8 papers in the library · publishing 1995-2006
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science January 15, 2006 Thomas Natsoulas
Consciousness, according to William James, is a continuous stream made of brief, adjacent states that occur one at a time, except when it stops and restarts. At any given moment, a person's conscious mental life consists of a single, integrated state with many intrinsic features, and there is no evidence of a second simultaneous stream.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2005 Thomas Natsoulas
James argues that consciousness is not a substance but is constituted of 'pure experiences' that are neither mental nor physical but can be taken as either. A key feature is direct acquaintance with one's experiences, which forms the basis of all knowledge. For example, knowledge of the sun arises from taking certain experiences as that physical object, due to their context among other experiences that are also objects of inner awareness.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 2003 Thomas Natsoulas
William James's later theory of consciousness, presented in his article 'Does Consciousness Exist?', reconceives the stream of consciousness as composed of 'pure experiences' that are neither mental nor physical but can be taken as either. A key feature is direct acquaintance with one's own experiences, which grounds all knowledge. For example, knowing the sun involves directly experiencing certain phenomena and, within a context of other inner experiences, interpreting some of those experiences as the physical sun itself. The article examines James's own statements about his intentions and closely analyzes his new conception.
Consciousness & Emotion September 5, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
Two contrasting philosophical accounts of the stream of consciousness are examined. William James views each momentary state of consciousness as a complex, unitary awareness that simultaneously instantiates many features and takes multiple objects; emotion, on this view, pervades and colors the entire state. Brian O'Shaughnessy instead proposes that the basic unit of the stream is the attention, a psychic space occupied by several simultaneous experiences; emotion here is one distinct experience among others, interacting with them by limiting their number and intensity. The two theorists also differ on how non-inferential self-awareness of one's own conscious states is achieved.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2000 Thomas Natsoulas
Blindsight, a neurological condition caused by visual-cortical lesions, can be interpreted through William James's conception of the stream of consciousness as presented in The Principles of Psychology. This Jamesian interpretation assigns no role to unconscious mental occurrences; instead, the deficiency of blindsight lies in the total brain process producing states of consciousness whose intrinsic visual-perceptual dimension is inaccessible or unreliably accessible to immediate apprehension. The author elaborates this interpretation to clarify the kind of conception of consciousness James was developing, despite disagreeing with some of its theses.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1996 Thomas Natsoulas
This philosophical paper examines the relationship between consciousness and self-awareness through the lens of William James's "The Principles of Psychology." It clarifies different senses of consciousness and explores James's concept of personal consciousness, particularly how the durational components of a stream of consciousness cohere without spatial location, given James's mind-body dualism. The author argues that continuities of content, especially bodily feelings intrinsic to each component, unify the stream. The diachronic unity of consciousness heavily relies on self-awareness. The paper also addresses inner awareness—immediate awareness of one's own mental occurrences—and questions whether remembering past experiences requires both inner awareness at the time of occurrence and self-awareness.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1995 Thomas Natsoulas
William James's concept of 'ejective consciousness' holds that in altered states, mental events can split off from a person's main stream of consciousness to form a second, equally conscious and personal stream. Unlike nonconscious mental occurrences, which James argues cannot exist because they lack inner awareness, this second stream has its own inner awareness of its basic durational components. The original stream can only know the second stream indirectly, through inference, and the same applies in reverse. James thus distinguishes between split-off conscious streams and the nonconscious mental, which he rejects.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 1995 Thomas Natsoulas
This philosophical article examines William James's concept of "ejective" consciousness from his work The Principles of Psychology. James proposes that during altered states, and possibly at other times, mental occurrences can split off from an individual's primary stream of consciousness, forming a second stream that is equally conscious and personal. While James rejects the existence of nonconscious mental occurrences that lack inner awareness, he accepts that a second stream of consciousness can exist alongside the first. Each stream has inner awareness of its own durational components, but can only have inferential knowledge of the other stream.