What is the Flow of Consciousness (in Psychology)?

The term "Stream of Consciousness" was coined by William James at the end of the 19th century, to refer to how thoughts emanate and circulate in the conscious mind. Through this concept, James analyzed the wide variety of thoughts that we are aware of and how they shape the flow of consciousness.

Next we will see what the idea of ​​the flow of consciousness of William James consists of, what are his attributes and how our thoughts are shaped.

• Related article: "History of Psychology: main authors and theories"

The Flow of Consciousness: background and definition

In 1889, the American William James published one of the works that enshrines him as one of the fathers of psychology: "The Principles of Psychology" (The principles of psychology). In this book he explored and described consciousness in terms of a "flow" or "stream," that is, as a continuous succession of experiences through which we select or direct our attention to certain stimuli.

Among other things, James had the concern, like many other scientists and philosophers of the time, of

explore the contents of consciousness and know the way in which we carry out that complex action we call "thinking", and what is more: how it is that we realize (we become conscious) that we are thinking.

He called it "flow" (stream, in the original English), to make a metaphorical reference to a kind of caravan of ideas, images, feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., that constantly appear and disappear in our consciousness.

According to this idea, all the previous elements, contrary to what used to be thought, are not so separated and differentiated from each other; they are part of the same conscious flow where past and current thoughts are connected. According to this way of understanding the human mind, consciousness is characterized by the constant passing of psychological contents, the ones linked in the others, and the existence of each one of them cannot be understood separately, since they are united and overlap between Yes.

There is then an overlap of our cognitive experiences, where the current experience may be the easiest to recognize as immediate, but it happens that past experiences continue to be present, and the next ones gradually enter the flow.

That is, the mental states follow each other. There are no "isolated thoughts", but all of them are in the same current of continuous consciousness, regardless of temporality and even what we can anticipate or to decide.

4 descriptive properties of the Flow of Consciousness

According to Tornay and Milan (1999), the four descriptive properties that James attributes to the flow of consciousness are the following:

• Each mental state tends is part of a personal consciousness
• Within personal consciousness, mental states are constantly changing
• Personal awareness is continuous
• Consciousness fixes interest in some parts of its object, excluding others, and chooses between them.

How do we think?

William James said that consciousness, and more specifically thought, follows a process that is apparently necessarily directed by intelligence. However, according to the psychologist, the figure of the "thinker" does not necessarily have to manifest itself as a leader.

Rather, the action of thinking is a goal-oriented process, which is fundamentally driven by the sense of satisfaction we experience when we are about to achieve those goals.

Thought would then be an automated process that has been consolidated as a logical result of our evolution, that is, it does not want the existence of an independent or spiritual entity to guide this process. In other words, far from the existence of an entity (ourselves) separated from our consciousness, dictating the paths that it follows; the conscious state is rather a process directed by our desire to experience satisfaction under the belief that our thoughts lead us to accomplish something.

Determinism and free will

Inevitably, some questions about determinism and free will in human beings follow from here. We could quickly draw the conclusion that, for James, humans experience, feel, and think as automatons.

Nevertheless, James suggests that human beings are, rather than automata, selecting organs. This is so because, although we cannot consciously select what will initially appear in our consciousness, we can choose which element we keep there or not once it has been done Present; or to what stimulus we remain attentive and to what not.

Although this was an ongoing discussion in much of his work, James moves the free will debate onto the grounds of philosophy, clarifying that psychology, as a science, should be added to a more deterministic tradition of consciousness.

How are the ideas of William James related to advances in neuroscience?

The concept of Flow of Consciousness is no longer used in current Psychology (at least consistently), but rather referred to as part of the History of this science and the works of William James. However, its essence seems to go in line with what recent decades of neuroscience research have allowed us to learn about the human mind.

For example, it is known that neural networks work by coordinating and overlapping each other, not from differentiated "brain modules" that work in parallel. What's more, the fact that one thought leads to the next is part of the normal activity of the nervous system, and this is the way in which an inertia is generated that drives mental processes always forward, without allowing them to stagnate completely.

Bibliographic references:

• Bayne, T. & Montague, M. (2012). Cognitive Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Carreira, J. (2013). William James, The stream consciousness and free will. Philosophy is not a luxury. Retrieved August 10, 2018. Available in https://philosophyisnotaluxury.com/2013/03/21/william-james-the-stream-of-consciousness-and-freewill/
• Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. London and New York: Routledge.
• Pawelski, J.O. (2007). The Dynamic Individualism of William James, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Tornay, F.J. and Milan, E. (1999). James' ideas on the flow of consciousness and current scientific theories of consciousness. Journal of History of Psychology, 20 (3-4): 187-196.
• Tieszen, R. (2005). Phenomenology, Logic, and the Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge and New York: Camabridge University Press.