JITOTM14: Coralling Consciousness

Would you rather be rich, or thin? These days it seems like most people want to be both. But consciousness, by contrast, seems to always be one or the other; at least, that's what most theorists suggest.

There are two main ways of thinking about consciousness: either it's rich - that is, replete with sensation or experience - or it's thin, and there's really only a trickle of awareness going on in the mind at a given moment. An imaginative researcher by the name of Eric Schwitzgebel set about trying to determine the nature of conscious experience, summing up his intriguing findings in a weighty paper with an even weightier title.

"Do You Have Constant Tactile Experience of Your Feet in Your Shoes? Or Is Experience Limited to What's in Attention?" These are the questions Schwitzgebel set about to answer, in a clever but challenging attempt to seperate rich, from thin consciousness. Is it any surprise that his results show both rich, and thin experiences? If we've learned anything about consciousness so far... maybe not.

Take a walk through the works of a first-rate consciousness researcher in this week's episode of Jay Ingram's Theatre of the Mind, "Coralling Consciousness."

Behind the curtain

• Eric Schwitzgebel's home page is square one for all kinds of cool thinking about thinking.
  
  
• Jay mentioned Susan Blackmore, whose website is just the tip of the iceberg...
  
  
• We produced two items on Schwitzgebel's work with Daily Planet on Discovery Channel Canada. One was about echolocation: Sensing Our Surroundings. The other was called Dreaming In Black & White
  
  
• The Song of the Week is actually a tune (no words!) It's "She Kicks Up Her Heels" by Anne Lindsay

We're more thin than rich... but you can enrich our lives with your comments... leave them here on the site or drop us an email.
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