Phenomenal Consciousness

“But I can see. I can see everything. I can see things that Mom and Dad can’t. Or won’t “. (page 4) In the novel Tangerine by Edward Bloor, Paul Fisher is an insecure, visually impaired boy with a low self esteem, who is stuck in the shadows of his older brother Erik’s “ football dream “, and can see beyond sight in ways that others can’t and into reality in search for his identity. Even though Paul starts off as a visually impaired boy with low self esteem and cruel nicknames, he learns that only he decides how people can treat him, and the true story of what actually happened to his eyes.

The brain is considered the most complex organ in the body. It is responsible for controlling motor function, the body’s ability to balance and the ability to translate information sent to the brain by sensory organs. The mind is described as the faculty of consciousness and thought. It’s where our feeling and emotions originate from and defines who we are as a person. The brain is composed of the visual cortex, which is responsible for processing visual information. In blind individuals the feature that makes up visions still exists in the visual cortex. These features are now used to process information received from the other senses. However, blind individuals are able to view the images because what’s in their mind.

In Chaim Potok’s book, The Chosen, blindness is a recurring theme. Although there are some instances of physical blindness, such as Billy in the hospital, most of the situations in this book are of the figurative sense. In these circumstances, the person has good physical vision, however, due to their previous experiences, they are not able to see the true situation.

When defining the word blindness, it can be interpreted in various ways. Either it can be explained as sightless, or it can be carefully deciphered as having a more complex in-depth analysis. In the novel Blindness, Jose Saramago depicts and demonstrates how in an instant your right to see can be taken in an instant. However, in this novel, blindness is metaphorically related to ‘seeing’ the truth beyond our own bias opinions.

Oliver Sacks, “A Neurologist’s Notebook, The Mind’s Eye,” is referring to how the blind see things, while not always visually like you and I. But also how their minds perceive things like sounds, since their senses are heightened from losing one of their senses. Sacks, references several instances of different people and their experiences with being blind, but also being able to visually see or imagine things using their mind. They build their own visuals in their minds, one describes being able to “see” their hands on the keyboard as they are typing, as well as not being comfortable in a new environment unless they have a mental picture of the areas appearance. Another described being able to replace the gutters on his house single-handed

Hull a professor who was born partially blind but worsened with age and became totally blind.He wrote a book talking about his experiences, he says that with the loss of his sight he shifted his attention to other sense. The author wrote an essay on Hull’s book and receives numbers of letters from other blind people. Many of them wrote that they could not identify with Hull’s experiences and that with decades of losing their sight they still found himself very visual. The many people said they used their imagination to imagine what

In October of this year, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a news article titled “Vegetative Patients Show Glimmers of Consciousness” (Mundasad, 2014). The article brought attention to the fact that while a patient may fit the medical description of being unconscious or in a vegetative state, research shows that some patients have brain activity similar to healthy adults, which suggest that the patients have mental awareness. The article referenced a study conducted by Chennu et al. (2014) comparing the structure and network differences between healthy adult brains to the brains of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC).

Daniel Dennett looks to quine qualia, or completely disprove their existence, in “Quining Qualia.” He is successful in creating a theoretical framework by which many intuitive arguments for qualia can be struck down. Because of his success, an argument from introspection is difficult to make; Dennett seems to successfully refute many of the arguments given by intuition or folk psychology. I will adopt Eugene Park’s criticism in critiquing Dennett, showing that an argument from introspection can provide some insight into how qualia might exist. Park argues that relying on memory comparison is incomplete, and unfairly eliminates direct apprehensibility.

Meanwhile, in The Mind’s Eye, Sacks tells various anecdotes from individuals who have to their own unique ways to cope with blindness. Sacks describes understanding as independent to the individual. While each person goes through blindness, not every person will go through the adversity in the same way. First, Sacks explains John Hull’s story of how his blindness affected life.

Among those in support of the claim that change blindness and inattentional blindness reveal a grand illusion of visual perception, Cohen identifies three interpretations of the illusory beliefs in which the grand illusion is understood: world richness, representational richness, and representational reality. Although Cohen forms arguments against each interpretation of illusory beliefs, as stated earlier, this paper will focus on the idea of the grand illusion in regards to the illusory belief of representational

Gibson’s and Gregory’s theories of perception both suggest that eye-retina is important for perception. The both believe that without eye-retina, a person will not be able to see. This is a common view of both of the theories of perception. The idea is supported by the case of SB. SB was a man who had been blind from birth due to cataracts. When he was 52, he had an operation which restored his sight and hence he could see. Thus, this case has shown the importance of eye-retina for things to be perceived. And therefore, supports both of theories of perception which eye-retina is essential for perception.

One of the ways an individual can understand cultural diversity is by creating a meaningful and genuine relationships with people who are from different cultures. Cultural diversity is an important phenomenal for teachers in training to become familiar with and I believe it is for this reason that the Education Department at Medgar Evers College has as one of its eight-unit standard Personal and Global Consciousness. The department under this standard expects teachers in training to examine, deconstruct, and reconstruct their own and others beliefs, values and perspective, to understand their own cultures, and to develop empathy and acceptance towards others culture. Teachers wishing to work in New York City

The goal of these counter-arguments against the materialist claim is an attempt to refute the idea that mental states are purely physical happenings. In speaking about how Mary has not learned anything new, those who disagree with this argument would clearly say that she has learned something new from actually being able to experience seeing color. Proponents would make the claim that although Mary has all of the physical tools necessary to understand experiencing color, the act of actually experiencing the color provides one with a certain qualia that did not exist before. Essentially without ever being able to see color, one lacks the knowledge of actually knowing what it is like to experience seeing color. If one person has this qualia and another does not, say the colorblind person, then the other person should not have the same mental experience as the one who has obtained this qualia. Those who support the knowledge argument would then lead to the conclusion that these qualia are separate from the physical properties we are all capable of learning, so there must exist other properties than just purely physical. In terms of the ability hypothesis, those who refute this idea make the claim that simply being able to imagine an experience is not enough knowledge to know what actually experiencing it would be like. One can gain the knowledge of something new

Unconscious perceptions do not make it past Prinz’s lower level. Lower level perceptions don’t make it past the first filter. The first filter is loosely explained, but cases studied match Prinz’s requirement for availability to the working memory, which only happens past the first filter. Sensory change alone is not sufficient. One instance studied is ‘inattentional blindness’. In inattentional blindness cases participants cannot report on changes in their visual stimuli. These perceptions, though they are not reportable, still appear on brain imaging studies. For example, when you have participants focus on a particular aspect of their stimuli others go unnoticed. One study had the members count how many times a basketball was passed by people wearing white shirts. Meanwhile an all-black gorilla moves through the scene unnoticed. This study showed brain activity without awareness. Research on unilateral neglect is consistent with inattentional blindness.

talked of "seeing" in her dreams much as she saw when she was awake (let it be