VARIETIES OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
Reply to Reidbord on Bridgeman on Consciousness

Abstract

The immediacy of current awareness or sentience runs up against a paradox of time: that the present is a moving knife-edge with no duration and therefore no content. Even the simplest stimuli and the most direct neural events require time to be coded. The psychological present must therefore extend into the past. Our feeling of rich awareness escapes the paradox by using a working memor. The contrast between the properties of this memory and the long-term episodic memory creates the contrast between immediate and reflective consciousness. Conscious experience and memory are inextricably intertwined from start to finish. Experience requires memory and is made meaningful by other memory. And different aspects of consciousness are supported by different kinds of memory with distinct neurological organizations.

Keywords

References

• Bridgeman, B. (1992). On the evolution of consciousness and language. PSYCOLOQUY 3(15) consciousness.1.
• Milner, B. (1970) Memory and the temporal regions of the brain. In K. H. Pribram & D. E. Broadbent (Eds.), Biology of Memory. New York: Academic Press.
• Reidbord, Steven (1992) Would You Choose Unremembered Pain? Commentary on Bridgeman on Consciousness. PSYCOLOQUY 3(41) consciousness.22