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A Thinking Consciousness

24 November, 2015 - 11:22
Available under Creative Commons-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/e9870125-e711-4b95-b8a1-46ba7f0fbf48@19.1

Levels of thinking is going to be related to consciousness. If people have a hierarchy of thought and feeling, some of that is going to be conscious at different times.

Some belief someone has formed in the past or near-present could be influencing their consciousness. That would be different from an attitude influencing how someone is thinking, or their 'consciousness'.

Here I am defining consciousness as someones current state of thinking and feeling. At any moment, different beliefs, attitudes, ideas, emotions, drives, feelings etc could be influence your current state of feeling and thinking (your 'consciousness').

Since some of the ideas that people have are going to be subjective, they might be ideas that make the person more emotional. Or an idea could simply use more unconscious emotional processes, but not make the person feel any more (be more emotional) than they currently are.

Philosophers have talked about an 'inner sense' or how consciousness feels to someone. The question I want to bring up is - which mental processes influence our consciousness and in what way do they do so?

How does a belief someone has influence what they are thinking or how they are thinking? Similarly, what does having an attitude do to someones thoughts, 'thinking' or consciousness?

When you are talking to someone else, you could have an 'attitude' that they are worthless, be thinking that they are worthless and not have an attitude about it, etc.

So, obviously, attitudes are influenced by beliefs and emotions (thought and feeling).