How to Write a PhD Research Proposal on Human Consciousness #9 - Lit Review Pt.3!

What the heck is Consciousness anyway?

Jul 20, 2025

hello! ⏰ 1:12 pm

i can feel the enthusiasm waning to write these mini essays everyday… but i think it's just that i am tired… plus the sun hasn't shown up at all today ☹️ i need my photosynthesis!!! 🌱 ⛅️

inspo for today's topic + memes:

re-routed there because of the latest Bistro Huddy short:

gonna talk about human behavior today!

could you guess?!

Was that Chit guy conscious or what?! 🤣

Reviewing previous feedback…

(…helps to re-orient focus in what to do)

My professor asked me :

…

***ADHD BRAIN*** …1:38 pm ⏰

omg i got distracted looking for memes…. now i am hungry… gotta go make lunch before i continue.

…🤤

⏰ *** 2:09 pm :

OK! i am back!

hydrated 💦 and fed 🥪

…where was i ?

My professor asked me :

" What is meant by conscious qualities? "

Off the top of my head …

conscious qualities are:

self-awareness
thoughtfulness
mindful-ness
the ability to respond to someone, or their environment
being alive, as a breathing, living being
like, have a pulse and beating heart?
liiiikeee, not dead bro.

ya gotta be like sooooo incredibly specific in research!

let's go look up some papers to see if we can "define" "conscious qualities" and then we can copy+paste that into our paper, extrapolate, synthesize, and yes ADD CITATIONS!!

Note: the reason why we do this in academic writing…

is to have "SUPPORT" from other published authors+researchers in validating your argument/thoughts/ideas/theories.

it makes what you are saying, more "LEGIT"

“…because, like BRO, he said it, and she said it too! they both like Agree with Me on this Bro! You can BELIEVE what I said is possible and true! because they said something similar to what I said here!”

* this is literally how this works.

…yes, i know, i know.

just play along, and find your way!

Ok, drilling down what papers to look for, i am thinking, i want to find stuff on the topics of

self-awareness
thoughtfulness
the ability to respond (to someone, or their environment)

I think these 3 points are the main qualities that makes us "conscious."

Looking up stuff on Research Gate, and google scholar, for human psychology papers on the above points…

…

⏰ **3:39pm wow! another distraction

…had to update my profile account blablabla on Research Gate

Ok back to researching!

**3:43pm ⏰ randomly poking around twitter/X…

found researcher: https://x.com/shi_weiyan

with a post on: How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMs

Ref: https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.773/

| pulled from abstract|

As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly common and competent, non-expert users can also impose risks during daily interactions. Observing this, we shift the perspective, by treating LLMs as human-like communicators to examine the interplay between everyday language interaction and AI safety.

…looks interesting!

…gonna sift thru this a lil later

**4:00 pm ⏰

wow… nearly fell through a time-suck rabbit hole looking at AI research… when I intended to look for Human Consciousness papers.

back on research gate…

⏰ 4:02 pm

— (3x) interesting papers i found on Research Gate:

Self context-aware emotion perception on human-robot interaction

self context-aware model (SCAM) that employs a two-dimensional emotion coordinate system for anchoring and re-labeling distinct emotions.

downloaded pdf… will look at later…

The Phenomenon of Responsibility in the Collective and Individual Consciousness of Students and Adults
— by A. Andreeva, E. Danilova

The structure and content of the social idea of responsibility as a phenomenon of collective consciousness is characterized by the dominance of the categories of social responsibility and self-control

ugh… had to fill out a form to download the PDF … because it was published by Wiley (big pub co.) and then they email it to me 🙄

it's featured in a journal : Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence

…will dive into more later!

Artificial Intelligence, Human and Society in the Context of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society Theory

Examining the potential interconnections between an artificial entity and consciousness and a real entity (human/society) and consciousness is the article's primary issue.
…
The theory of risk society, put forward by Ulrich Beck, in its most general definition, is that modern humans create various risks that will threaten their own existence with the knowledge, science and technology they produce.
…
Artificial entities and consciousness share the human ability to be a conscious entity, use reason, and generate ideas because artificial intelligence technology produces results that are almost identical to human intellect and consciousness.
…
According to the findings obtained from the article, artificial entity and consciousness based on artificial intelligence technology may blunt the ability to use human qualities and banalize many functions that make human entity special.

sometimes, it's just easier to go to citefast.com, then copy+paste the title of the paper into the journal tab to find it & get the correctly APA formatted citation!

now time to take a peek at Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society Theory…

**4:18p ⏰

Nevermind… I just went to presearch.com to lookup:

"what is consciousness in psychology"

found a few worthy references I can add to my Lit Review:

https://positivepsychology.com/consciousness-psychology/ — article discusses "Types and Levels of Consciousness" and shares a TED talk, refs to previous researchers + philosophers
Good 'ol PubMed / National Library of Medicine: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3956087/ — Conscience and Consciousness: a definition : Conscience is the “highest authority" and evaluates information to determine the quality of an action: good or evil, fair or unfair and so on.

i think that last one by Vithoulkas & Muresanu is all i really need!

…time to walk away from this 😅

**know when it is time to leave all this computer stuff behind and touch grass outside!**

OK! What did we learn today?!

Research is NOT a linear process!
'Researching' is fraught with Distractions + Rabbit Holes Galore!
Ya Gotta take breaks!
- step away from the computer screen!
- Feed + Hydrate yourself!
- Stretch & Move around!

Next post i'll share the most recent feedback i got from my other professor. We are also sharing our drafts with our classmates to get each other's feedback as well!

I should have enough resources now to write revisions to my first draft.

What are your research adventures like?

Are you as ADHD and distractable as I am?

share in the comments!

rips, blips, and clips

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