According to the World Almanac (2000), there is no agreed-upon definition of consciousness. Consciousness has been described as sensations, thoughts, or feelings. Historically consciousness has been discussed in different ways.
In the 17th century, the French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes, asked, AIs the mind, or consciousness, independent of matter? Is consciousness extended (physical) or unextended (nonphysical)? Is consciousness determinative, or is it determined (p. 1)?@
English philosophers such as John Locke thought of consciousness as being associated with physical sensations which provided information.
In 1876, Wilhelm Max Wundt, a German psychologist studied the structure of consciousness. He included feelings, images, memory, attention, duration and movement within his theory. He focused on a central methodology which was introspection. His subjects reported on their own consciousness.
At Cornell University, Edward Bradford Titchener, an American psychologist, developed the introspective approach. Introspective self-reports helped to detail his structure of the mind from which he developed a structuralism approach to consciousness. For example, Ataste was >dimensionalized= into four basic categories: sweet, sour, salt and bitter (p.2).@
By the 1920's consciousness was removed from psychological research for 50 years when behaviorism captured the field of psychology.
By the late 1950's the subject of consciousness returned. ATechniques relating to altered states of consciousness, sleep and dreams, meditation, biofeedback, hypnosis and drug-induced states surfaced (p.2).@
Rapid eye movement was found to be a physiological indicator of the dream state. At 90 minute intervals, the eyes of sleepers were observed to move rapidly. Brain wave patterns of these sleepers found a pattern resembling the waking state. When awakened during these periods of rapid eye movement, the ...