# Consciousness Studies/BioPsychoSociology

This brief summary is an illustration of an attempt to model a
multidisciplinary biopsychosocial (bps) understanding of
self-consciousness seen from the perspective of both scientific
methodology and metaphysical logic where the empirical and the
inferential provide a seamless blend of the ontological brain with the
epistemological mind.

The achievement of self consciousness is the crucial mental state
allowing the human species to monitor the equilibrium state of
biopsychosocial ongoing contingencies especially when confronting
life-threatening circumstances. The inherited proto-semantics and
acquired language guide the required recursive co-generation of the
appropriate language and thought to meet the contingency. Thus informed,
it allows humans to elaborate effective adaptive short and long range
responses.

## Definition of terms

Bps model uses some unusual definitions of terms. These are explained
below.

\"Sense-phenomenal awareness\" is defined as an unconscious,
life-preserving, adaptive reflex response which may occur without
qualia. It originates at a sensory receptor, wherever located in the
body economy, and ends at an effector organ, glandular or muscular. -
Phenomenal consciousness/awareness is a term normally reserved for
experience containing qualia in other analyses.

System/network \"awareness\" is defined in the bps model as that
unconscious processing occurring during the integration of the
participating neural network modules leading to a stereotyped adaptive
response. - normally awareness is defined as knowledge that a conscious
state is present.

Sense-phenomenal awareness may become a conscious experience when
relevant inferential networks (e.g., memory, emotions, etc.)are
subsequently accessed, including inner-language processors. When
experiences are recalled the qualia that arise are called \"conceptual
qualia\".

\"Access consciousness\" is described as being initially an unconscious
process that makes it possible for a life-preserving, reflex-driven and
\'unconscious\' sense-phenomenal state of mind to become conscious by
making use of available, pertinent and concurrent mental states to
interact with the novel sense-phenomenal input, a potentially
life-threatening event.

\"Proto-linguistic organ\" or \'plo\' is described as the first line of
defense to guard against life-threatening stimuli arising from
sense-phenomenal inputs (external, visceral or proprioceptive). Housed
in the amygdaloidal complex, it represents the inherited proto-semantic
(primitive \'meanings\') database responsible for activating the
corresponding unconscious fight/flight adaptive Cannon effector
response.

\"Proto-semantic\" input from plo is described as a required initial
participant in the subsequent recursive co-generation of inner language
and thought as may be required in the eventual elaboration of
\"conceptual consciousness\".

## Higher order consciousness theory

The \'bps\' model of \'consciousness\' is a high order consciousness
theory in which an unconscious, non inferential phenomenal state
(established from either online sensory receptor input or offline memory
input), when confronting a novel life-threatening event, triggers an
initially unconscious access intermediate stage where relevant modular
networks are incorporated including Broca\'s language processor
recursively co-generating in the process the \'inner language\'
narrative state and accompanying thought, a conscious high order mental
state, all of which causally precedes (or is simultaneous with) the
adaptive response (if any, as we see in dreams).

Notice that bps considers phenomenal states to be non-conscious, this
would confuse the ordinary reader who expects the Kantian term
\"phenomenal\" to be equivalent to the term \"conscious experience\".
Only the higher order mental state is regarded as \"conscious\".

The \'bps\' model basically describes two co-existing, ongoing mental
states, one non-inferential subconscious \'gut feeling\' inner sense
(BOP, a variant of Lycan\'s 1996 HOP) and an initially non-inferential
unconscious accessing of narrative pathways leading to (recursive
co-generation of \'inner language\' and thought is an open option) the
eventual production of higher order thought (HOT) whose content is the
feeling that oneself is the subject of self-consciousness.

In other words, according to the \'bps\' theory, feelings are not part
of consciousness until higher order thought occurs, i.e., qualia needs a
context.

In \'bps\' theory not even self-consciousness, of which \'qualia\' may
arguably be considered a subset of, has revealed its constitutive
secrets. This means that bps is a theory of brain processing rather than
a theory of the content of consciousness (qualia) or consciousness
itself except when it ventures into the postulate that language and
self-consciousness are recursively co-generated or co-causal. More
controversial is the mediation of the amygdaloid complex (plo) in
providing inherited primitive \'meanings\' (protosemantic codelets) to
initiate Chomskian language processing and thought co-generation, i.e.,
protosemantics precedes syntax structuring. For a more complete
exposition see:

Further Reading: <http://delaSierra-Sheffer.net> For a quantum field
perspective see also: <http://www.biopsychosociology.org>
<http://spaces.msn.com/angelldls/>

