Five Factors of Consciousness

consciousness is
• subjective and private, self-contained and insulated from intrusion by any other.
• constantly changing, once experienced, an experience cannot be repeated in exactly the same manner
• continuous,
• noetic (it has the function of knowing, intentionality, content)
• characterized by selective attention

In The Principles of Psychology (1890), proposed that consciousness functions in an active, purposeful way to relate and organize thoughts, giving them a stream-like continuity within “the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible." Experience is established by psychological facts that make their appearance as an undifferentiated stream of consciousness. The mind makes a distinction between subject and object, sensations and concepts. out of the necessity of organizing the confused facts of experience (functionalism). Hence their value is not absolute but relative to their utility that is their practical consequences (Pragmatism).
James argued that consciousness arose via the principles of evolution, existing throughout the animal kingdom in varying degrees of complexity.
Consciousness is active and a unity. It is selective and teleological. It carves out man's world. The will, by making a strong idea focal to the exclusion of others, fills the mind and prepares for action. The intellect isolates and integrates "things," imputes reality to them, through the emotional and active life, and conceives them pragmatically. The unity of consciousness is thorough connectedness, a flowing stream, "substantive" parts shading into one another through the "transitive" parts, surrounded by a "fringe" or "feeling of tendency."
"The pragmatic method," says James, "tries to interpret each notion (concept) by tracing its respective practical consequences."
James discovered besides, around and beneath the conscious mind, a darkened psychical zone, the zone of the subconscious, in which -- he believed -- the highest spiritual values, such as genius, sanctity and so forth, were formed, and contact was established with the absolute.
James considered pragmatism to be both a method for analyzing philosophic problems and a theory of truth. He also saw it as an extension of the empiricist attitude in that it turned away from abstract theory and absolute principles toward concrete facts, actions, and relative principles. Like Rene Descates, James concept of consciousness is subjective and introspective.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator