Awareness
Key Terms: awareness, sentience, consciousness, phenomenology, intentionality, sensations, thoughts, internal cognition, peripheral awareness, central awareness, focus, Enlightenment
Learning Targets:
Define Awareness and Intentionality. Learners will be able to define awareness as a state of perception (sentience/consciousness) and explain Husserl’s concept of intentionality—that every act of consciousness is always “about” or “of” something, never empty or isolated.
Differentiate Sensation and Internal Cognition. Learners will distinguish between objects of awareness that arise from external sensations (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) and those that originate from internal cognition (thinking, reasoning, imagining, remembering, problem-solving).
Describe the Scene of Awareness. Learners will describe how awareness is shaped by the “scene”—the sum of sensory and mental elements present at any moment—and use metaphors (such as a stage or a stream) to illustrate how attention shifts and memories are formed.
Explain the Role of Emotions and Impressions. Learners will explain how emotions and feelings contribute to impressions, and how interpretive bias, emotional state, heredity, environment, and culture filter and shape individual awareness.
Identify and Challenge Cognitive Distortions. Learners will identify common cognitive distortions (e.g., all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, emotional reasoning) and practice using reason and self-reflection to challenge and reframe unhelpful automatic thoughts.
Analyze the Uniqueness of Perspective. Learners will analyze how neurodiversity and Kant’s idea of the synthetic a priori contribute to unique perspectives, and discuss how facts can be interpreted differently by individuals and groups.
Demonstrate Strategies for Increasing Awareness and Focus. Learners will demonstrate strategies to increase awareness and focus, such as contemplative practices, knowledge acquisition, quietness, deliberate attention, and the cultivation of humility and curiosity.