Consciousness

Max Velmans is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, and has been involved in consciousness studies for over 40 years. His main research focus is on integrating work on the philosophy, cognitive psychology and neuropsychology of consciousness. He has over 100 publications on this topic including his major work Understanding Consciousness (2000) (now in its second 2009 edition), the co-edited Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (2007) (now in its second 2017 edition), and Towards a Deeper Understanding of Consciousness (2017). He was a co-founder and, from 2004-2006, Chair of the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, and an Indian Council of Philosophical Research National Visiting Professor for 2010-2011.

• Consciousness: Critical Concepts in Edited by Max VelmansVolume I: The Origins of Psychology and the Study of Consciousness General IntroductionVolume 1 Introduction Part 1. Early Theories of Consciousness Aristotle, ‘The Faculties of the Soul, Chapters I, III and III’, in B. Rand (ed.), The Classical Psychologists: Selections Illustrating Psychology from Anaxagorus to Wundt, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912), pp. 45-52. Originally published in Psychology, A Treatise on the Principle of Life, Book II, translated by W. A. Hammond, London, Swan Sonnenshein & Co Ltd., 1902 [384-322 BCE]. René Descartes, Extracts from, The Principles of Philosophy (1644) section XLVIII, the Passions of the Soul (1649) Articles 13, 17, 23., 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, And Seeking Truth in The Sciences, 1637, part V. David Skrbina, ‘Panpsychism in History: An Overview’, in D. Skrbina (ed.), Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009), pp. 1-29. G. Stanley Hall, extract from ‘Gustaf Theodor Fechner, 1801-1887’, in Founders of Modern Psychology (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912), pp. 125-127, 136-139, 151-153. William James, ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’, The Journal of Psychology Philosophy and Scientific Methods, 1904, 1, 18, 477-491. U. T. Place, ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, British Journal of Psychology, 1956, 47, 44–50. George A. Miller, ‘Levels of Awareness’, in Psychology: The Science of Mental Life (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1962), pp. 40-49. Part 2. Establishing Psychology as the Experimental Study of Mind and Consciousness Gustav T. Fechner, ‘The Measurement of Sensation’ and ‘The Fundamental Formula and the Measurement Formula’, Sections VII and XIV in Elements of Psychophysics, 1860/1912, translated by Herbert Sidney Langfeld. Originally published in Benjamin Rand (ed.), The Classical Psychologists (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912). Wilhelm Wundt, Introduction in Principles of Physiological Psychology translated from the fifth German edition (1902), by E. B. Titchener, (Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904), pp. 1-16. William James, ‘The Scope of Psychology’, in The Principles of Psychology, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1890), pp. 1-11. William James, ‘The Methods and Snares of Psychology’, in The Principles of Psychology (London: Macmillan and Co., 1890), pp. 183-194. John, B. Watson, ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It’, Psychological Review, 1913, 20, 158-177. Edward B. Titchener, ‘On "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It"’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1914, 53, 1-17. Edwin G. Boring, ‘A History of Introspection’, Psychological Bulletin, 1953, 50, 3, 169-189. K. Anders Ericsson and Herbert A. Simon, ‘Verbal Reports on Thinking’, in C. Faerch and G. Kasper (eds), Introspective Methods in Second Language Acquisition (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, Ltd., 1987), pp. 24-53. Jerome L. Singer, ‘Experimental Studies of Ongoing Conscious Experience’, in G. R. Bock and J. Marsh (eds), Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness. Ciba Foundation Symposium 174 (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons,1993), pp. 100-116. Part 3: The Relation of the Conscious to the Unconscious Mind (early work) E. W. Kelly, extract from ‘F. W. H. Myers and the Empirical Study of the Mind-body Problem’, in E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelley, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso and B. Greyson (eds), Irreducible Mind: Towards a Psychology for the 21st Century (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007), pp. 47-75. Sigmund, S. Freud, extract from ‘The Unconscious’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 14, (London: Hogarth Press, 1915), pp. 166-179. Carl G. Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche (London: Routledge, 1969[1960]), sections 2-5, pp 91-118; section 7, pp.130-137. Part 4: How to Understand the Interactions between Consciousness and Brain (Early Theories) Thomas H. Huxley, ‘On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and its History’ (Address, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Belfast), reprinted from T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays, Vol. I. Method and Results (London: Macmillan, 1898 [1874]), pp. 199-250. George J. Romanes, ‘Mind and Motion’, (Rede Lecture), in G. J. Romanes, Mind and Motion and Monism (London: Longman Green and Co., 1895 [1885]), pp. 1-38. George A. Mandler, ‘Consciousness: Respectable, Useful, and Probably Necessary’, in R. Solso, (ed.), Information Processing and Cognition: The Loyola Symposium (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1975), pp. 229–54. Part 5. A Return to Basic Principles: To What Does the Term "Consciousness" Refer? Max Velmans, ‘How to Define Consciousness—and How Not to Define Consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16, 5, 2009, 139-156. Volume II: Cognitive and Neuropsychological Approaches to the Study of Consciousness Part 1.IntroductionPart 6. Preconscious, Unconscious and Conscious Processing Howard Shevrin and S. Dickman, ‘The Psychological Unconscious: A Necessary Assumption for All Psychological Theory?’, American Psychologist, 35, 5, 421-434. John F. Kihlstrom, ‘The Cognitive Unconscious’, Science, 1987, 238, 1445-1452. Max Velmans, extracts from ‘Is Human Information Processing Conscious?’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1991, 14, 4, 651-669. Lawrence Weiskrantz, ‘Disconnected Awareness for Detecting, Processing, and Remembering in Neurological Patients’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 1991, 84, 466–470. Philip M. Merikle, Daniel Smilek and John D. Eastwood, ‘Perception without Awareness: Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology’, Cognition, 2001, 79, 115-134. Melvin A. Goodale, ‘Duplex Vision: Separate Cortical Pathways for Conscious Perception and the Control of Action’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2nd edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 648-661. Marc Jeannerod, ‘Consciousness of Action’, in M. Velmans and S. Schneider (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 540-550. Part 7. Attention and Consciousness William James, extracts from ‘Attention’ and ‘The Stream of Thought’ in The Principles of Psychology (London: Macmillan and Co., 1890), pp. 402-405, 283-286; pp. 288-289. Anne M. Treisman, ‘Strategies and Models of Selective Attention’, Psychological Review, 1969, 76, 3, 282-299. Donald A. Norman, ‘Attention’, in Memory and Attention: An Introduction to Human Information Processing (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1979), pp. 7-35. Andreas K. Engel, Pascal Fries, Peter R. Roelfsema, Peter König, Michael Brecht and Wolf Singer, ‘Temporal Binding, Binocular Rivalry, and Consciousness’, Consciousness and Cognition, 1999, 8, 128–151. Christof Koch and Naotsugu Tsuchiya, ‘Attention and Consciousness: Two Distinct Brain Processes’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2006, 11, 1, 16-22. Michael A. Cohen, Patrick Cavanagh, Marvin M. Chun, and Ken Nakayama, ‘The Attentional Requirements of Consciousness’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2012, 16, 411-417. Melinda S. Jensen, Richard Yao, Whitney N. Street and Daniel J. Simons, ‘Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness’, WIREs Cognitive Science, 2011, 2, 529–546. Katharine McGovern and Bernard J. Baars, ‘Cognitive Theories of Consciousness’, in P. D. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch and E. Thompson (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 177-205. Part 8. Learning, Memory and Consciousness Arthur S. Reber, ‘Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1989, 118, 3, 219-235. Endel Tulving, ‘Memory and Consciousness’, Canadian Psychology, 1985, 26, 1-12. Part 9. Visual Imagery Research Allan Paivio, ‘Introduction’, in Imagery and Verbal Processes (New York: Psychology Press, 1979), pp. 1-10. Samuel T. Moulton and Stephen M. Kosslyn, ‘Imagining Predictions: Mental Imagery as Mental Emulation’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2009, 364, 1273-1280. Part 10. Sleep, Dreaming, and Consciousness J. Allan Hobson and Robert W. McCarley, ‘The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream Process’, The American Journal of Psychiatry, 134, 1977, 1335-1348. Rodolpho R. Llinás and Denis Paré, ‘Of Dreaming and Wakefulness’, Neuroscience, 1991, 44, 3, 521-535. Part 11. The Development of Consciousness in Human Infants Colwyn Trevarthen, and Vasudevi Reddy, ‘Consciousness in Infants’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness Second Edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 45-62. Part 12. Consciousness in Non-human Animals Jaak Panksepp, ‘Affective Preclinical Modeling of Psychiatric Disorders: Taking Imbalanced Primal Emotional Feelings of Animals Seriously in Our Search for Novel Antidepressants’, Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2015, 17, 363-379. Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff, ‘Animal Minds, Cognitive Ethology, and Ethics’, The Journal of Ethics, 2007, 11, pp. 299–317. Volume III: Cognitive and Neuropsychological Approaches to the Study of Consciousness Part 2.Introduction Part 13. The Search for the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) Benjamin Libet, ‘Brain Stimulation in the Study of Neuronal Functions for Conscious Sensory Experiences’, Human Neurobiology, 1, 235-242. Francis Crick and Christof Koch, ‘Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness’, Seminars in the Neurosciences, 1990, 2, 263-275. Wolf Singer, ‘The Neuronal Correlate of Consciousness: Unity in Time Rather than Space?’, Neurosciences and the Human Person: New Perspectives on Human Activities, 2013, Scripta Varia 121 (Vatican City: Pontifical Academy of Sciences), pp. 1-17. Stanislas Dehaene and Jean-Pierre Changeux, ‘Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processing’, Neuron, 2011, 70, 200-227. Part 14: Global Disorders of Consciousness Joseph E. Bogen, ‘On the Neurophysiology of Consciousness: An Overview’, Consciousness and Cognition, 1995, 4, 1, 52-62. Part 15: Some Challenges for NCC Research Bjorn Merker, ‘Consciousness without a Cerebral Cortex: A Challenge for Neuroscience and Medicine’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2007, 30, 63–81. Jaan Aru, Talis Bachmann, Wolf Singer and Lucia Melloni, ‘Distilling the Neural Correlates of Consciousness’, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2012, 36, 737–746. Part 16. The Divided Brain R. W. Sperry, ‘Hemisphere Deconnection and Unity in Conscious Awareness’, American Psychologist, 1968, 23, 723–733. R. W. Sperry, M. S. Gazzaniga and J. E. Bogen, ‘Interhemispherical Relationships: The Neocortical Commissures; Syndromes of Hemispherical Disconnection’, in P. I. Vinken and G. W. Bruvn (eds), Handbook of Clinical Neurology (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 273-290. Mary Colvin, Nicole, L. Marinsek, Michael B. Miller and Michael S. Gazzaniga, ‘Split-brain Cases’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Second Edition, (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 634-647. Part 17. The Reintroduction of First-Person Methods Francisco J. Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1996, 3, 4, 330–349. Antoine Lutz and Evan Thompson, ‘Neurophenomenology: Integrating Subjective Experience and Brain Dynamics in the Neuroscience of Consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2003, 10, 9–10, 31–52. Michel Bitbol and Claire Petimentingen, ‘Neurophenomenology and the Micro-phenomenological Interview’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Second Edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 726-739. Donald D. Price and James, J. Barrell, ‘Developing a Science of Human Meanings and Consciousness’, in Inner Experience and Neuroscience: Merging Both Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), pp. 1-30. Donald D. Price and James, J. Barrell, ‘Human Pain and Suffering’, in Inner Experience and Neuroscience: Merging Both Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), pp. 159-193. Donald D. Price and James, J. Barrell, ‘Second Pain: A Model for Explaining a Conscious Experience?’, in Inner Experience and Neuroscience: Merging Both Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), pp. 195-207. Max Velmans, ‘What Consciousness Does’, in Understanding Consciousness Second Edition (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 300-326. Part 18. Free Will Benjamin Libet, ‘Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary Action’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1985, 8, 529-539. Chris Frith, ‘The Psychology of Volition’, Experimental Brain Research, 2013, 229, 3, 289-299. Aaron Schurger, ‘The Neuropsychology of Conscious Volition’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Second Edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 695-710. Volume IV: New Directions: Psychogenesis, Transformations of Consciousness and Non-reductive, Integrative TheoriesIntroductionPart 19. Mental Influences on States of the Body and Brain (Psychogenesis) Anees A. Sheikh, Robert G. Kunnzendorf, Katharina S. Sheikh and Sheila M. Baer, ‘Physiological Consequences of Imagery and Related Approaches’, in A. A. Sheikh (ed.), Healing Images: The Role of Imagination in Health (Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Co., 2003), pp. 27-52. Etzel Cardeña, ‘Hypnos and Psyche: How Hypnosis Has Contributed to the Study of Consciousness’, Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 204, 1, 2, 123–138. Damien G. Finniss, Ted J. Kaptchuk, Franklin Miller and Fabrizio Benedetti, ‘Placebo Effects: Biological, Clinical, and Ethical Advances’, The Lancet, 2010, 375, 9715, 686-695. Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, Lynanne McGuire, Theodore F. Robles and Ronald Glaser, ‘Psychoneuroimmunology: Psychological Influences on Immune Function and Health’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2002, 70, 3, 537–547 Part 20. Altered States of Consciousness Arnold M. Ludwig, ‘Altered States of Consciousness’, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1966, 15, 225-234. Etzel Cardeña, ‘Altering Consciousness: Setting up the Stage’, in E. Cardeña and M. Winkelman (eds), Altering Consciousness: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Volume I. History, Culture, and the Humanities (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), pp. 1-21. Frank Larøi, et al., ‘Culture and Hallucinations: Overview and Future Directions’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2014, 40, suppl. no. 4, S213–S220. Part 21. Studies of the Nature and Effects of Meditation Robert Keith Wallace, Herbert Benson and Archie F. Wilson, ‘A Wakeful Hypometabolic Physiologic State’, American Journal of Physiology, 1971, 221, 3, 795-799. Jon Kabat-Zinn, ‘An Outpatient Program in Behavioral Medicine for Chronic Pain Patients Based on the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation: Theoretical Considerations and Preliminary Results’, General Hospital Psychiatry, 1982, 4, 1, 33-47. Eugene Taylor, ‘Introduction’, in M. Murphy, S. Donovan and E. Taylor, The Physical and Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Review of Contemporary Research (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1997), pp. 1-23. Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne and Richard, J. Davidson, ‘Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation’, Trends in Cognitive Science, 2008, 12, 4, 163–169. Shiang-Ling Keng, Moria J. Smoski and Clive J. Robins, ‘Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health: A Review of Empirical Studies’, Clinical Psychology Review, 2011, 31, 6, 1041-1056. Part 22. Mystical Experiences William James, extracts from ‘Lectures XVI and XVII on Mysticism’, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (N. Y.: Longmans Green & Co., 1902), pp. 379-402, 422-428. M. Wulff, ‘Mystical Experiences’, in E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn and S. Krippner (eds), Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, Second Edition, (Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2014), pp. 369-408. Part 23. The Use of Drugs in the Transformation of Consciousness Albert Hoffman, ‘How LSD Originated’, ‘The Use of LSD in Psychiatry’, and ‘LSD Experience and Reality’, in LSD - My Problem Child’ trans. by Jonathan Ott, (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980), pp. 5-15, 21-29, 96-102. R. R. Griffiths, W. A. Richards, U. McCann and R. Jesse, ‘Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance’, Psychopharmacology, 2006, 187, 268–283. Robin L. Carhart-Harris, et al., ‘Neural Correlates of the LSD Experience Revealed by Multimodal Neuroimaging’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016, 113, 17, 4853-4858. David Presti, ‘Altered States of Consciousness: Drug-induced States’, in S. Schneider and M. Velmans (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, 2nd edition (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 171-186. Part 24. Non-reductive, Integrative Theories of Consciousness Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch, ‘Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2015, 370, 1668. Mark Solms, ‘"The Unconscious" in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: An Integrated Approach to the Cognitive Unconscious’, in M. Leuzinger-Bohleber, S. Arnold and M. Solms, (eds), The Unconscious: A Bridge between Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience, (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 16-35. Edward F. Kelley, ‘Parapsychology in Context: The Big Picture’, in E. Cardena, J. Palmer and D. Marcusson-Clavertz (eds), Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015), pp. 30-41. Max Velmans, ‘Reflexive Monism: Psychophysical Relations Among Mind, Matter and Consciousness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 19, 9-10, 143-165.Index