33 papers in the library · 70 citations · publishing 1984-2006
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science January 15, 2006 Thomas Natsoulas
Abstract Except for time‐gaps, when the stream comes to a stop and then starts again, a stream of consciousness is constituted, from the Jamesian perspective, of tightly adjacent states of consciousness occurring very briefly one at a time. Unless a second such stream flows in the individual simultaneously, his or her conscious mental life at any instant consists entirely of one integral state...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2005 Thomas Natsoulas
I continue to address W. James's intentions in his article of 1904 titled “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” (DCE), and to raise critical questions concerning the direction his theory takes after The Principles of Psychology. Here, as in the preceding article of this series, I closely examine his article for what it tells us concerning his new conception of the stream of consciousness. James holds...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 2003 Thomas Natsoulas
I address W. James's intentions in “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” (DCE), and raise critical questions about the direction his theory takes after The Principles of Psychology. My article starts with consideration of a few of James's later statements on what he was trying to do in DCE, and then I closely examine his article for what it tells us concerning his new conception of the consciousness...
Consciousness & Emotion September 5, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
What are the states of consciousness in themselves, those pulses of mentality that follow one upon another in tight succession and constitute the stream of consciousness? William James conceives of each of them as being, typically, a complex unitary awareness that instantiates many features and takes a multiplicity of objects. In contrast, Brian O’Shaughnessy claims that the basic durational...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
This article, published in two parts, is propaedeutic to a consideration next of Weiskrantz's conception of consciousness from a perspective bequeathed to us by James more than a century ago. Weiskrantz has argued in support of a general account of awareness that resembles the “Intellectualist” notion of mind against which James strongly objected. Weiskrantz mainly addressed the question of...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
Weiskrantz's recent account of awareness is considered from a perspective that James bequeathed us. In opposition to the Intellectualists, James asks why a pure ego wielding purely conceptualizing acts is needed to give us awareness of relations and universals, inter alia. In opposition to Weiskrantz's Intellectualism, I ask how a commentary system, which has at its disposal only conceptual...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
This two-part article is propaedeutic to considering subsequently Weiskrantz's “commentary” conception of consciousness: from the perspective that James bequeathed to us more than a century ago. Weiskrantz has sought to render plausible a general account of awareness that resembles the “Intellectualist” notion of mind to which James had objected in The Principles. Whereas the central problem he...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 2002 Thomas Natsoulas
James presented a number of compelling arguments against those theorists whom he called the “Intellectualists”: a) for holding that mental states of the mundane Jamesian qualitative kind cannot provide us with our awareness of relations; and b) for introducing purely conceptualizing mental acts to do the job from on high. In his classic account of mental life, James found no use for purely...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 2001 Thomas Natsoulas
James distinguished the states of consciousness that successively constitute a stream of consciousness from how they appear to inner awareness. For one thing, the stream has a discrete temporal structure whereas its basic durational components inwardly seem continuous, each with the next one: partly because the stream never abruptly changes in all of the features of its content. States of...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 2001 Thomas Natsoulas
The feeling aspect that, according to James, every state of consciousness possesses—what is it and what is its function? From a previous article, I continue here an effort to spell out how the feeling aspect and a cognitive aspect—which, too, was proposed to characterize all pulses of mentality—belong together to a single integral whole. Every state of consciousness is both a feeling and a...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 2000 Thomas Natsoulas
Blindsight research provides an opportunity to place James's account of consciousness in an empirical context that is attracting much comment from psychologists. Recently, I briefly indicated some lines along which the neurological phenomenon of blindsight—which results from visual-cortical lesions—is interpretable in keeping with James's conception of the stream in The Principles of...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 1999 Thomas Natsoulas
This article develops the concluding section of a previous article of mine, which briefly contrasted William James's views on consciousness in The Principles with those of Susanne K. Langer in her own magnum opus. This comparative approach allows me to bring out vividly the fact that James's discussion of consciousness seeks to express a non-egological conception of the subject matter. James...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 1999 Thomas Natsoulas
I continue to pursue an understanding of the state-appropriative acts, which are introduced in the immediately preceding article of the present series. I inquire here into James's concept of appropriation, which refers to one of the main functions that the state-appropriative acts are proposed uniquely to perform. These states of consciousness turn around, so to speak, upon the stream itself,...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1998 Thomas Natsoulas
From within the stream of consciousness, according to William James, there take place very frequently acts of “appropriation” to oneself of other basic durational components of the stream. Some components are thus “owned,” but some are “disowned”; also, “assent” is bestowed on the contents of some states of consciousness, whereas others may be rejected as false or unacceptable. At one point,...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 1998 Thomas Natsoulas
By examining work published in this Journal, I bring present-day issues to bear on my ongoing exploration of William James's stream of consciousness. How do knowledgeable psychological scientists demonstrate or acknowledge the relevance to their own work of their illustrious predecessor's introspectively grounded theses and arguments? In installments number XV, XVI, and XVII of the present...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 1998 Thomas Natsoulas
By addressing work on consciousness that has been published in this journal, I bring contemporary material to bear on my ongoing exploration of William James's stream. How do psychologists of the present day demonstrate or acknowledge the relevance of their great predecessor's introspectively grounded theses and arguments to their own work? I am considering the first fifteen volumes of...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1997 Thomas Natsoulas
Addressing work on consciousness published in this Journal allows me to bring relevant present-day material to bear on my ongoing exploration of James's stream. Instead of, as before, making use of an author's findings or ideas to improve our understanding of James's stream, I inquire into what each author has explicitly drawn from James's work in his or her article. I consider all fifteen...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality September 1, 1997 Thomas Natsoulas
The present installment in this series of articles continues in consideration of the role that bodily self-awareness plays in the very structure of the basic durational components constituting William James's stream of consciousness. The focus here is dual, on both the prominent phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch's account of this role and on James's account. Critically addressed is Gurwitsch's...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 1997 Thomas Natsoulas
According to William James, bodily self-awareness (bodily feeling) is pervasive throughout the stream of consciousness; such awareness is included in each and every pulse of mentality that makes up the stream of consciousness. This installment of the present series of articles begins to consider the role that bodily self-awareness plays in the very structure of the basic durational components...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1996 Thomas Natsoulas
Consciousness and self-awareness—how are they mutually related? This contribution to the present series of articles begins to consider replies to this question from the Jamesian perspective of The Principles. First, several relevant senses of consciousness are made explicit. Then, I give attention to James's notion of personal consciousness: How do the basic durational components of a stream of...
Imagination Cognition and Personality September 1, 1996 Thomas Natsoulas 9 citations
In this two-part article, I discuss William James's account of inner awareness as it is expressed in The Principles of Psychology. Inner awareness is the immediate awareness which we all have of some of our own mental-occurrence instances. An essential part of what it is for a mental-occurrence instance to be conscious, or to be a state of consciousness, is an actual or potential immediate...
Imagination Cognition and Personality June 1, 1996 Thomas Natsoulas 16 citations
In this two-part article, I present a critique of William James's theory of inner awareness, as this theory finds expression in The Principles of Psychology. By inner awareness, I mean the immediate awareness we have of some of our own mental-occurrence instances. In the case of any mental-occurrence instance, the actual or potential occurrence of an immediate awareness of it is a necessary...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 1995 Thomas Natsoulas
As in the preceding article of the present series, I continue to examine William James's thought in The Principles of Psychology regarding what he there called “ejective consciousness.” James held that, in certain altered states, and perhaps at other times as well, mental occurrences may take place that are not components of the individual's original stream of consciousness. Usually if not...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 1995 Thomas Natsoulas
The present series concerning the stream of consciousness continues with two articles that examine James's conception of “ejective” consciousness in The Principles. During certain altered states, and perhaps at other times as well, mental-occurrence instances take place that are not part of the individual's original stream of consciousness. Usually, if not always, such “split-off”...
Imagination Cognition and Personality October 1, 1994 Thomas Natsoulas 8 citations
Quite naturally, Imagination, Cognition and Personality is the literal context of the present series of articles, which aims to examine what is known and knowledgeably held about the nature and character of the referents of William James's concept of the stream of consciousness. The sixth and seventh installments focus on selected relevant interpretations and facts from Imagination, Cognition...