Abstract
To reduce the likelihood that psychology will develop in a deeply
flawed manner, the present article seeks to provide an
introduction to Freud's conception of consciousness because, for
among other reasons, his general theory is highly influential in
science and culture and among the best understood by clinicians
and experimentalists. The theory is complex and all of its major
parts have a bearing on one another; indeed, consciousness has a
central place in the total conceptual structure--as is argued, in
effect, throughout the present article. The discussion focuses
mainly on how conscious psychical processes differ from processes
of the psychical apparatus that do not instantiate the Freudian
attribute of consciousness. This intrinsic attribute that belongs
to every conscious psychical process is seen as including, along
with qualitative content, an unmediated, witting awareness of the
psychical process that is directed upon itself. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 20 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXV. Awareness as commentary (Part I)
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 21(4), 2001-2002, pp.
347-366
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
This two-part article is propaedeutic to considering subsequently
Weiskrantz's "commentary" conception of consciousness: from the
perspective that James bequeathed to us more than a century ago.
Weiskrantz has sought to render plausible a general account of
awareness that resembles the "Intellectualist" notion of mind to
which James had objected in The Principles. Whereas the central
problem he addresses is where in the brain James's consciousness
stream flows, Weiskrantz holds all awareness, even pain, is
commentary. Contrary to how it may appear to the person himself or
herself, every state of consciousness is no more than a kind of
behavioral response--covert, overt, or incipient--bringing
something or other under some heading. Although Weiskrantz
formulates his concept of awareness in terms of operations that
get a subject to report so the experimenter can judge whether the
subject is aware of something in particular, Weiskrantz rejects
all strategies that seek to theoretically eliminate awareness.
Nevertheless, he proposes awareness to consist simply of the
actual or potential delivery of a report. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 21 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXIV. James contra the
intellectualists (second part)
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 21(3), 2001-2002, pp.
253-272
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
James presented a number of compelling arguments against those
theorists whom he called the "Intellectualists": a) for holding
that mental states of the mundane Jamesian qualitative kind cannot
provide us with our awareness of relations; and b) for introducing
purely conceptualizing mental acts to do the job from on high. In
his classic account of mental life, James found no use for purely
conceptualizing mental states, whether in relation to our
awareness of objective relations or in relation to our awareness
of anything else. All of the mental states that constitute the
stream of consciousness--and therefore, in James's view, all
mental states that occur in us--are of the qualitative/cognitive
kind, whether they are minimal conceivings of the sensation kind
or they have the most abstract objects. I continue in the present
article to discuss James's responses to the Intellectualists. I
discuss in particular how James addressed their claim that an
account of the apprehension of universals requires the theoretical
introduction of mental states purportedly resembling universals,
namely, purely conceptualizing mental acts. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract )
Record 22 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Freud and consciousness: X. The place of consciousness in Freud's
science
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Thought. Vol 23(4), Fal 2000, pp.
525-561
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.iup.com/order.cfm?bookno=PC&action=info&J=J]
AB: Abstract
This article focuses on the place that Freud explicitly assigned
to consciousness within his science. Of central concern are the
conscious psychical processes, which occur in the
perception-consciousness system, possess individually both
qualitative and cognitive contents, and include conscious
awareness each one of itself, along with whatever else each may be
an awareness of. The quality of being conscious, which every
conscious psychical process possesses, is intrinsic to each
conscious psychical process; nothing more than it itself needs to
occur in order for the quality to be instantiated. Direct
acquaintance with conscious psychical processes provides the
analogical basis for positing unconscious psychical processes;
these help to explain the occurrence of psychical and behavioral
happening consciously accessible by sensory perception or inner
awareness. Every unconscious psychical process is, so to speak, an
instance of a "truncated" consciousness; i.e., its owner undergoes
therein nonqualitative and nonreflexive awareness of something or
as though of something. Although the quality of being conscious is
not essential to the psychical, it is no less a property of
natural processes than any other property a psychical process
possesses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 23 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Consciousness and conscience
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 21(4), Fal 2000, pp. 327-352
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Discusses aspects and meanings of the words "conscious"and
"consciousness", including that of the "intrapersonal together
sense". Whereas the interpersonal sense of consciousness picks out
a certain kind of relation that exists, has existed, or will exist
between 2 or a few people, the intrapersonal together sense refers
to a process instantiated wholly by a single person yet analogous
to that particular interpersonal relation. In addition to the
interpersonal sense and the intrapersonal together sense, this
article distinguishes the related concept of "consciousness in the
guilty sense" which has reference to a subcategory of
consciousness in the intrapersonal together sense. A person
conscious in the guilty sense has come to judge that he or she has
committed or is committing now a legal or moral transgression--
this kind of consciousness turning into an application of
"conscience" insofar as the judgment passed involves moral
self-condemnation and produces feelings of guilt. All of the above
are mutually similar kinds of consciousness and they are cases of
"awareness- with." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all
rights reserved)
Record 24 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXI. Blindsight and states of
consciousness
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 20(1), 2000-2001, pp.
71-95
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
Blindsight research provides an opportunity to place W. James's
account of consciousness in an empirical context that is
attracting much comment from psychologists. The author spells out
an interpretation of blindsight--neurological phenomenon resulting
from visual-cortical lesions--in keeping with James's conception
of the stream of consciousness in The Principles of Psychology, in
order shed light on the conception of consciousness that James was
developing. Consistently with James's general theory, no role is
assigned to unconscious mental occurrences in this Jamesian
interpretation of blindsight. Accordingly, the special deficiency
of blindsight consists in the total brain process, bringing states
of consciousness into existence whose intrinsic visual-perceptual
dimension is inaccessible or unreliably accessible to immediate
apprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 25 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXIII. James Contra the
intellectualists (first part)
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 20(4), 2000-2001, pp.
383-404
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
W. James distinguished the states of consciousness that
successively constitute a stream of consciousness from how they
appear to inner awareness. For one thing, the stream has a
discrete temporal structure whereas its basic durational
components inwardly seem continuous, each with the next one:
partly because the stream never abruptly changes in all of the
features of its content. States of consciousness that James called
"transitive" apprehend objective relations existing between items
apprehended successively. The Intellectualists claimed that states
of the mundane Jamesian qualitative kind cannot provide awareness
of relations and they introduced purely conceptualizing mental
states to do the job from on high. James formulated a number of
cogent opposing arguments: some of these are discussed in the
present article. These arguments may well prove useful, too,
against an understanding of consciousness that has been advanced
recently in a neuropsychological context. More extremely than the
Intellectualists, the advocate of this conception maintains that
any mental stream, whether animal or human, consists entirely of
acts of commentary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all
rights reserved)
Record 26 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XXII. Apprehension and the feeling
aspect
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 20(3), 2000-2001, pp.
275-295
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
This article discusses the meaning and function of the feeling
aspect that, according to W. James, every state of consciousness
possesses. From a previous article, the author continues here an
effort to spell out how the feeling aspect and a cognitive
aspect--which, too, was proposed to characterize all pulses of
mentality--belong together to a single integral whole. Every state
of consciousness is both a feeling and a mental apprehension of
something, or at least as though of something. Although states of
consciousness vary in veridicality, no state of consciousness is
more or less cognitive than any other. Nor is any state of
consciousness more abstract, less finite, than any another, less
of a concrete feeling. Even an awareness of something universal or
general is a "perfectly determinate, singular, and transient
thing.... a perishing segment of thought's stream, consubstantial
with other facts of sensibility." The feeling aspect is the
experiential, qualitative way in which--or form by which--a state
of consciousness feels the totality of items, properties, events,
relations, and so on, that it apprehends or seems to apprehend.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 27 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
On the intrinsic nature of states of consciousness: Further
considerations in the light of James's conception
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Consciousness & Emotion. Vol 1(1), 2000, pp. 139-166
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=C%26
E]
AB: Abstract
How are the states of consciousness intrinsically so that they all
qualify as "feelings" in W. James's generic sense? The author
restricts his topic mainly to a certain characteristic that
belongs to each of those pulses of mentality that successively
make up James's stream of consciousness. Certain statements of
James's are intended to pick out the variable "width" belonging to
a stream of consciousness as it flows. Attention to this proposed
property brings the author to a discussion of (1) the unitary
character of each of the states of consciousness however complex
they may frequently be and (2) how to conceive of their complexity
without recourse to a misleading spatial metaphor. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 28 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
An ecological and phenomenological perspective on consciousness
and perception: Contact with the world at the very heart of the
being of consciousness
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Review of General Psychology. Vol 3(3), Sep 1999, pp. 224-245
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.apa.org/journals/gpr.html]
AB: Abstract
Owing to the intentional nature of consciousness, people possess a
special kind of contact with the real world. They apprehend part
of it in a qualitative and cognitive manner at the ontological
level suitably described as corresponding to the psychological. At
the core of the visual system's molar activities, a stream of
visual awareness flows and is the very form wherein direct visual
reference to the world is accomplished. Also a function of the
visual system, when it is operating in the mode called "viewing"
or "reflective seeing," is one's immediate apprehension of visual
perceptual experience per se. Using an approach that draws on both
ecological and phenomenological thought, the author seeks to make
progress toward a conceptual structure for consciousness.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
(journal abstract )
Record 29 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The concept of consciousness-sub-6: The general state meaning
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. Vol 29(1), Mar 1999,
pp. 59-87
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/asp/journal.asp?ref=0021
-8308]
AB: Abstract
Considered here is the last one of the six basic concepts of
consciousness that The Oxford English Dictionary identifies in its
several entries under consciousness. The referent of the sixth
concept, which I call "consciousness-sub-6," is rightly understood
to be a certain general operating mode of the mind. Any
psychological account of consciousness-sub-6 must distinguish this
operating mode from (a) the "particular consciousness or
awarenesses," i.e., the specific thoughts, feelings, perceptions,
intentions, and the like (including William James's succession of
total states of consciousness), that occur while the mind is so
operating, and from (b) the other, alternative, general operating
modes of the mind: such as those that are sometimes in force in
place of consciousness-sub-6, when one is awake. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 30 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
A commentary system for consciousness?!
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 20(2), Spr 1999, pp. 155-181
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Critiques a proposal that L. Weiskrantz published in his book,
Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neurophysiological Exploration
(1997), on brain-damaged individuals. It is a proposal regarding
the locus, nature, and character of consciousness in general.
Every instance of being conscious, or aware, or having experience
of anything (O), is supposed to be identical to either one of
three kinds of activity of a commentary system in the brain that
correspond to the Skinnerian distinction between overt, covert,
and incipient responses. Any human or animal who is experiencing O
at the present moment is therein either (a) commenting on O to
someone else; (b) commenting on O to himself or herself, overtly
or covertly; or (c) occurrently tending to comment on O, overtly
or covertly, either to someone else or to himself or herself. This
third form of experience of O is made up of a certain portion of a
process in the commentary system that constitutes overt or covert
commenting on O. Although the identification of awareness with
commentary is Weiskrantz's stated preference, the current author
questions Weiskrantz's implication that commentary behavior is not
required equally by different kinds of awareness. (PsycINFO
Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 31 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
A rediscovery of presence
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 20(1), Win 1999, pp. 17-42
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
When we see Wilfrid Sellars's favorite object, an ice cube pink
through and through, we see the very pinkness of it. Inner
awareness of our visual experience finds the ice cube to be
experientially present, not merely representationally present to
our consciousness. Its pinkness and other properties are present
not merely metaphorically, not merely in the sense that the
experience represents or is an occurrent belief in the ice cube's
being there before us. Despite his behavioristic inclinations,
Sellars acknowledges experiential presence and gives an account of
it in terms of a perceptual experience's having two intrinsic
components, a sensation and a conceptual response to the sensation
that ultimately refers to the sensation although it normally takes
the sensation for the environmental item that produced it.
Problems with Sellars's account include the inadequacy of the
causal and referential relations postulated between the two
components of a perceptual experience, and the experimentally
demonstrated fact (A. Michotte et al, 1964/1991) that, although
sensations may be necessary for perceptual experience,
experiential presence of a particular environmental property does
not always require corresponding sensations. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Record 32 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The case of intrinsic theory: IV. An argument from how conscious
mental-occurrence instances seem
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 20(3), Sum 1999, pp. 257-276
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
D. Woodruff Smith maintains that, within any objectivating act
that is its object, inner awareness (i.e., direct occurrent
awareness of the act) is inextricably interwoven with the outer
awareness (i.e., occurrent awareness of or as though of something
else) that is involved in the act. The author provides an
examination of arguments Woodruff Smith proffers pro an
understanding of inner awareness as intrinsic. He gives attention
only to one of Woodruff Smith's arguments, and his discussion
focuses largely on how D. M. Rosenthal, who holds instead that
inner awareness is accomplished by a separate mental-occurrence
instance, has interpreted the empirical evidence that Woodruff
Smith cites. Woodruff Smith considers how a conscious
mental-occurrence instance seems to its owner to be empirical
evidence that lends support to intrinsic theory of inner
awareness. When one introspects a mental-occurrence instance, one
finds a single unified experience, not two of them as Rosenthal
proposes. Rosenthal accepts this firsthand evidence as tending to
support intrinsic theory, but tries to explain the appearances
away, mentioning G.E. Moore's description of consciousness as
"transparent." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 33 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
The stream of consciousness: XX: A non-ecological conception
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Imagination, Cognition & Personality. Vol 19(1), 1999-2000, pp.
71-90
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://baywood.com/search/PreviewJournal.asp?qsRecord=4]
AB: Abstract
Contrasts James's views on consciousness in "The Principles of
Psychology (1890, 1950) with those of S. K. Langer in "Mind: An
Essay on Human Feeling" (1967). The author suggests that James's
discussion of consciousness seeks to express a non-egological
conception of the subject matter. James is seen as consistently
refusing to adopt any theory according to which consciousness is
brought into being by something more than the processes of the
brain; there exists no mental spring or source from which the
mental stream flows or has its origin; the ongoing activity of the
brain, without knowing what it does, produces mechanically one
state of consciousness after another. In contrast, Langer's
descriptions of the organism as that which feels may be a way of
implicitly introducing a physical ego, which does all that a
metaphysical subject or ego is supposed to do. A brain center
that, as Langer holds, receives impressions of physiological
processes above a certain limen and, by apprehending them, renders
these processes into states of consciousness, is viewed as a
physical ego. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights
reserved)
Record 34 of 34
DN: Database Name
PsycINFO (1840-Current)
TI: Title
Virtual objects
AU: Author
Natsoulas, Thomas
SO: Source
Journal of Mind & Behavior. Vol 20(4), Fal 1999, pp. 357-377
RL: Resource Location
[URL:http://www.ume.maine.edu/~jmb/welcome.html]
AB: Abstract
Comments on the concept of "virtual objects" as described by J. J.
Gibson in The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979,
1986). Gibson contends that objects are both perceived and not
perceived through their images; examples include pictures of
places and events. In contrast to Gibson's views, experiences
undergone in the process of perceiving pictures of things are not
identical with perceiving the things themselves. The cases of a
photograph of a tree, a bleeding heart in an inkblot, very small
and very distant surfaces, an optical tunnel, shadows, an
invisibly supported objects, and movie scenes all point to
problems with Gibson's concept. Visually perceived objects are,
have been, or will be actual parts of the single world we inhabit,
or they have no existence. Adoption of Gibson's view that we
visually perceive imaginary virtual objects extends the sense of
"visual perceiving" to a point where the phrase loses usefulness
for the field of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004
APA, all rights reserved)