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Originally Posted by Yvonne Francis What is the nature of consciousness? when not fully conscious, what behavious or mental activities (such as perception, learning) may occur unchanged? What activites occur but function differently? What activities cease? |
First let's make some distinctions.
Consciousness refers to awareness during non-sleeping condition.
Unconsciousness refers to unawareness of the surrounding environment during sleep, coma, or any other state which might induce that unaware condition. Of course the degree of these states of mind vary. For example, we tend to experience REM, rapid eye movement just before we fall asleep and a growing lethargy which gradually prepares us for slumber.
There is also the matter of hallucination. We have to keep in mind that those who are hallucinating and out of contact with reality are not necessarily considered to be unconscious, they are usually considered to be perceiving their surroundings in a warped way unless the hallucinations become so severe that total disconnection from reality takes place. But even then the term unconciousness isn;t used in thise cases.
We can also look at the subject from a Freudian viewpoint of a tripartite human psyche of ego, id and superego. The ego is the one in charge during consciousness. The superego is the conscience which guides the ego. The id is the subconscious which includes submerged desires, and suppressed thoughts which remain beneath the conscious level while we are awake.
However, during unconsciousness or sleep, the ego and superego weaken and the id takes over causing us to dream dreams based on all these suppressed emotions and thoughts.
As for learning, the mind uses sleep to reorganize data and seek solutions to problems it ha faced during conscious hours. That's why we sometimes awaken with a solution to a problem or other perplexity after a brief sleep.
Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness
BTW
Behaviors when one is not fully conscious might include clumsiness, incoherent speech, lowered moral inhibitions.
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