The Conscious Is the Evidence of Unconscious
Our understanding of our own consciousness lies largely in analyzing the experiences after they happen. We see evidence of the unconscious, moment by moment, determining our conscious state.
Thinking: A Fantasy of Emotion and Prediction
We talk stimulus and response, but most of our lives are spent without anything terribly stimulating going on. In these moments, our thoughts are the salient stimuli; ideas are the new perceptions. This opens up a whole new dynamic experience for psychology to talk about.
The Stream of Consciousness and Its Tributaries: Blending Memory and Presence
Although our stream of consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the present, its directions are determined a great deal by the past. Our stream of consciousness depends upon…
Being in the Situation: Creating a Feeling of Context in Working Memory
As discussed before, long-term memory sets down pathways by strengthening some connections and inhibiting others. We create many concepts by the bundling of active neural tracts. We have a somewhat…
Interpreting the Present: The Basic Task of Long-Term Memory
It is always perplexing to comprehend the ability of the human brain, but it may be even more shocking to realize that it must do all this work in real…
The Illusion of Pure Sensation and Reality of Interpretation
Some people claim to mistrust their senses, calling it all an illusion with Cartesian enthusiasm. You may have thought these people were a little crazy. Or you may have agreed…
Affect Is the Engine of Perception
I have previously written about how attention functions to direct senses to novel or unpredictable things that we may need to react to. Attention focuses on a section of the…
Learning and Overlooking: Attention’s Role in Creating Our Unconscious Perceptions
In this media-based era, attention has been something that we have struggled to control. With all the powerful and provocative imagery of overly convenient media and entertainment, it is no…
Opening Subjectivity: Consciousness as the Relationship Between Feeling and Perceiving
What is Consciousness? Our whole means of existence is the ability to perceive and navigate through the real world, thus enabling survival and physical existence through evolutionary time. Humans never…
Projecting Attention: Discovering How We See the World by Creating It
Attention, like action, can follow two different modes. Sometimes our attention is reactive, and sometimes our attention is searching for something. When we automatically react to a stimulus, our attention…