But common sense can be easily confused. Consider these questions for example: if you felt pain in an amputated leg, where is the pain? If you say it is in your head, would it be in your head if your leg had not been amputated? If you say yes, then what reason have you for ever thinking you had a leg?
One source of confusion when explaining “consciousness” stems from common sense and formal accounts that frame the study of mental life. These are typically discussed in terms of a binary split between conscious intentional processes versus non-conscious involuntary processes – the latter of which are outside our awareness. When walking, for example, we have a conscious awareness of the intention to go somewhere. Yet putting one foot in front of the other is a non-conscious action. [...]
The key driver behind this traditional distinction stems from our own powerful belief that causality links subjective awareness with the daily experience of appearing to have control over our thoughts, feelings and actions. Over the past 100 years, however, a growing body of evidence has begun to question this binary distinction. There is now increasing agreement that most, if not all, of the contents of our psychological processes – our thoughts, beliefs, sensations, perceptions, emotions, intentions, actions and memories – are actually formed backstage by fast and efficient non-conscious brain systems.
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