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GLOSSARY INQUIRY: CONSCIOUSNESS
For complexivists, individuals’ consciousness is a complex, emergent phenomenon that cuts across brain-body-world divisions.
Individual human consciousness (understood as awareness and intentionality) emerges from the interaction of bodily experience, the connected activities of various brain modules, and participation in larger social and cultural processes. Although unconscious processes play a much larger role in human behaviour than is commonly supposed, consciousness still acts as the “governor” of our mental life, directing our thoughts and attentions towards specific ends (see downward causation).
A complex understanding of consciousness helps us appreciate the role it plays in individual learning. In addition, several complexivists have speculated that consciousness-like processes are at work in larger scale social processes, for example, in the way a teacher directs the attentions of students, or the way artists bring issues into society’s collective consciousness.
See related terms: Emergence, Embodiment, Culture.
