Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I To be conscious
- Part II To have consciousness
- 4 ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (Nagel)
- 5 Treatments of subjective conscious experience in the arts
- 6 A captive mind
- Part III To know consciously
- Conclusions
- Notes
- Further reading, viewing and listening
- References to films, paintings and other artworks
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Treatments of subjective conscious experience in the arts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I To be conscious
- Part II To have consciousness
- 4 ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (Nagel)
- 5 Treatments of subjective conscious experience in the arts
- 6 A captive mind
- Part III To know consciously
- Conclusions
- Notes
- Further reading, viewing and listening
- References to films, paintings and other artworks
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
We can ask how artists and writers have treated how it is for us to experience anything. The idea in this chapter is to do just that. Clearly, ideas about consciousness are nothing new and people have tried to conjure our experience in ways that can be set down on paper or put on film. As Theo Sarbin said:
Long before there was a science of psychology, men and women created and told stories about the efforts of human beings to make sense of their problematic worlds. Novelists, dramatists, poets, essayists, and film makers – storytellers all – have continued to provide insights about human motives and action, even during the hundred years that human conduct has been examined by scientific psychology.
We’ll have a look at film, television, painting and the novel as treatments of subjective experience in different media.
Let’s start with how I’m using the word ‘treatment’. I believe that our psychological life rests on the way we treat each other. What makes this a psychology book is that all the conceptual analysis concerns how we treat each other and by this I mean how we act towards each other. Treatment is what makes a psychological life: how others act towards us and how we in turn act towards others. Treatment is used here to convey also the idea of how we consider what it is like for someone else. We think about them and may play out, as a presentation, how we imagine their experience would be if it were to be ours. And this is how I’m using the term ‘treatment’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Acts of ConsciousnessA Social Psychology Standpoint, pp. 164 - 191Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014