Human-Rights (5 TH Year)

by Alan Jenkins

What is the state of civil and human rights today? We’ve made a huge amount of progress but we still have a long way to go. There’s very little of the kind of formal bigotry and segregation that we saw in Eyes on the Prize, but there’s still a lot of discrimination in our society, unfortunately.

Addressing Inequities Today
The modern civil rights movement is working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society. Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Our country hasn’t yet fulfilled that promise.

Hurricane Katrina provides a good example. What it revealed is that there’s still significant racial inequality and desperate poverty in America. A lot of that springs from discrimination from long ago that concentrated black people in the poorest neighborhoods — the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to flooding, that are farthest from good jobs, schools and hospitals, and the hardest to get out of with transportation in an emergency. So those were the people who were hardest hit when Katrina struck. African American communities were not thought of by our government in the same way as more affluent or white communities.

The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity so that kind of thing doesn’t happen again. It’s important to determine what’s different now compared to the Eyes era. We’ve got to eradicate the more subtle manifestations of racial bias in our society that go back to those earlier times.

The Movement’s Impact
The African American civil rights movement has inspired a lot of other groups that have suffered injustices. One example that we saw recently was the immigrant rights demonstrations around the country. Immigrants’ assertion that “we too are America” was inspiring, and very much in the spirit of the civil rights movement. In addition, there’s been, since the late Sixties, a powerful Latino civil rights movement, that included the farm workers’ movement, and includes organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, patterned on the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. The women’s rights movement was inspired in part by the African American civil rights movement. Certainly the immigrant rights movement, and the gay rights movement as well. Those are just a few examples. Dynamic people in those communities have led the movements, but the African American civil rights movement provides a powerful template for activism.

The impact of the civil rights movement has spread throughout the world. I’ve met with people in India — Dalits, who are the former “untouchable” caste. What’s exciting is that Martin Luther Kinglearned nonviolent strategies from Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, so it’s kind of a full circle. When I traveled to India I met activists who were singing “We Shall Overcome” — the touchstone song of the American civil rights movement — in Hindi, and talked about how they had gotten inspiration from the American civil rights movement for their own struggle to achieve rights in Indian society. And there are many more examples worldwide.

Improving Our Own Communities
The first thing that people can do to improve things around them is to make sure that we live up to the promise of opportunity in our own lives. That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases. We all carry around biases and stereotypes in our heads, and that’s a part of being human. But we all have an opportunity to step outside of them and make sure we’re treating people the way we want to be treated.

The second thing is to be part of making our society more equal. That could mean calling up your local TV station and either complementing reporting they’re doing, or asking them why they aren’t doing more to expose inequality and highlight solutions. Write letters to the editor — including writing to your school newspaper — about how issues of opportunity are playing out in your community and what you can do about it.

The Implicit Association Test on race is an online test that you can take on Harvard University’s Web site. It’s a fascinating way to see biases you might unknowingly have. The test flashes up images of people from a variety of racial groups, and pairs them with negative and positive words. It’s designed to demonstrate that everyone carries around implicit biases to some degree. It’s a very interesting test. Of course, there is a difference between the Bull Connors — the hateful racists — and the rest of us, who are people of good will, but we don’t always recognize the stereotypes we carry around with us.

What does implicit or subconscious bias mean for police officers who have a split second to make a decision? What does it mean for school admissions officers or others making a decision that affects someone’s direction in life? The question for people to ask themselves is, if this person looked different, would I make the same decision?

Civil Rights Today
I think we’re at a crossroads now for opportunity. There are some areas where we’ve made great progress. For example, African American women have made the most progress of any group in college attendance — a remarkable success story. But in many other areas America is in real trouble. Great inequality and discrimination still exist in our school systems, our criminal justice system, and other aspects of our lives. Research shows, for example, the need to address the employment and housing discrimination that still exist. Nearly one out of every four African Americans seeking housing experience discrimination. That’s happening today. And yet there’s very little written about it — people are really unaware that that’s the case. We find similar levels of discrimination in employment statistics.

People interested in finding out more can read a report on our web site called The State of Opportunity in America. It explores how we’re doing as a nation in achieving opportunity for all, in terms of equality, economic security, and more.

It’s a very important time now for America to reinvest in that struggle for overcoming inequality and discrimination. They are really contrary to our values as a country.

Source: Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006.

Alan Jenkins

is the executive director and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization that works to expand opportunity in America through research, communications, and advocacy. His career has taken him to the Ford Foundation as Director of Human Rights; to the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant to the Solicitor General; and to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as Associate Counsel. In his current role he works with a range of social justice groups to expand opportunity in America.

ew issues in American life have been as intransigent as race. In every century, race has presented the nation its greatest paradoxes, challenges, and opportunities, calling into question time and again the principle of equality on which it was founded.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the golden era of civil rights activism, the civil rights movement mobilized the nation’s collective consciousness around issues of racial equity. The U.S. Supreme Court officially ended legal school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954. Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black political participation increased dramatically. In 1964, only 5 blacks served in the U.S. Congress. By 1998, the number had grown to 39.

But the victories of the movement, however decisive they seemed at the time, did not bring the long-term parity that activists and policymakers hoped for. Bread-and-butter issues such as unemployment, substandard housing, inferior education, unsafe streets, escalating child poverty, and homelessness supplanted the right to vote, eat at a lunch counter, and attend desegregated schools. As new issues arose, appearing and intensifying in ways that fell beyond the scope of the legislation and social reforms, the old civil rights model—one that relied mostly on judicial and protest remedies—seemed less and less effective in dealing with them.

Contributions of the Movement

The civil rights movement made lasting contributions to the nation. Above all, it helped eliminate the legal apartheid that had dogged the United States since its earliest days. It also created a national expectation that individuals and groups had the right to petition their government to right legal wrongs affecting them. In its wake there developed a broad base of constituent interest groups—women, the elderly, children’s rights advocates, the handicapped, homosexuals, environmentalists—that emphasize the rights of affected parties to be a critical part of the decisions affecting their interests.

Ironically, the emergence of those constituent groups, each with its own divergent interests, made it much more difficult to sustain the old civil rights coalition of members of labor, the faith communities, and sympathetic whites and blacks to advance the new issues of post-civil rights America. Indeed, the dominant ethos of the sixties, racial integration and equality, has given way to an implicit but insidious assumption by many whites and blacks today that voluntary racial isolation and segregation are acceptable even among those whose fundamental interests are similar.

The American citizenry is also divided over whether the unfinished civil rights agenda has its origins in race or social class, and even whether government reforms such as affirmative action should address the lingering problems. The compelling evidence of African-American progress found in the burgeoning middle class helps explain why opponents of a race-based agenda feel the way they do. Meanwhile poverty in a large and intractable black underclass reaches deep into inner cities and rural communities nationwide and decisively constricts the life chances for affected parties, particularly children.

The Unfinished Civil Rights Agenda

Two issues remain on the civil rights agenda. The first is addressing the persistence of racial disparities. The second is redefining the agenda to fit a vastly changing American demographic profile.

Black-white inequality persists in income, education, health, housing, technology access, and safe communities. The national media increasingly report on racial profiling in what has come to be euphemistically referred to as “driving while black,” in the denial of equal access to rent or purchase housing, and in disparities in arrests and sentencing in the criminal justice system.

Many still view government intervention as the most effective means to provide the leadership to eliminate the disparities. But others argue that the responsibility for solving these problems rests neither entirely with government, nor with the voluntary, private, sector, but with a coalition of government, civil society, business, and individual initiatives. They see an invigorated role for faith-based groups, particularly those serving African Americans, and also a stronger role for industry in hiring and training the most indigent and least prepared.

The second issue on the civil rights agenda involves the rapid growth in the immigrant population since 1965. Individuals of Hispanic origin now outnumber African Americans. By 2050, the majority-minority population paradigm on which race and ethnic relations have traditionally rested in this society may be a thing of the past. As a nation, we have already moved away from the traditional white-black model of race relations to one that reflects the nation’s broad diversity—in race, ethnicity, gender, and lifestyle.

The increase in interracial and interethnic marriages is already changing the historical perceptions of what it is to be a member of the “white” or “black” race. High-profile individuals like golf professional Tiger Woods represent a generation of Americans who are redefining race by embracing their ethnic and racial diversity and its broader societal implications.

It is conceivable that at mid-century, Americans will view race in fluid rather than fixed and precise terms, not unlike the way Brazilians see their multiracial population.

The Need for New Models

One of the shortcomings of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was its failure to envision the need for a fluid model of action to address new civil rights issues in the years ahead. And still the search goes on. Indeed, the issue today is how to develop flexible remedies to black-white disparity, the nation’s changing racial and ethnic diversity, and white poverty. One way is to rebuild the black voluntary sector that was for a time supplanted by the black electorate. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition was a step in the direction of pitching a huge tent under whose shelter new and old minorities and the poor could find common issues and agendas. Martin Luther King’s proposed Poor People’s campaign in 1967 also recognized that a civil rights coalition based entirely on race would not be sufficient to address the problem of white poverty.

A new generation of civil rights leaders now focuses its work on eliminating social and economic disparities, particularly for the indigent. Using some of the sixties strategies for community organizing around advocacy and service delivery, these leaders are bringing technical proficiency to such complex problems as economic development, improvement of schools, and the organization of community development corporations whose missions range from building housing to creating mini-industries.

The most effective of these leaders are people like Bob Moses, a key voting rights activist in the South in the sixties, who now teaches math literacy to prepare poor children for the technology-driven job market; Eugene Rivers, a founder of Boston’s 10-Point Coalition to disarm gangs and rehabilitate young lives; Hattie Dorsey, whose Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership helps rebuild decaying neighborhoods; and Robert Woodson, head of the National Neighborhood Enterprise Center, who brokered a truce among the District of Columbia’s most violent gangs and placed its members in paying jobs.

Most of the successful leaders in the post-civil rights movement operate in the nonprofit sector, primarily in community-based groups. They know how to reinvent themselves and their strategies by developing cross-cultural alliances and partnerships based on technical competence as much as on common goals; build public and private resource bases; and navigate the bureaucratic governmental maze for funding. And they are actively training a new generation of young leaders to succeed them. The skills they bring to the job include expertise in planning, finance, technology, and government. They know how to design programs that are appropriate for the complex, multi-layered issues inherent in their work and how to garner the resources to rebuild decaying infrastructures and overhaul human services to make them more efficient and less costly, even while pushing constituents to practice self-sufficiency.

In conclusion, two questions stand out. First, can diverse cultural communities (such as Puerto Ricans in New York City, Central Americans or Ethiopians in Washington, D.C., Asians and Latinos in Los Angeles) and nonprofit groups in civil society coalesce with elected officials and with one another to address the post-civil rights agenda? Second, as they face increased costs along with demands for both enhanced services and fiscal accountability, how can cities (including economically and institutionally recovering venues of reinvention like Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia) support all their citizens?

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On Tuesday, two travelers filed a law-suit against United Airlines in a California court, asking $5 million in damages. The reason? They felt discriminated against for not being able to participate in United’s “Young Flyer” discount campaign.A class-act lawsuit was filed on Tuesday against United Airlines for age discrimination. Photo: Getty Images

We have heard of many strange and farfetched lawsuits in our days. However, the two United Airlines customers that are now asking for $5 million in damages for not being eligible for the carrier’s “Young Flyer” promotional discount might take the disproportionality cake.

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$5 million for a lost 10%

The class-action suit claims the two travelers were discriminated against because of their age, which is illegal according to Californian law. The suit was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The passengers are both residents of California.

United’s “Young Flyer” campaign ran from September 10th, 2019, to June 30th, 2020. It allowed travelers between the ages of 18 and 22 to book flights before December 31st this year within the US, Canada, and Mexico with a discount of 10%. The promotion was to make travel more accessible for young people still in college or at the start of their careers.

The conditions stipulated that the booking had to be made via the airline’s app and that the customer had to be a MileagePlus member. Conditions that the lawsuit says both travelers fulfilled. The only thing not applicable was their age, as they were 23 and 67 at the time.United’s “Young Flyer” campaign for the US, Canada, and Mexico ran from September 2019 to June this year. Photo: Getty Images

United says the lawsuit is baseless

Apparently, the two plaintiffs felt so discriminated against for missing out on their 10% discount by one and 45 years, respectively, that they decided to take United to court over it. The suit asks for $5 million in damages and an injunction against United not to engage in any further “age discrimination.”

A spokesperson for United Airlines told the Chigaco Tribune that,

“It is a shame that a few individuals take issue with an offer that is intended to make travel more accessible to more people. We believe this lawsuit is completely baseless and will defend ourselves vigorously.”

While there may technically be a case under California’s anti-discrimination laws, the sheer disproportionality of the damages the plaintiffs’ lawyer is requesting on their behalf should be enough to label this as the opportunistic stunt it seems to be.

Simple Flying has reached out to United for a comment but was yet to receive a reply at publication.A spokesperson for United says the airline will defend itself vigorously. Photo: Getty Images

Other select suits

This is not the first, and most likely will not be the last, of odd law-suits brought against an airline. Business Traveller mentions, among others, a nervous flier who was appalled when a carrier played “Killing Me Softly” with The Fugees as she was boarding the plane. The woman, who claimed psychological suffering, lost her case in court. 

Apparently, some of the most common claims stem from insect bites, including bed bugs from sleeper-style premium cabins, and injuries suffered due to turbulence. In the US, the airline is actually liable for the latter, with about $170,000 payable without any particular proof that the carrier itself was somehow at fault.

Now and then, the lawsuit comes from somewhere more unexpected. As NBC News tells it, an undisclosed airline’s CEO filed a lawsuit against his own airline from which he had received millions and full health insurance for life. The reason being that he had not been granted “full compensation” in the form of his free life-time first class flights.

What do you make of the class action against United? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. 

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file

I received a press release this afternoon from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission trumpeting a settlement they secured from United Airlines.

Apparently the airline should have given preference to disabled employees wanting to transfer jobs, rather than to the most qualified candidates for those open positions

Apparently the airline should have given preference to disabled employees wanting to transfer jobs, rather than to the most qualified candidates for those open positions.

By requiring workers with disabilities to compete for vacant positions for which they were qualified and which they needed in order to continue working, the company’s practice frequently prevented employees with disabilities from continuing employment with United, the EEOC said.

If a disability prevents an employee from returning to work in his or her current position, an employer must consider reassignment. As the Seventh Circuit’s decision highlights, requiring the employee to compete for positions falls short of the ADA’s requirements. Employers should take note: When all other accommodations fail, consider whether your employee can fill a vacant position for which he or she is qualified.

I have several observations on this, none of which are on the merits of the application of the Americans With Disabilities Act. While I have some familiarity with it as an employer, I am not a specialist on the requirements of the ADA.

• The suit was filed in 2009. It was settled in 2015.
• This isn’t United’s first EEOC settlement
• It’s being billed as a settlement of “over $1 million” because it is… $1,000,040. No doubt the EEOC pushed for that extra $40 so they could trumpet the ‘over’ part of the claim.
• The EEOC’s case was dismissed in 2011. However the EEOC got it re-instated by the full 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that an EEOC case that went to the Supreme Court in 2002 trumped the precedent on which United obtained the dismissal. Given that United had won a dismissal from the 7th Circuit though, it suggests that it at least wasn’t obvious they had been violating the law. In that case, should they be liable, when they couldn’t clearly foresee their conduct was illegal? Shouldn’t the precedent be announced clearly – on a prospective basis – so that employers know what rules they’ll be held to, rather than being pursued for financial penalties based on past conduct?

In Blakey v. Continental Airlines, Inc. , 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2532 (D.N.J. 1998), the jury sitting in United States District Court in Newark, New Jersey, a federal court returned a verdict in favor of a former female pilot who sued her employer for sexual harassment, awarding the employee $480,000 in back pay, $15,000 in front pay and $500,000 for emotional distress, pain and suffering. However, the jury found that the employee had failed to mitigate her damages and subtracted $120,000 from her back pay award of $480,000.

Following the trial, the employer moved to have the entire verdict vacated including the jury’s award of back pay claiming that the jury’s reduction of the back pay by only $120,000 was inexplicable and inadequate. The court rejected the employer’s argument holding that the employer has the burden of proving that the employee failed to mitigate her damages.

The court held that an employee who fails to mitigate damages is not barred from recovering back pay. Rather, the employee’s back pay award may be reduced by the amount she could have earned with reasonable diligence.

The court noted that the employee was in an unusual position because she had not been terminated but rather was on an administrative leave by mutual consent. Therefore, the employee was not entirely free to obtain another job, nor was she able to return to work in what she perceived as an un-remedied hostile environment. The court found that the employer failed to introduce any evidence that it was reasonable for the employee to return to work and that the employer had the burden of proof on the issue of mitigation of damages and failed to meet it.

The court noted that although the employer eventually eliminated the problem, it did nothing to assure the employee that it had done so. Rather, the court noted that the employer allowed the employee to remain on administrative leave and did nothing to allay her fears and could not now avoid the consequences.

The court held that given evidence of the employee’s previous unpleasant experiences with her employer’s management, the jury was entitled to conclude that it was not reasonable for her to return to work.

1. Blakey v. Continental Airlines, 1997 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2532 (D.N.J. 1997)

A group of passengers is suing American Airlines, alleging two instances of racial discrimination before and aboard a recent American Airlines flight –– though the airline is pushing back on these claims.

Plaintiffs Elgin Banks and Aubrey Kelly, both Black men, claim the airline discriminated against them on a departing flight from Los Angeles on May 31.

“Discrimination of any kind is not acceptable and does not align with our values, which is why we launched an investigation when were made aware of the allegations,” Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines, told USA TODAY in a statement. “We are continuing to review this incident, but we believe that the allegations are not a full or accurate portrayal of the incident.”

While Banks and Kelly are suing for discrimination, all five plaintiffs are suing for failure to prevent discrimination, among other accusations. The lawsuit comes as the nation has seen an outcry over racism and police brutality against Black people following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.

One of the American Airlines incidents resulted in airport security and police being called onto the plane. The civil lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court, the Central District of California, on Friday.

The first of the incidents began when the airline made Kelly check his carry-on bag without a justifiable reason, according to the complaint, as there was room for the bag on the flight and it met the airline’s sizing requirements.

Next, on the flight, Banks asked if the flight was full and if he could change seats if open ones were available. A flight attendant told him he could do so after the pilot announced boarding was complete. Non-Black passengers did so after the announcement, but when Banks asked for permission from the white flight attendant to get a seat closer to the front of the plane, the situation escalated.

“Excuse me, I asked for a seat earlier and I see you moving people so I wanted to know if I could get a closer seat,” Banks asked. The flight attendant said, “Sir, step back,” and the two began to argue, according to the complaint. She accused him of raising his voice, which he denied he was doing, and she told him to sit down.

The flight attendant called airport security and police. Security forced Banks off the plane, per the lawsuit. Kelly and the three other plaintiffs in the suit (Natalie Epstein, Brandy Flowers and Cynthia Vassor) were also escorted off as they vouched for Banks. The flight attendant suggested Banks was trying to sit in first-class, which the lawsuit called “a perjurious lie.”

Feinstein offered an alternate take on the events: “After boarding American Airlines flight 1931 with service from Los Angeles to Phoenix on May 31, Mr. Banks requested to be seated in the first class cabin. He was informed that he was not eligible for an upgrade and would have to remain in his assigned seat. During the boarding process, he attempted to relocate to the first class cabin prior to leaving the gate. One of the seats he attempted to sit in was assigned to another passenger. The disruption on board required deplaning passengers with the flight departing the next day.”

The lawsuit also alleges white passengers were offered accommodation vouchers while Black passengers “who were also escorted off due to their solidarity against discrimination American denied offering accommodations.”

“All affected customers were provided with a hotel voucher unless they lived locally, as is our policy,” Feinstein said. The lawsuit lists all plaintiffs as out-of-state residents. 

The plaintiffs are seeking a combination of punitive damages, the costs associated with the lawsuit, general damages and more.

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Describing Consciousness

Consciousness is an individual’s state of awareness of their environment, thoughts, feelings, or sensations; in order to experience consciousness, one must be both awake and aware.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Trace the history of the study of consciousness

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

• Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties.
• The study of consciousness helps scientists shed light on the inner workings of psychology and neuroscience. Scientists who study consciousness examine the relationship between stated perception and neural activity.
• The majority of experimental studies assess consciousness by asking human subjects for a verbal report of their experiences and then comparing their answers with the corresponding neural activity.
• While primary sensory areas of the brain are often involved in perception, it is the higher brain areas such as the primary cortex that are required for consciousness to occur.
• Issues of interest in consciousness research include phenomena such as perception, subliminal perception, blindsight, anosognosia, brainwaves during sleep, and altered states of consciousness produced by psychoactive drugs or spiritual or meditative techniques.

Key Terms

• anosognosia: The inability of a person to recognize his or her own illness or handicap.
• subliminal perception: Perception that is below the threshold of consciousness.
• blindsight: The responsivity shown by some blind or partially blind people to visual stimuli of which they are not consciously aware.

Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself, such as thoughts, feelings, memories, or sensations. It has also been defined in the following ways: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive-control system of the mind. At one time, consciousness was viewed with skepticism by many scientists, but in recent years, it has become a significant topic of research in psychology and neuroscience.

Philosophy of Consciousness

Despite the difficulty in coming to a definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include the following: whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whether non-human consciousness exists, and if so, how it can be recognized; how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties; and whether it may ever be possible for computers or robots to be conscious.

The Mind-Body Problem

The mind-body problem is essentially the problem of consciousness; roughly speaking, it is the question of how mental experiences arise from a physical entity.  How are our mental states, beliefs, actions, and thinking related to our physical states, bodily functions, and external events, given that the body is physical and the mind is non-physical?

The first and most important philosopher to address this conundrum was René Descartes in the 17^th century, and his answer was termed Cartesian dualism. The explanation behind Cartesian dualism is that consciousness resides within an immaterial domain he called res cogitans (the realm of thought), in contrast to the domain of material things, which he called res extensa (the realm of extension). He suggested that the interaction between these two domains occurs inside the brain. He further suggested the pineal glad as the point of interaction, but was later challenged several times on this claim. These challenges sparked some key initial research on consciousness, which we will discuss shortly.

Early Ideas on Consciousness

For over 2000 years, questions surrounding human consciousness—such as how the everyday inner workings of our brains give rise to a single cohesive reality and a sense of an individual self—have been baffling philosophers from Plato to Descartes. Descartes, as previously mentioned, is noted for his dualist theory of consciousness, in which the physical body is separate from the immaterial mind. He also gave us the most famous summary of human consciousness: “I think, therefore I am.”

The historical materialism of Karl Marx rejects the mind-body dichotomy, and holds that consciousness is engendered by the material contingencies of one’s environment. John Locke, another early philosopher, claimed that consciousness, and therefore personal identity, are independent of all substances. He pointed out that there is no reason to assume that consciousness is tied to any particular body or mind, or that consciousness cannot be transferred from one body or mind to another.

American psychologist William James compared consciousness to a stream—unbroken and continuous despite constant shifts and changes. While the focus of much of the research in psychology shifted to purely observable behaviors during the first half of the twentieth century, research on human consciousness has grown tremendously since the 1950s.

Current Research on Consciousness

Today, the primary focus of consciousness research is on understanding what consciousness means both biologically and psychologically. It questions what it means for information to be present in consciousness, and seeks to determine the neural and psychological correlates of consciousness. Issues of interest include phenomena such as perception, subliminal perception, blindsight, anosognosia, brainwaves during sleep, and altered states of consciousness produced by psychoactive drugs or spiritual or meditative techniques.

The majority of experimental studies assess consciousness by asking human subjects for a verbal report of their experiences. However, in order to confirm the significance of these verbal reports, scientists must compare them to the activity that simultaneously takes place in the brain—that is, they must look for the neural correlates of consciousness. The hope is to find that observable activity in a particular part of the brain, or a particular pattern of global brain activity, will be strongly predictive of conscious awareness. Several brain-imaging techniques, such as EEG and fMRI scans, have been used for physical measures of brain activity in these studies.

Higher brain areas are more widely accepted as necessary for consciousness to occur, especially the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in a range of higher cognitive functions collectively known as executive functions.

Prefrontal cortex: This image shows the location of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain heavily involved in consciousness.

A History of Theories of Consciousness

Theories of consciousness include developmental, cultural, neural, computational, and moral perspectives.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Critique the major theories about human consciousness

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

• First appearing in the historical records of the ancient Mayan and Incan civilizations, various theories of multiple levels of consciousness have pervaded spiritual, psychological, medical, and moral speculations in both Eastern and Western cultures.
• The Ancient Mayans were among the first to propose an organized sense of each level of consciousness, its purpose, and its temporal connection to humankind.
• Sigmund Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious.
• Modern psychological approaches to understanding consciousness include developmental, social, and neuropsychological; each contribute a different understanding of what consciousness might be.

Key Terms

• consciousness: The state of being aware; awareness to both internal and external stimuli.
• Sigmund Freud: (1856–1939) An Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis.

Historical Theories of Consciousness

Mayan and Incan Theories of Consciousness

First appearing in the historical records of the ancient Mayan and Incan civilizations, various theories of multiple levels of consciousness have pervaded spiritual, psychological, medical, and moral speculations in both Eastern and Western cultures. Consciousness can be defined as human awareness to both internal and external stimuli. Because of occasional and sometimes substantial overlap between hypotheses, there have recently been attempts to combine perspectives to form new models that integrate components of separate viewpoints.

The Ancient Mayans were among the first to propose an organized sense of each level of consciousness, its purpose, and its temporal connection to humankind. Because consciousness incorporates stimuli from the environment as well as internal stimuli, the Mayans believed it to be the most basic form of existence, capable of evolution. The Incas, however, considered consciousness a progression not only of awareness but of concern for others as well.

John Locke on Consciousness

John Locke, a 17th-century philosopher, was one of the first to speak and write on consciousness. He believed that our identity was tied to our consciousness, which he essentially defined as what passes through a man’s mind, or memories. He also asserted that our consciousness is not tied to our physical bodies, and that it can survive even after our physical bodies die. In fact, Locke held that consciousness could be transferred from one soul to another.

René Descartes on Consciousness

René Descartes also addressed the idea of consciousness in the 17th century. He set out to answer the question of how it is possible that our consciousness, a non-physical thing, can come from our bodies, a physical thing. The explanation he came up with was called Cartesian dualism; in short, consciousness resides within an immaterial domain he called res cogitans (the realm of thought), in contrast to the domain of material things, which he called res extensa (the realm of extension). He suggested that the interaction between these two domains occurs inside the brain.

Sigmund Freud on Consciousness

While Eastern perspectives on consciousness have remained relatively stable over the centuries, fluctuations in theory have come to define the Western perspective. One of the most popular Western theories is that of Sigmund Freud, medical doctor and father of psychoanalytic theory. Freud divided human consciousness into three levels of awareness: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Each of these levels corresponds and overlaps with Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego. The conscious level consists of all the things we are aware of, including things we know about ourselves and our surroundings. The preconscious consists of things we could pay conscious attention to if we so desired, and is where many memories are stored for easy retrieval. Freud saw the preconscious as comprised of thoughts that are unconscious at the particular moment in question, but that are not repressed and are therefore available for recall and easily capable of becoming conscious (for example, the tip-of-the-tongue effect). The unconscious consists of things that are outside of conscious awareness, including many memories, thoughts, and urges of which we are not aware. Much of what is stored in the unconscious is thought to be unpleasant or conflicting; for example, sexual impulses that are deemed unacceptable. While these elements are stored out of our awareness, they are nevertheless thought to influence our behavior.

Freud’s levels of consciousness: This figure illustrates the respective levels of the id, ego, and superego. The part above water is known as the conscious level; the top level of waves just below the surface and above the white line is the preconscious level; and the bottom level is the unconscious.

Modern Theories of Consciousness

While Freud’s theory remains one of the best known, various schools in the field of psychology have developed their own perspectives, which we will explore below. It is important to note that these perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, just different approaches to the same questions.

Developmental Psychology on Consciousness

Developmental psychologists view consciousness not as a single entity, but as a developmental process with potential higher stages of cognitive, moral, and spiritual quality. They posit that consciousness changes over time, in quality and in degree: an infant’s consciousness is qualitatively different than a toddler’s, a teenager’s, or an adult’s. Abnormal development also affects consciousness, as do mental illnesses.

Social Psychology on Consciousness

Social psychologists view consciousness as a product of cultural influence having little to do with the individual. For instance, because different cultures speak different languages, they also codify reality differently. That difference in codification leads to differences in the experience of reality, and therefore of consciousness. Language is the main mechanism for transmitting a mode of consciousness, and an analysis of language can to some extent reveal the mentality of people who speak that language.

Neuropsychology on Consciousness

Neuropsychologists view consciousness as ingrained in neural systems and organic brain structures. A major part of the modern scientific literature on consciousness consists of studies that examine the relationship between the experiences reported by subjects and the activity that simultaneously takes place in their brains—that is, studies of the neural correlates of consciousness. The hope is to find activity in a particular part of the brain, or a particular pattern of global brain activity, that will be strongly predictive of conscious awareness. Several brain-imaging techniques, such as EEG and fMRI, have been used for physical measures of brain activity in these studies.

Neural Underpinnings of Consciousness

The neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) refer to the relationship between the experiences reported by subjects and the activity that simultaneously takes place in their brains.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Analyze the neural mechanisms underpinning conscious awareness

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

• Consciousness is the awareness of the self in space and time. Researchers attempt to study states of human consciousness and differences in perception in order to understand how the body works to produce conscious awareness.
• Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) are sets of neurons and series of events necessary for conscious perception. Neural correlates in the brain have been found to be both redundant and parallel, which makes pinpointing brain activity difficult for researchers.
• Consciousness varies in both arousal and content. We have two types of conscious experience: phenomenal, or in the moment, and access, which recalls experiences from memory.
• Neural correlates of consciousness are studied using fMRI and EEG scans, which attempt to locate brain activity. The most popular stimuli for these studies has become visual tests as they are easily recorded and manipulated.

Key Terms

• arousal: A physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuli, including elevated heart rate and blood pressure, and a condition of sensory alertness, mobility, and readiness to respond.
• consciousness: The state of being aware; awareness to both internal and external stimuli.

Consciousness is the awareness of the self, the environment, and the relationship between these two distinct worlds. From ancient philosophers to modern-day scientists, many people have struggled to understand, research, and document the processes involved in human consciousness. Thanks in large part to advances in medicine, science, and psychology, we have learned much about how states of consciousness are created. Current research studies the neural correlates of consciousness by examining experiences reported by subjects and recording the simultaneous activity that takes place in their brains. Researchers continue to search for brain activity or global brain patterns that can be predictive of conscious awareness.

Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)

The neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) refer to the relationship between the experiences reported by subjects and the activity that simultaneously takes place in their brains. The physical world is perceived by human consciousness through the senses, which funnel stimuli and information into the central nervous system, and eventually the brain. The brain is the major organ implicated in turning physical stimuli into thoughts and actions. The study of NCC seeks to link objective, observable, neural activity to subjective, unobservable, conscious phenomena. While discovering and characterizing neural correlates cannot offer its own theory of consciousness, the data and findings may one day lead to such a discovery.

Neural correlates of consciousness: The study of neural correlates of consciousness seeks to link activity within the brain to subjective human experiences in the physical world.

Neural networks have been found to have a large amount of redundancy and parallelism, such that activity in one set of neurons cannot necessarily be said to correlate with the same perception over time. Scientists believe it may be the case that every phenomenal, subjective state has its own neural correlate. Continued advances in the ability to stimulate or induce activity in certain brain regions or sets of neural networks will help scientists answer ever more complicated questions about the characteristics and commonalities among neural correlates.

Neurobiology and Consciousness

The science of consciousness sets out to explain the precise relationship between subjective mental states and brain states, the relationship between the conscious mind and the electro-chemical interactions in the body. Progress in this arena has come from focusing on the body rather than the mind. In this context, the neuronal correlates of consciousness may be viewed as its causes, and consciousness may be thought of as a state-dependent property of some complex, adaptive, and highly interconnected biological system.

Most neurobiologists assume that the variables giving rise to consciousness are to be found at the neuronal level, governed by classical physics. More than ever before, neuroscientists are able to manipulate neurons
using methods from molecular biology combined with state-of-the-art optical tools (e.g., Adamantidis et al., 2007). Neuronal analysis and brain imaging techniques have become so fine-grained that a rational understanding of consciousness is within reach.

Dimensions of Neural Consciousness: Arousal and Content

Neuronal consciousness is often described as involving two distinct dimensions: arousal and content. In order for the brain to be conscious of any type of content, it must be in a high state of arousal. While awake and dreaming states are fundamentally different states of consciousness, they are both high-arousal, and thus allow for perception. Sleep is just one of the many types of consciousness we can experience and comprises several states of consciousness itself. Consciousness can also be phenomenal, such as our experiences in real time, or access, such as recalling a state of being or feeling.

Brain Areas Implicated in Consciousness

Another idea that has drawn attention for several decades is that consciousness is associated with high-frequency (gamma band) oscillations in brain activity. This idea arose from proposals in the 1980s, by Christof von der Malsburg and Wolf Singer, that gamma oscillations may link information represented in different parts of the brain into a unified experience.

Several studies have demonstrated that activity in primary sensory areas of the brain is not sufficient to produce consciousness: it is possible for subjects to report a lack of awareness even when areas such as the primary visual cortex show clear electrical responses to a stimulus. Higher brain areas are seen as more promising, especially the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in a range of executive (higher-order) functions. There is substantial evidence that a “top-down” flow of neural activity (i.e., activity propagating from the frontal cortex to sensory areas) is more predictive of consciousness than a “bottom-up” flow of activity. The prefrontal cortex is not the only candidate area, however: studies have shown that visually responsive neurons in parts of the temporal lobe reflect the visual perception in the situation when conflicting visual images are presented to different eyes.

Brain Imaging and Consciousness

One popular theory implicates different patterns of brain waves in producing different states of consciousness. Researchers can record brain waves, or tracings of electrical activity within the brain, using an electroencephalograph (EEG) and placing electrodes on the scalp. The four types of brain waves (alpha, beta, theta, and delta) each correspond with one mental state (relaxed, alert, lightly asleep, and deeply asleep, respectively).

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, can also be used to measure physical activity in the brain that correlates with different conscious states and perceptions. The ease in which visual perceptions can be manipulated in time and space has made visual studies, such as the Necker cube, one of the most preferred modalities for studying the neural correlates of consciousness. These studies take a seemingly simple and unambiguous visual stimulus and record differences in its subjective perception by a study participant. The cube, for instance, is 12 basic lines that can be interpreted in two different depths, creating a visual illusion. Scientists are interested in locating which neural correlates lead to differing mental interpretations.