My OpenLearn Profile
Personalise your OpenLearn profile, save your favourite content and get recognition for your learning
The consciousness of the human mind has long been a topic of fascination and curiosity amongst writers, artists and psychologists, from Carl Jung and Salvador Dali to Virginia Wolfe and Gertrude Stein. This album explores our understanding of consciousness, and features a discussion on some of psychology's most complex questions: what does it mean to be a conscious human, and what purposes our consciousness serves. This material forms part of The Open University course DD303 Cognitive psychology.
Track 2: What is consciousness?
What does consciousness mean? How artists, writers and scientists understood consciousness in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Read a transcript of this track - you'll need a PDF viewer, such as Adobe's free Adobe Reader
- Download this track from iTunes - you'll need Apple's free iTunes software
- Discover more from The Open University and iTunesU at open.edu/itunes
Tracks in this podcast:
| Track | Title | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cognitive Psychology | A short introduction to this album. Play now Cognitive Psychology |
| 2 | What is consciousness? | What does consciousness mean? How artists, writers and scientists understood consciousness in the 19th and 20th centuries. Play now What is consciousness? |
| 3 | Consciousness: the central psychological question | The difficulties of explaining consciousness scientifically. Play now Consciousness: the central psychological question |
| 4 | The evolution of consciousness | Are animals conscious? Can we produce conscious machines? Play now The evolution of consciousness |
| 5 | Consciousness: a first person experience | Could we programme consciousness into a computer? Are there varying degrees of consciousness? Play now Consciousness: a first person experience |
| 6 | Consciousness and experience | The link between experience, consciousness and language and how it gives us an evolutionary advantage. Play now Consciousness and experience |
| 7 | What is consciousness for? | The purpose of consciousness, and how it governs the imaginative use of our sensory apparatus. Play now What is consciousness for? |
Rate and Review
Rate this course
Review this course
Log into OpenLearn to leave reviews and join in the conversation.
Course reviews