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= Stream of consciousness (William James) =

Stream of Consciousness (Definition)
William James’s stream of consciousness can be defined as, a state of thought where he believed that the contents of the human consciousness is like a “stream”. This stream is comprised of every experience that an individual has ever had and shapes their opinion. “Every new experience is inevitably molded and framed by all the old experiences that have gone before, and because this background constantly changes and enlarges, no two experiences can ever be precisely alike.” James also saw the consciousness as being continuous as well. Streams do not have gaps in their water source, so the consciousness does not have gaps in its stream. James believed that the human consciousness would remember what happened immediately before and immediately after an unconscious period, and merge the gaps into one fluid “stream”.

Personal History
William James was born in New York in 1842. James was one of five children that was raised by his father Henry James Sr. Education was very important to James’s father so they moved around from country to country to find the best education possible. As a result all the children were very educated and knew many languages. As a young man James went to study chemistry at Harvard where he eventually switched his major from chemistry to physiology. James eventually applied and went to medical school at Harvard. He went on a hunting expedition to the Amazon to explore the world of field biology. He was eventually injured and began to read books by Wilhelm Wundt and became increasingly interested in the field of Psychology. Around this time James had a “Psychological Breakdown”. James eventually recovered from his crisis and continued his studies of psychology. He eventually became a popular teacher at Harvard. After he became a teacher he wrote about the popular idea of stream of consciousness in his book “Principles of Psychology”.

Buddhism/Mindfulness
Psychology did not have the initial idea of a “stream of consciousness”. A lot of similar ideas came from Buddhist teachings. The phrase "stream of consciousness" (Pali; viññāna-sota) occurs in early Buddhist scriptures.[1] The Yogachara school ofMahayana Buddhism developed the idea into a thorough theory of mind.[2] Hammalawa Saddhatissa Mahathera writes: "There is no 'self' that stands at the mentality to which characteristics and events accrue and from which they fall away, leaving it intact at death. The stream of consciousness, flowing through many lives, is as changing as a stream of water. This is the anatta doctrine of Buddhism as concerns the individual being."[3]

Buddhisms idea of "Mindstream" is closely related to "Stream of Consciousness". The basic concept is an ongoing mind that can never be the same at one point of time to the next. It consists of the notion that everything that has ever happened to someone will change a person's "Mindstream" into something that is unique at every point of time it existed. Another aspect is that we have had a stream of mind since before we were born, where there is not a definite beginning or end to it because it continues after death.

The idea that the mind acts apart from the body is very heavy in Buddhist teachings. There is a definite separation from the brain and the mind, where the mind is something that cannot be controlled or tested. Every individual mind has unique aspect that cannot be determined by a physical entity, such as the brain. There is a large debate of how the mind, in this context, could have ever begun. The easiest way to analyze this is to think of something that depends on previous actions to be whole. If you take away those previous actions, can the object exist at the beginning? Without previous experiences with the mind, the idea of mind cannot completely exist. It is also important to point out that everyone has their own unique mind that does not connect to other minds. The universe is not interconnected through some sort of connected “Mindstream.” It should be noted that a mind can affect another mind passively though.

Stream of Consciousness
There are five characteristics to thought that give us stream of consciousness. They are:

1) Every thought tends to be a part of a personal consciousness

2) Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing

3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous

4) It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself

5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects or chooses from.

A Person's Thought is Personal
Thought is completely personal. It does not require anyone else's opinions or consciousness, only yours. No two peoples consciousness ever cross or mingle. We each have our own personal stream that is made up of what we have seen and what we have experienced. When an experience occurs, each and every person will create a recollection completely different, “so long as the existence of something” matches with a personal mind that can mold it into their own personal stream.

A Person's Thought is Constantly Changing
When an individual has an experience, this experience changes their entire state of mind. If an individual takes in an experience one day at the same location, it will never be the same as the last. “...the result on which I wish to lay stress is this, that ''no state once gone can recur and be identical with what it was before''.” (James, 1890) Take for example a person wakes up every day and goes to the coffee shop. Each and every time they have that experience; it changes the state of mind. State of mind is ever changing and can never be revisited twice. (James, 1890)

For Each Person, Thought is Continuous
When James defies continuity of a person's consciousness, he describes it as a river that has no breaks or separators of any kind. An example would be a river breaking when a river is flowing downstream. The only kind of delays a person would have with their consciousness would be time gaps between when a person is conscious, and being unconscious (ex. asleep). James states that due to the effects of our consciousness being continuous, it means two fundamental things:

1. Even with time gaps, as soon as the consciousness realizes that it was a part of a person’s experience, it registers it as a consciousness and molds it into itself.

2. Changes between consciousness type, such as awake and sleep, are “never abrupt”.

Human Thought Always Appears to Deal with Objects Independent of Itself
James explained that through the idea of duplicate thoughts. Humans believe that there must be individuals with the same type of thought because there are many human thoughts created from same objects. This allows for judgment of other thought independently because someone somewhere has the same type of thought as their own. James states that if the past self and the present self are of the same object, a third position, an “independent position” can be taken to provide judgment.

Interested in Parts, Welcomes, and Rejects
James boldly addresses the fact that as humans, selective attention and deliberate will are examples of this phenomenon. Not many humans realize, but this activity occurs very consistently on a daily basis, an example being the sound of a clock. The ticking sound can be noticeable, but at times it is not. We can assume consciously that the clock is still going when we do not hear it based in our previous other characteristics above. We decide to “ignore” the stimulus because out consciousness choose where our attention is given based on interests.

Proponents
William James is given credit for the concept of stream of consciousness. He is considered the father of American Psychology and stream of consciousness was one of his most famous ideas that he is most known for. He wrote about the stream of consciousness in his book The Principles of Psychology which was published in 1890. He was enormously skeptical about using introspection as a technique to understand the stream of consciousness so he came up with a different concept. He described the flaws of introspection like this, "Let anyone try to cut a thought across the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation........is. The rush of the thought is always so head-long that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. Introspective analysis is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks". William James did not believe it was a smart idea to analyze thoughts by breaking them down and looking at each individual thought. Instead of using introspection as a technique to analyze our thoughts he came up with stream of consciousness. James describes stream of consciousness like this in his own words, "meet and merge over the gap, much as the feelings of space of the opposite margins of the 'blind spot' meet and merge over that objective interruption to the sensitiveness of the eye. Such consciousness as this whatever it be for the on looking psychologist, is for itself unbroken. It feels unbroken." Stream of consciousness was only one of James’ many contributions to the science of Psychology. He also wrote about many of the most talked about topics in Psychology in his book including theories about brain function, habit, the self, emotion, and will.

Bernard Baars has developed Global Workspace Theory which bears some resemblance to stream of consciousness.

Current Views
The current view on the stream of consciousness has been a place for debate. On one side for supporting such a view, is another named Bernard Baars who developed a similar theory to that of William James. His theory, the Global Workspace Theory, is built around the idea of a theater metaphor. In this metaphor, the stage is where the consciousness is the center of attention. The audience, and back stage staff are the subconscious that are analyzing the situation, and changing the ‘act’ as the show goes on. This is similar to the work of William James because the stream of consciousness is affected by every experience, which reshapes the view of the consciousness, where in Baars theory it is the audience and the backstage staff.

Those critics of William James’s stream of consciousness, such as Susan Blackmore, is a psychologist that challenges what James thought was how the human conscious processes life experiences. She suggests that the entire idea of a stream of consciousness is an illusion to man. No one can know for sure if they were conscious or not at a time that immediately passed when they questioned their own conscious against subconscious experiences. She questions the idea by examining the senses to describe that there is no for sure way to determine a stream of consciousness that continues and is not broken up by time gaps. This is her main argument to critic James’s theory.