Impact of Technology on Consciousness - Coursework Example

Technology has become intrinsic part of human consciousness. To rationalize the working of conscious and unconscious thoughts of a man and co-relate them with his subsequent actions and reactions can be broadly explained through cognitive science. The theory of cognition, thereby, tries to explain why and how the events take place and subsequent pattern of behaviour of man under certain condition involving emotional and metaphysical reaction. The role of brain and conscious and unconscious activities of the mind are seen to be the responsible for the general behaviour of man. The cognitive theory, therefore, defines brain and the mind as two independent entities that work in tandem to produce actions and reactions of man, to an event. The need to know the working of mind becomes all the more important because of the fact that all our intentional and non intentional decisions and emotive expressions have a definite voluntary and involuntary actions associated with them. Hence our state of mental causation results in some form of physical actions. In other words, our beliefs and desires are linked with some definite actions that are designed to rearrange the physical aspects of our surrounding through the movements of our body parts which is caused by the directives of the mind. Hence, the concept of mental causation becomes relevant because of the sheer physicalitism of the world, surrounding us. “Physicalists, according to Jones, means people who believe that “this world of ours is only physical” (Jones, 2006). Since technology has become embedded into our system of ‘physicality’, the impact of technology on our consciousness can be explained through the impact of communication, information or other technology on our consciousness. Descartes treated body and mind of a man separately. He believed that body is inanimate object that acts only at the behest of the mind. It is also known as Cartesian dualism. He says that one cannot find out the nature of physical things without the participation of ‘intelligence’ which instead of ‘seeing’ judges them do be so. The mind therefore understands and recognizes other objects like technology because of its inherent ability to represent complex structures rather than relying on sensation and imagination (Descartes, 1901). The theory of dualism, though controversial at that time, was much appreciated and even corroborated by the later philosophers. Kim, through his theory of causal closure and overdetermination, has tried to correlate mind and body. The overdetermination hints at causes that might constitute non physical causal effects. It can be explained in the following example. If, one wishes to interact with one’s friend, he can make use of a transport and meet the person. But if at the same time, he would just relax and use communicating device like telephone, process of interacting with his friend would be expedited. Either way, one consciously and unconsciously, uses technology. According to Kim, mental causation is real for many reasons. The foremost being, our mental state evolves into causal effects resulting in physical actions and reactions. The events that take place around us like eating for survival to construction and destruction of objects and things. The second is that our perception needs the causation of “perceptual experiences and beliefs by objects and events around us”(Jaegwon, 2005). The third is the Reasoning through which causation of new beliefs and knowledge arises from the existing ones. The fourth is the memory that stores the knowledge acquired through various causal effects which is used as and when required. Perception of an object and imagination of the same, have been classified as two different activities of the brain because where perception has been linked with the sensory organs, imagination can cross the limitation of the sensation and visualise the object beyond the realm of its physical reality. Perception is interpretation and understanding of the object reality and its accuracy depends on the cognitive processing and subsequent attention span of the memory. According to experts cognitive processing is selective as well as limited and hence same object is perceived differently by different people. It may also be able to explain the reason that technology has not only become an integral part of human life but it may be one of the factors responsible for advancement in science and technology. Another major factor that plays a major role in the manipulation of sensation and emotional actions is memory. Memory or the working memory, as it is better known is actually a process of storing and retention of information sent by sensory organs which is then interpreted as per the requirements of the events. It is one of the main functions of the brain which is used on a daily basis and the more it is used and manipulated, the stronger it becomes in terms of retention of information for a longer time and comprehension of the same. Use of technology has become embedded into our brain which is reflected in our daily use of technology. Although, we react as per the perception of the event, it is equally true that our reactions are also influenced by the manipulations of the information that are retained in the memory of the brain. The ‘selective memory’ ensures that part of information is not included in the reaction to an event. Hence our judgement of events is largely dependent on the memory that stores information about that event. According to cognitive theory, conscious and unconscious working of our mind is strongly co-related with our experience of the object reality. Our conscious mind understands and interprets the sensations according to the partial or total recall of the events. On the other hand, sub conscious mind may or may not interpret the event with the same degree of accuracy. Activities of the subconscious mind are often visible in our dream sequences. They also become intrinsically involved in actions that require automatic response to a set of events which are repeated. In an article, ‘Imagery, creativity and Emergent Structure’ is written by Ronald A. Finke who explores the consciousness of human mind to decipher the intricacies of creative imagination and the emergent properties of mental images that are formed with or without the influence of external factors. The article has thrown light on the various models and theories of creative cognition. The author has also tried to delve into the mysteries of the consciousness of the human mind in order to provide a relatively coherent explanation for its vast capacity for creative imagery and mental images within the given parameters of controlled environment and spontaneous responses. The article discusses three main areas which directly impact creative cognition; creative imagery based on the methods of creative cognition, differentiate between creative imagery under conscious and deliberate controlled environment and imagery that reflects absence of control and the third being the two aspects of creative imagery; intentional and structured and spontaneous and unstructured. According to the author, mental imagery has developed into a distinct subject of research in psychology and cognitive science. The ‘studies have helped to establish that imagery is functionally distinct from other internal processes and that mental images can be distinguished from other forms of mental representation’(Finke, 1989; Kosslyn, 1994). It is a fact that the mind is capable of retrieving images from recess even if no conscious effort was made to commit them to memory. Hence, it can be safely stated that even during the process of intentional recall of an image in some specific format, the mind can generate and explore various other properties of the same image. The inventions of tech gadgets are the by-product of this theory. It is equally true that given a set of perceptual items or forms as pre-inventive objects, the mind can conjure a host of imaginative inventions that can be interpreted in as many ways as possible. If the object category is not defined, the spontaneity of creative imagery is more inventive. The theory of creative cognition has widespread support of social scientists from psychology and cognition science. The relevance of creative imagery in the wider context of consciousness of human mind seems to have become the mainstay of all new emerging structural inventiveness. The inherent competency of the mind to retrieve and also to memorise and store information and imageries, without any conscious effort, has now being recognized as a potent tool for inventiveness in all areas of human interest. This is the greatest strength of creative imagination and mental images that the human consciousness can produce voluntarily or involuntarily. Very interesting is the fact that modern philosophical thinking also tries to explain the theory of cognition thereby trying to explain why and how the events take place and subsequent pattern of behaviour of man under certain condition involving emotional and metaphysical reaction. Philosophy can be broadly defined as an attempt to explain the sequence of events or happenings around us that directly or indirectly influence our actions and reactions in our daily life. It tries to interpret everything and anything in the wider empirical consideration of our experiences of conscious and unconscious manifestations of our being. It therefore, can be said that each of us, follow a definite philosophy which guides our actions and our efforts to gain knowledge and use of technology is but a statement of our lifestyle. Philosophy, with its wide ranging implications and its inherent tendency of examination and evaluation of ideas and events, is amalgamation of all areas of learning and encompasses all fields of social sciences. “Philosophy is the most inclusive of all branches of learning, and acts as a touchstone to all other aspects of human knowledge” (Sw. Krishnanand). Where all other branches of social sciences like biology, physics, sociology, history etc., work towards explaining and researching subjects and areas that come within its precinct, philosophy and philosophical thoughts promote learning through the application of various fields of social science as well as explaining through the metaphysical aspect of the experiences and events. The technology, therefore, becomes intrinsic part of human interaction that facilitates our action to reach its desired conclusion. Again, Kim has very succinctly expounded on the theory of physical closure. He says that “physical world constitutes a causally closed domain”(Jaegwon). If a physical event is caused at a particular place by a particular causal effect, then the event is confined to that causal effect and at that place and it cannot have any effect beyond that domain. It therefore, follows that one does not have to go outside the predetermined physical domain to find the causal explanation of the physical event. All physical events or effects have physical causes, thus conforming to the concept of ‘physicalist’s world’. Jaegwon Kim defines modern Physicalism as “the idea that all things that exist in this world are bits of matter and structures aggregated out of bits of matter, all behaving in accordance with laws of physics, and that any phenomena of the world can be physically explained if it can be explained at all” (Kim). It therefore, can be said that the cognitive reality of the being owes its existence to the physical realities of the outside objects and events. Our intentions comprise of our beliefs and desires that are directly correlated with actions that happen, thereafter. The huge implications of technology in human life is because the human mind recognises the reality of the mental causation. The human knowledge presupposes the causal effect of our intentions and decisions and through our physical body parts, we are able to execute or experience our beliefs and desires. Reference Descartes, Rene. Translated by Veitch, John. (1901). Meditations on First Philosophy. Available from: [Accessed 14 November 2008]. Finke, R. A. (1989). Principles of mental imagery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Finke, R. A., Ward, T. M., & Smith, S. M. (1992). Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jones, Kile. The Causal Closure of Physics: An Explanation and Critique. Available from: [Accessed 14 November 2008]. Kosslyn, S. M. (1994). Image and brain: The resolution of the imagery debate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kim, Jaegwon. (2205). Physicalism or Something Near Enough. Princeton University Press. New Jersey. pp 149-150. Swami Krishnanand. Philosophy of Life. Divine Life Society. India. Available from: [Accessed 14 November 2008]. Read More