Approaching Consciousness

The consciousness is the awareness of the mind of itself and the world around it - this is
the only solid piece of information we have about consciousness. There is no actual science
behind it yet, no explanation for it, only theories to be made and disproved. For many years,
psychologists have ignored the concept, but recently have begun to try and tackle the task of
locating and explaining consciousness using scientific analysis. Meanwhile, philosophers
throughout the centuries have discussed and theorized about consciousness, playing around with
certain ideas using logic and modus ponens arguments. A comparative analysis of Berings and
Shackelfords psychology article "The Causal Role of Consciousness: A Conceptual Addendum
to Human Evolutionary Psychology" and Balabans philosophy book Subject and Consciousness
shows that psychologys disciplinary approach of drawing evolutionary evidence from secondary
sources is more effective at talking about consciousness than philosophys disciplinary approach
of building off the theories of others, because it provides a solid ground for a concept with an
abstract nature.
The academic disciplinary of psychology uses a format that is very easy to follow when
discussing a complicated topic such as the consciousness. The article begins with an abstract that
the authors use to give a summary about the paper starting with an argument they make about
Darwinian algorithms and then go on to give examples and significance to their argument.
They finish it up by stating the main point of the paper. Following the abstract, the paper is
divided into sections with headers, each section leading to more complicated ideas as the paper
progresses. These ideas start with comparing humans to chimpanzees and end with suicide and
intentionality. The author uses each different section as a different piece of evidence that builds
and supports his argument. With this format, the authors are able to lay out all of their different

points in a manner that is easy to follow. It also makes it easy to find certain pieces of evidence
or ideas that pertain to certain subtopics within the paper. This is very important when focusing
on the idea of the consciousness because it is a subject that is still being studied and that
encompasses many different ideas and subtopics.
While the psychological approach is simple and easy to follow, the philosophical
approach can be a little more confusing. Balabans book starts with a short introduction that
plainly states the authors main intentions and arguments. The book is then divided into three
parts, each with three or four chapters. This is because the author takes more time to provide
background information on the philosophy and history of consciousness while still integrating
their ideas. This format makes it more difficult to understand what consciousness is because one
has to sift through the history and philosophical ideas to find any sort of definition. It is very
difficult to read blindly about a topic being discussed academically when one does not know the
basic definition of the topic at hand. In general, it is harder to pinpoint certain ideas or arguments
that the author is making in philosophy because it is intertwined with lots of other information
necessary to the chapters. This may be because it is a discipline under the format of arts and
humanities while psychology is a social science, making it harder for the philosophy author to
inject definitions and evidence like in the psychology article. For this reason, the academic
discipline of philosophy is not as effective as psychology in terms of their formats when
discussing consciousness.
The psychological approach is also more effective in discussing consciousness when
comparing the type of language being used. The authors use an extensive vocabulary that may
make the reading more challenging but also a lot clearer. This is because the authors wrote the
paper with their field in mind, expecting readers to know certain terms. For example, the authors

write about the ideas of other scientists on comparing primates to humans. Aside from brief
mention of the social adaptiveness and predictive and explanatory power of this novel
representational system, each fails to operationalize the actual mechanisms of selection that have
resulted in adaptive human behaviors rooted either directly or indirectly in the system (Bering
and Shackelford). As you can see, this sentence would need to be broken down to be understood
by those without experience in psychology. In the example, the authors use the term
operationalize which is a psychological term not explained in the reading. The authors assume
that the readers would know the word is referring to the process by which researchers set out to
measure something that cannot be directly measured. Although these unknown vocabulary words
make the reading more challenging, it also makes the discipline more effective. By using precise
terminology, the author ensures that the meaning intended will not be misconstrued. This, along
with the fact that the paper is written in the passive voice, makes the paper appear more credible
and professional. The passive voice helps the authors maintain their objectivity, an important
aspect in this field because without it the paper could be deemed biased and unreliable. If the
paper were deemed unreliable it would put into question all the evidence being displayed about
the consciousness. This would in turn make the paper ineffective because one wouldnt be able to
tell which evidence is reliable or not since there is not much evidence about the consciousness to
begin with. Therefore, the use of the first person is very important when considering the type of
language being used to describe the consciousness. The extensive vocabulary used in this
academic discipline, along with the use of the first person, makes psychology a more effective
approach to consciousness because it makes a topic that can be confusing and difficult to
understand appear very clean and precise as well as reliable.

On the other hand, the language used in the philosophical approach can make
understanding the topic of consciousness more difficult. Although the author appears to have
written the book with a large variety of readers in mind, he still for the most part uses
complicated philosophical language to explain his ideas. The author not only uses a large
vocabulary; he also asks many rhetorical questions as seen in the following example. But what
does all knowing is consciousness of knowing really mean? It means that an intentional act,
besides its being conscious about its content, is conscious about its being an intentional act. (13)
The amount of extra words and embellishments the author uses in his rhetorical questions can
make reading the book very confusing. It can also make it very difficult to extract actual
information from the text. Another factor that contributes to this is the authors use of the first
person. When writing about his theories, the author tends to use the first person and active voice.
For example, At this point I should remark that I take for granted that no analysis of
consciousness can succeed without assuming the existence of actual unconscious content. (5).
The usage of I and the way the author speaks about himself taking things for granted gives the
writing a more personal, conversational feeling. It is almost as if the author is personally
discussing his ideas with the reader out loud. By doing this, the author creates the need for the
reader to sift through the reading for information as if they were sifting through an actual
conversation. In general, the type of language the author uses makes the philosophy books
approach to the topic of consciousness far less direct and concise with its information than the
psychology articles approach.
Finally, the academic disciplinary of psychologys use of arguments and evidence is more
effective when discussing the topic of consciousness because of its variety. In the article, Bering
and Shackelford use many different examples to show correlations between the evidence in past

studies and the recent development of consciousness to show that it is something we have
developed through evolutionary adaptations. They do this by relying heavily on a variety of
secondary sources and by using many different types of evidence. The authors use many
different kinds of examples to show that their argument is feasible when looked at from many
different perspectives. They use evidence such as literary text references, quotes, and results
from previous studies. They then take this evidence and show that each piece, each topic
touched, relates to the question at hand. For example, the authors reference Dostoyevskys book
The Brothers Karamazov about a man who kills a woman out of jealousy, confesses it to a
priest, and then considers killing the priest he has confessed to because it is unbearable for him to
know the priest is alive and knowing. The authors analyze this literary text and use it to support
their thesis. This fictional scenario is useful insofar as it allows us to distinguish between the
low-level mechanisms driving conspecific killing behavior that are deeply embedded in our
primate ancestry, on the one hand, and the evolutionarily novel, high-level mechanisms
promoting new classes of adaptive homicidal behaviors characteristic only of humans, on the
other hand (Bering and Shackelford). This application of psychology to a literary text from a
different field shows that in the academic field of psychology, evidence can come from a
multitude of sources. This is very important when studying the consciousness because it is
something that is used in every occasion, not just in psychology related studies. In addition, since
there is not much evidence about the consciousness it is important to be able to take evidence
from a variety of sources. The type of evidence the authors use and the way they use it to support
their arguments makes the psychological approach to the consciousness overall more effective.
The philosophy book uses modus ponens arguments and a smaller variety of evidence to
support them. Modus ponens arguments are those that use the concept of if a, then b. These as

well as theoretical questions are heavily used in the philosophical disciplinary approach creating
a sense at times that the argument the author is making is going in circles. For example, when
writing on the topic of proving unconsciousness exists because one is able to feel the absence of
consciousness the author says And the absence of something which is not present is felt, then it
is in some sense present. But in saying that it is present in some sense I am adding nothing nor
making anything clear. In what sense, then, is the absent present? (6). As you can see, in this
example the author starts by providing the readers with an idea only to undermine it and make
the reader think more in depth. This contrasts greatly with the psychology article that simply
states the facts and hard evidence that directly support the thesis. Also, the philosophical
approach relies heavily on the authors ability to directly build off of other philosophers theories.
Since there is little physical evidence in the field of philosophy, the type of evidence that can be
used is basically restricted to references and quotes from other philosophers. This creates a need
for the reader to find something solid to hold on to since there is no solid scientific background
information or facts that will help the reader understand, only what the author has observed and
speculated from the ideas of others. For example, the author clearly states, This chapter as well
as Chapter 7 is devoted to a consideration of Hegels approach (65). In other words, two out of
the ten chapters this book consists of are dedicated to the ideas of another philosopher. This
shows to what extent the philosophical approach bases its arguments off of the ideas of others
with no hard evidence to support his theory on the existence and definition of consciousness. The
types of arguments and evidence used in this philosophy book to support the authors thesis in
comparison to those used in the psychology article seem less solid and are generally more
difficult for the reader to understand, something that can get very confusing when talking about
consciousness.

In conclusion, the academic disciplinary of psychology has a format, language, and

evidence that is more effective when approaching the topic of consciousness than philosophy. It
uses a format and language that is easier to follow than the philosophy book. This is because
whereas philosophy creates theories based off of the words of others, psychology uses a larger
variety of more reliable sources. Also, the psychological approach although it has terms that are
difficult for the average reader to understand, is easier to follow along and make sense of how
the arguments support the thesis. On the other hand, the philosophical approach can get
confusing and really makes the readers think what exactly it is they are reading. Finally, the
psychological approach uses many different kinds of evidence from different sources whereas
the philosophical approach only uses philosophical sources, giving the psychological approach
an upper hand when producing solid arguments. Overall, the psychological approach is more
effective than the philosophical one when approaching the topic of consciousness due to the
strong support it provides for its arguments and its ability to be succinct and direct, both
important aspects when researching an abstract topic like consciousness.

Works Cited

Balaban, Oded. Subject and Consciousness. Savage: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Inc, 1990. Print.

Bering, Jesse M., and Todd K. Shackelford. "The Causal Role of Consciousness: A
Conceptual Addendum to Human Evolutionary Psychology." Review of General
Psychology 8.4 (2004): 227-48. Web.