The development of consciousness from affective sources.

摘要

Consciousness remains largely undefined for the sciences of behavior. In its stead, science studies a series of features of behavior, such as sensation, perception, emotion, and cognition. Yet one of the most undeniable features of human experience is our consciousness. Why has science focused on what appear to be components of consciousness, without ever establishing a satisfactory account of the origin, development, and function of consciousness itself?;Arguably, it is the subjective nature of consciousness that has caused its neglect, perhaps due to its apparent inaccessibility to experimental study. But subjectivity, as felt experience, may not be closed off to objective investigation. The thesis will examine in detail a set of biological functions that produce globally felt states as a part of their means of insuring appropriate behavioral actions. Neuroscience describes how the instincts, drives, and emotions elaborate felt states in activating repertoires necessary for survival and for successful functioning in complex environments.;I will argue that these felt states are conserved throughout individual maturation, and that they may continue to serve as important constituents of behavior. By examining data from research on the physiological details of how the felt states arise and become incorporated with the development of other behavioral systems, I will investigate the possibility that subjective awareness unfolds as a dimension based in the felt states. I will consider how language may arise from that matrix, and how its development shapes subjectivity into reflexive consciousness.;The thesis's primary emphasis is on organizing the research data to show how the affective systems produce globally felt states, how they maintain their robustly experiential character as they integrate with the growth of higher systems such as cognition, and how they become the phenomenally salient dimension we recognize as the felt quality of consciousness. The objective of the thesis is to explore data for a model that will eventually permit a developmental account of consciousness that incorporates affective neuroscience and an evolutionary perspective.